Chapter 28
Randi
Randi had thought she understood what happiness felt like. She believed she had experienced it in small, fleeting pieces back in Tampa when she first began building something that belonged entirely to her.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the overwhelming, breath-stealing certainty that settled into her chest as she stood beside Chance as his new fiancee while the crown of Noriveille became his.
In the same moment, he had made his choice to make her his in a way that was both public and irrevocable.
It wasn’t just the proposal, though that alone had been enough to leave her heart racing and her thoughts spinning.
It was the way he had done it, the way he had stepped away from power at the very moment he was meant to claim it, and chose her first in front of an entire kingdom as though there had never been any question at all.
She still felt it now, hours later, standing in the quieter corridors of the palace with her fingers brushing absently over the tattoo on her wrist.
“Well,” she said lightly and glanced up at Chance as they walked side by side. Her tone threaded with amusement despite the warmth lingering in her chest, “I guess this means I’m going to need another one.”
Chance looked down at her with a hint of confusion crossing his expression. “Another what?”
“A tattoo,” she clarified and lifted her wrist slightly. “It would feel unbalanced otherwise, don’t you think? One for where I came from…” she tilted her head, a playful glint in her eyes, “and one for the crest of Noriveille.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “You’re already planning permanent marks of loyalty?”
Randi shrugged, though her smile softened into something more meaningful. “I think that decision was made the moment I said yes,” she replied. “The tattoo is just balance.”
Chance shook his head slightly, though the fondness in his expression was unmistakable. “Remind me not to underestimate your commitment.”
“Too late,” she said easily.
But as much as she wanted to stay in that moment and linger in the warmth of it, there was something else she needed to do. Something that had been sitting in the back of her mind since the moment the battle ended. An itch she couldn’t ignore and a question that refused to be quiet.
“I want to see him.”
Chance’s steps slowed, tension threading through his posture. “Randi, don’t.”
“I’m not going down there to fight,” she added quickly. “I just… I need to.”
He turned to her fully then and studied her like he was trying to read every thought she wasn’t saying out loud. There was worry in his eyes but he wasn’t afraid for himself. He was for her. Finally, he exhaled and gave a reluctant nod. “I’ll have someone escort you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said softly, though she didn’t argue when he insisted anyway.
The dungeon felt colder than she remembered. Not just in temperature, but in something deeper. It felt like the stone corridors remembered every cruel word and every act of violence it had ever witnessed. Randi walked down the dim corridor while a guard trailed a few paces behind.
The anger she’d carried for so long had dulled into something quieter. Something that wanted answers. Or maybe it was something that still hoped to get some.
The former King Gunner sat in his cell. The remnants of his former power had been stripped away until he was nothing more than a man behind iron bars. She knew the moment his gaze lifted and locked onto hers that whatever had made him who he was had not been so easily removed.
His power had just given him the ability to use his evil.
“Well,” he drawled, his voice cutting through the silence, edged with the same venom she remembered, “if it isn’t the reason my son thinks he’s a king.”
Randi stopped just outside the bars and folded her arms. She studied him carefully and searched his face for anything that even mimicked regret. Anything that suggested there had ever been a man worth saving beneath all of this.
She found nothing in his demeanor, his attitude, or the way he glared at her that made her suspect he cared even a little.
“You’re still doing that,” she said after a moment. “Blaming everyone else for the choices you made.”
His lip curled, eyes narrowing with open disdain. “And you’re still standing where you don’t belong.”
“I was hoping…” She hesitated, the admission catching in her throat before she forced it out. “I was hoping that maybe losing everything would’ve forced you to see it.”
“See what?” he snapped
“That you were wrong,” she said simply. “That you were the problem all along.”
For a split second she thought she saw something shift in his expression. But it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by something colder and harder.
A harsh laugh broke from him. “You think I regret anything?” He stepped up to the bars. “Let me tell you how life works. I did what I needed to do to keep my people in line. In return, I kept them safe.”
“By being cruel to them?”
“Life is cruel, honey. The quicker you learn that, the better off you’ll be. Your little boyfriend is going to rule with a weak hand and a soft heart. The people will overthrow him in a year. A little fear never hurt anyone. Sometimes you have to be cruel to get them to understand.”
Randi’s chest tightened. Not because of the words but because of how easily he said them.
“I think you should,” she replied, and this time there was just truth. “Because you didn’t just lose a throne.” She stepped closer to the bars. “You lost your son.”
Something in his expression darkened but it wasn’t guilt. It was anger.
“You mean the boy who betrayed me?” Gunner shot back. “The one who came back to steal what is rightfully mine?”
Randi flinched despite herself but she didn’t step back.
“No,” she said, her voice sharper now. “I mean the son who needed his father but instead watched him kill his brother and his mother.”
Gunner reacted but not with remorse. It was something far uglier that made her stomach turn.
“And now,” she continued, “you will never see a day without these bars. And he will never look at you again.”
Silence stretched between them.
Randi searched his face one last time but there was nothing. No guilt or remorse. She doubted he even had any recognition of what he had done. Just that same unyielding, bitter man.
“You don’t deserve him,” she said finally. “You don’t deserve a family. You don’t deserve loyalty. You don’t deserve anyone.”
“You think I care?”
She took a step closer to him, almost as if a challenge. “What you care about is irrelevant. You’re a disgusting, despicable old man who never needs to be heard or seen again. You make me sick.”
Gunner didn’t flinch. If anything, his expression hardened further. And at that moment, Randi understood. There was nothing to find.
No hidden piece of goodness. No buried regret waiting to be uncovered. With only a sad shake of her head, Randi was done. There was nothing left to say.
Chance found her not long after she returned. “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Randi replied lightly and gestured back toward the corridor. “Your very intimidating guard made sure of that.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She softened at that and stepped closer. “I know.”
“Are you okay?”
Randi considered the question for a moment before nodding. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I just needed to see the evil for myself.”
Chance studied her. “I’ve been thinking about Tampa.”
Randi’s brow lifted slightly. “Okay…”
“I don’t want you to feel like you gave something up to be here,” he continued. “Your life there mattered, and I don’t want this to become something you resent later.”
“Chance,” she said gently and reached for his hand, “I didn’t leave Tampa because I had to. Well, technically because of the attempted kidnapping, I did. But that’s beside the point. I left with you because I chose to.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but she held up a finger.
“When I left Stagholt the first time, it was because I needed something that was mine. I needed independence, something I built on my own terms, and I found that with TimeOff.”
Her grip on his hand tightened just slightly.
“And now, I still have that. I just have more with it.”
He searched her face, as though looking for any sign of doubt.
“I’m exactly where I want to be,” she said softly. “Close to my sister, building something new, andI have you. Besides, who says TimeOff can’t expand?”
Chance blinked. “Expand?”
“Think about it. A new branch, something completely different such as indoor water parks in the frozen lands of the Iskara Northlands.”
He stared at her for a second, then let out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re serious.”
“Completely,” she said with a grin. “Do you have any idea how much people would pay to swim when it’s snowing outside?”
Chance shook his head. “You just became queen, and you’re already planning business ventures.”
Randi shrugged, her expression unapologetic. “What can I say? I like to stay busy.”
He pulled her closer then, the movement easy, natural in a way that made her chest tighten just slightly.
“Good,” he murmured.
“I love you, King Chauncey Parelli of Noriveille.”
He kissed her long and slow. “I love you, Randi Matsen, woman of my heart.”
Randi leaned into him without hesitation, her earlier fears, her doubts, everything that had once felt uncertain settling into something solid and real.
Because for the first time, she wasn’t choosing between two lives.
She was building one that held both.