CHAPTER 16
Axel
A xel couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face as he approached her. After all of his worrying, too.
She turned slowly, wavering on her feet. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open slightly as she stared at him. Lifting her unresisting hand, he pressed his lips lightly to her knuckles, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to see you here, Katy,” he whispered. She continued to stare at him, mouth flopping like a fish. “And to think, only yesterday I was mourning the fact that I would never see you again.”
“But—” She stuttered as she finally found her voice. “But you’re G—”
He swiftly leaned forward, placing his lips next to her ear so the acoustics couldn’t pick up his voice. “If you care for me at all, please do not call me that here.” She began to draw back, but he leaned forward with her. “I’ll explain later, I promise.”
She gave him a slight nod as he withdrew. Behind him, he heard Otto release a quiet sigh.
“Axel,” his mother said, a rebuke in her voice. “What about Heidi?”
He almost confessed that “Heidi” stood before her, but he stopped himself at the last moment. Katy had attended the show; his cover story would be blown. “As I’ve told you, Mother, though I believed myself madly in love with her, it would never have worked out between us.”
“Yes, but—”
“And how can I deeply mourn her loss when faced with such loveliness as I see here before me?” he continued blithely. He winked at Katy, but instead of smiling back, her mouth finally snapped shut as she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Well!” huffed his mother, dropping back against her throne and pursing her lips. She opened her mouth like she planned to say something else, but her eyes darted to the young woman in front of him, and she closed it again. “If you are determined. But what does the young lady say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the king said stiffly. “By completing the challenge, she agreed to marry him.”
Katy spun back to face his parents. “No! I—I can’t marry him. That is, I really, really would rather not.”
Axel fought the downward pull on his lips at this outburst. Placing a tentative hand on her back, he whispered, “Katy?”
“This audience is over. Come, Carina.” Father stood and held out his arm. Mother narrowed her eyes at Axel before rising gracefully from her seat and taking it, heading for the exit.
Instead of shaking him off as he had feared, Katy twisted her head to look at him with a frantic expression. “Please! Help me convince him!”
“But, Katy…” His forehead creased as he set his other hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him. “I don’t understand. Why?”
“Excuse me, Your Highness.” The quiet voice of his guard drew both his and Katy’s attention. “Perhaps we should relocate?”
Axel followed the direction of Otto’s subtle nod. The king and queen had left, but Lord Ulrich was still standing on the dais. The advisor was pretending to fiddle with his sleeve, but his eyes gleamed in the early morning light as he watched them with interest.
“A wise suggestion, Otto. If you would, please, Katy,” Axel murmured, lightly gripping her arm.
She glared daggers at him as she ripped her arm out of his hold. “You may call me Katrin.”
“Later, Kat,” the guard urged. Axel’s eyes widened in surprise. “Let’s get out of here before you have it out with him.”
“With you, too,” she muttered, but she started stomping toward the throne room door.
Axel raised an eyebrow at his guard, but Otto only shook his head and motioned to the exit. “Later.”
Within a few minutes, the prince was closing the door of an empty sitting room. Katy stormed across the room to a window, while Otto took up a post next to the door.
As soon as the door was closed, Katy whirled to face him, her loose, wild curls flying out to the sides with the motion. Pointing her finger accusingly at him, she hissed, “You lied to me!”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Axel held his hands up, palms out. “But I promise, my name was the only thing I told you that wasn’t true.”
She stalked toward him. Her mouth was scrunched up in fury. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated earnestly. “I was only supposed to be at the show, not in it, so I gave you the name I gave the director and cast. My father would have a fit if he knew, so I couldn’t let anyone find out. Only you, the woman who told me the understudy was sick, and I know that I was Gunther.”
“And Otto,” she bit out, crossing her arms and transferring her glare to the guard. “You knew, didn’t you? And you didn’t tell me!”
“Guessed,” Otto corrected. He glanced at Axel. “I didn’t know until the throne room. ”
Axel sighed. Rubbing the back of his neck, he said, “I should have known you’d figure it out. Speaking of the throne room, you called her Kat. Does that mean she’s…?”
“My little cousin, yes.”
“You look nothing alike.”
Shrugging, Otto replied, “Kat’s father is my mother’s younger brother, but she takes after her mother, a native of the desert region.”
“This is fascinating, but Otto, you could have told me! ” Katy growled. “Even if it was only a guess, you could have told me.”
Her cousin shook his head. “No, I couldn’t have, Kat. What if I’d been wrong? I would have gotten your hopes up for nothing.” He gave her a sad smile. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
“This has nothing to do with hopes.” Katy dug her hands into her hair as she walked a hurried circle around an armchair. “If I’d known—”
“If you’d known—what?” Axel asked when she didn’t finish.
She tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. “It wouldn’t have changed anything,” she said in a defeated voice as she dropped into the armchair. “But why didn’t you at least tell me yesterday? Did you not trust me enough to keep your secret?”
The anger in her voice had lessened, replaced by pain. “Of course, I did,” Axel said softly. He slowly walked over to her armchair and knelt beside it. “I could have told you while we were walking the first time, too. But I’d already told you my name was Gunther, and…it was nice to be a simple actor wandering about with a pretty girl. I didn’t want to be ‘the prince’ with you; I liked being just Ax—well, just Gunther. And since I didn’t expect to see you again, there didn’t seem to be any point in telling you. Then yesterday, we were both going to forget about each other. My name didn’t seem important. ”
“You still should have told me,” she muttered. The heat was returning to her eyes as she shoved out of the chair and performed a shallow curtsy before spinning away from him. “Your Highness.”
The honorific shouldn’t have cut, but it did. She flung it at him like a knife, and it pierced deep into the part of him that had been longing for her presence since the first time he’d bidden her farewell.
“I told you she hates dishonesty,” Otto muttered under his breath.
“Last night was a little late, wasn’t it?” Axel snapped back. He buried his face in his hand. “Sorry, Otto. That was uncalled for.”
The guard didn’t answer. Axel stayed kneeling by the empty armchair, struggling to organize and rein in his emotions. He didn’t want to throw on his act with Katy; he’d only done it opening night in a feeble attempt to maintain his distance. She felt safe, so he wanted to be himself with her. But that didn’t mean that he wanted to assault her with the initial surge of his reactions like he’d just done to her cousin.
“I still can’t marry you, Gu—Your Highness,” Katy sniffed from the window to which she had retreated.
He lifted his head, not even trying to fight off the frown tugging at his lips or the furrow in his forehead. “Why not?” Quickly reviewing their interactions, he asked, “Is it because of what my mother said? You don’t have to worry about that, Katy; you are Heidi.”
“It’s Katrin,” she bit out. “If I am, why lie?”
He rose and slowly approached her. “I was afraid if anyone had seen us together, they might figure out that I’d been in the show. So I gave a false description of the girl I’d been out with to throw them off the scent, then made up a reason for why I’d never see her again since I couldn’t present her. ”
“And the name?”
“Same reason. I knew you had a cousin in the guard, and I didn’t want him to put the pieces together when the story reached him.” He threw an annoyed look over his shoulder. “A lot of good that did me when I invited him to follow me around.”
Instead of responding to the jab, Otto simply maintained his guarding stance by the door as his eyes traveled back and forth between his cousin and his prince.
Katy wrapped her arms around her waist and gazed out the window at the courtyard. Axel stepped up next to her, reaching his left hand across her back to rest it lightly on her shoulder. She started to lean back into his arm, but then she stiffened.
“It doesn’t matter. I still can’t marry you.”
“But why?” Axel rubbed his thumb along the top of her shoulder as his grip tightened before he forced himself to relax. His voice turned pleading, but he kept it low, conscious of the third person in the room. “I’ve been struggling for months because I knew my father would never consent to our relationship. Now he’s ordering me to marry you. The method isn’t ideal, but he’s offering what I wanted. I thought—I thought you would want it, too.”
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” she whispered. Squeezing her eyes shut, her lips mashed into a frown as she curled into herself and leaned her left side against the window. His hand trailed across her back as she moved away. “I can’t .”
Watching her silent tears proved to be more than he could bear. Hoping that she would accept it as she had the day before – back when she believed him to be a simple actor – he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. She burrowed her head into his chest, making no protest when he rested his temple on the top of her head. Allowing his emotions to pour into his arms, he pulled her firmly against himself .
Was he allowed this because he was a friend? Just not enough of one to make her willing to submit to his father’s whim?
“I don’t want to force you into anything, Ka—Katrin,” he whispered in her ear. His tight throat wouldn’t allow for anything more. “I can’t promise he’ll listen, but if you want me to, I’ll try to convince my father.”
She pulled back a little so that she could meet his eyes. “You would do that? B-but you want it.”
“But you don’t.” He brought his right hand up and lightly stroked her jaw with the back of his fingers. “So I have to try.”
“It’s not a matter of wanting,” she murmured, working her arms free and wrapping them around him as she snuggled back into his chest.
She’d said that before.
I can’t marry you.
It’s not a matter of wanting.
“I don’t understand.”
Instead of responding, Katy dug her hands into the back of his shirt and tightened her arms. When she relaxed them again, she said, “If you can talk him out of it, I’ll be eternally grateful. B-but you don’t have to leave yet. Un-unless you want to.”
He did not understand.
But he was going to hold her for as long as she would let him.
And then he was going to ask his father to let her go.