Chapter 15
Lucas
Lucas did not like deviations from plans under any circumstances.
So, when Sia’s message came, calm, polite, and regretful as she explained that she and the girls would be staying a few more days because of a minor injury, his jaw tightened. She hadn’t even called him personally. She had left a message with the staff.
An injury. Sia had been injured.
He read the message twice, then a third time. The words were too careful and too deliberate. He called immediately, but her voice sounded distant in more ways than one.
“They’re fine,” she had said of the girls. “The girls weren’t even with me when I fell. I just need a little more time.”
Time for what? He was afraid to ask for clarification. He knew she intended him to think she needed time to heal, but he read more into it than that.
She didn’t want to come back.
He stood in his study long after the call ended with his fingers resting on the dark wood of his desk. The house had haunted him with its quiet since they left
It didn’t take long for a plan to form. He told himself he was being reasonable when he decided to drive to her parents' house. It would be a surprise. And thoughtful. A devoted husband checking on his injured wife.
Yes. That was how it would appear and he would be sure that Aldrek knew about it.
He broke royal protocol and drove himself, alone. The quiet in the car soothed him much more than he expected, and his mood cheered the closer he got to his destination. Sia would be happy to see him.
At least that’s what he told himself.
The farther he drove from Crystafalls, the narrower the roads became.
Pines thickened on either side and their shadows stretched long across the pavement.
At the castle, the mountains rose high and near, impenetrable and magnificent but here, they created the horizon.
They rose in layered ridges, serene and shadowed.
He’d forgotten how beautiful they looked from a distance.
The air felt different here, too. It was cooler and smelled faintly of pine and damp earth.
When he pulled into her parents’ gravel driveway, he noticed the sagging fence line and the tangle of wildflowers that pressed against the porch steps. Untidy, wild, and beautiful.
He sat for a moment after he turned the car off and stared at the house. Simple, modest, and much more personable than the castle. He could almost feel the love stitched into it. He hadn’t been there since Dian’s death, and guilt washed over him. The girls needed their grandparents. All of them.
The front door flew open before he reached it.
“Papa!”
All three girls rushed toward him in a tangle of braids and scraped knees. They nearly knocked him backward.
Lucas laughed, genuinely laughed, as he lifted the youngest into his arms. “What have you been doing out here?” he asked as he brushed dirt from her small cheek.
“Climbing the big rock!” Luna shouted.
“Grandpa lets us feed the chickens!” Celeste added.
Stella hugged his neck. “And the goats.”
They were flushed with happiness that struck him hard. Children were often happy but this was unrestrained. Their cheeks glowed. Their voices were freer. They spoke over one another about tree swings and berry picking and a place in the woods where Mama Sia liked to sit.
He felt something tighten in his chest.
Sia’s mother appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. Surprise flickered across her face before she arranged it into a polite smile.
“Your Majesty.” She curtsied. “We weren’t expecting you.”
“I thought I’d surprise you all,” he said smoothly. “And Lucas, please. No formality needed.”
She ushered him into the house, but he could see that she was nervous.
“Where’s Sia?”
A hesitation. Small, but there.
“She’s… out,” her mother replied.
“Out?”
“In the woods, Papa. She’s listening to music.”
Lucas frowned. “Music in the woods?”
“She goes to a clearing past the old logging trail. It’s always brought her peace.” The older woman’s eyes searched his face, as though she measured how much to reveal. “She’s been going there since she was a girl. It was like her sanctuary.”
Lucas felt a faint, unwelcome prickle of worry at the base of his neck.
“A clearing?” he repeated. “With music? Like on her phone?”
Her mother nodded and evaded his eyes. “Sometimes, I’m sure.”
He sat Stella on the ground. “I’m a little confused.”
She let out a long sigh. “Sometimes a musician plays there. A young man who teaches in town.”
The prickle sharpened.
“Musician?”
“He used to play when Sia painted. He never came to the house and they never dated. They just enjoyed their art together.” She tripped over her words trying to get them all out.
“Painted?” Lucas blinked. “Sia doesn’t paint,” he said, certain of it.
“Maybe not now.” Her mother’s lips pressed together. “But she used to.”
The quiet that followed unsettled him more than any accusation would have.
“She has a whole room for all her stuff out in the garage, but her paintings are in here.” Celeste grabbed his arm. “Come see her art, Papa. It’s beautiful.”
She led him inside to a room at the end of the hall. He could smell Sia as soon as he entered. Paintings covered every inch of the walls, beautiful oil paintings of trees and flowers, all with the mountains in the background.
“She painted these?”
The girls nodded. “She wanted to be an art gallery when she was little,” Stella informed him.
Celeste rolled her eyes. “An artist, silly. She wanted to be an artist with her paintings in an art gallery.”
Luna pointed to one in particular. “Can we take that back to the castle, Papa? I love that one.”
Lucas felt gutted. His mind spun through memories to see if he had ever known Sia painted. Maybe Dian had said something at some point, but nothing came to mind.
“Where is her painting spot? How is she there? I thought she was injured.”
Her mother sighed. “You know how stubborn she is. As soon as she was given a walking boot and a cane, she was off again.”
And yet she couldn’t come home to him. The fact didn’t get lost in his mind.
“Show me where she is,” he said. He needed to make this oversight right.
The girls pointed out the trail, but their grandmother held them back when he headed out. The path into the woods was uneven, and Lucas noticed how isolated it felt the deeper he went, and how easily someone could disappear into this kind of quiet.
He had never been a huge outdoors person, but even he could appreciate the beauty of the woods as he walked. It was like he was the only person for a thousand miles.
He heard the music before he saw them.
A flute.
The melody wound between the trees, soft and intimate, rising and dipping like breath. Lucas slowed his steps without meaning to and came up on the clearing.
Then he saw them.
Sia sat on a low wooden stool in the clearing, mountains visible beyond the treeline in the distance.
A canvas rested against her knees, her hand moving with steady focus.
There was a streak of green paint along her cheek.
Her injured leg was stretched slightly in front of her, the boot propped up on a stump.
She was smiling. Not the polite, measured smile she wore at formal dinners or social gatherings. Not the careful one she offered him across long tables.
This smile was unguarded.
Her eyes were closed as she swayed to the melody. Opposite her stood a man, tall, lean, with his hair blowing in the breeze as he held his flute. His gaze was fixed on Sia with an intensity that made Lucas’s vision narrow.
The way he looked at her was not casual or even respectful, in his opinion. It was hunger, though he tried to disguise it as admiration.
Jealousy hit Lucas with startling force. It was not a feeling he was accustomed to. He did not compete for anything. He selected what he wanted.
Yet here, beneath the trees and the silent watch of the mountains, he felt displaced. Sia had never painted in his presence, nor had he ever seen her look so… alive.
The musician lowered his flute as Lucas stepped into the clearing. The crunch of leaves under his shoes snapped Sia’s head up.
Her smile vanished as the musician instinctively shifted closer to her, almost protective. Protective of his wife.
“Lucas.”
The man dropped into a bow. “Your Majesty.”
His name on her lips sounded less like welcome and more like warning. Lucas didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t even frown. He simply lifted one hand, a small gesture that commanded authority.
The musician stilled and Sia’s brush hovered in midair.
“Leave us,” Lucas said evenly. The authority in his tone was quiet but absolute.
The man hesitated and his gaze flicked to Sia as though awaiting her permission. She gave an almost imperceptible nod.
A beat passed. Then another. Finally, the musician inclined his head slightly, whether in acknowledgment or reluctant retreat, and stepped away. He didn’t look at Lucas again, only at Sia.
Lucas watched that look, memorized it, as the man hurried away.
When the clearing emptied and only the whisper of wind through the pine trees remained, Lucas walked closer until he could see the detail in her painting. The mountains rendered in sweeping strokes and the light caught along their ridges in a way that felt almost defiant.
“You never told me you painted,” he said. It was not a question.
Sia set the brush down slowly.
“I used to,” she replied.
The breeze stirred her hair. The air between them felt different here. It was less structured, less arranged.
“I’m not used to being ignored when I give an order. And yet he needed your permission.” He gestured toward the space the man had occupied.
“I’m sure Orion’s not used to having a king show up in the middle of the woods.”
“He loves you.”
“He had a crush on me when we were kids. Now we’re just friends, and he’s good with that. Nothing inappropriate is happening here.”
His admiration said otherwise, but Lucas let it go.
“How’s your leg?”
“My ankle. It’s healing. The boot helps.”
Lucas studied her face, searching for something friendly rather than the compliant calm and the careful attentiveness. Instead, he found distance.
She let out a long breath. “What are you doing here, Lucas?”
“I came to bring you home,” he said.
And though his voice remained smooth, fear crept up his spine. He could almost see the shutters replacing the happiness he had observed in her eyes. He could see the walls rising that robbed her of peace.
For the first time in a long while, Lucas felt that he was not entirely certain of anything.