CHAPTER 38
Axel
Y
ou’re asking me to choose between my wife and my child?” Axel managed. One of his hands slipped from his hip. “What kind of choice is that?”
“The same kind that Fabian gave your theater girl, that she didn’t tell you about for years.” Lotti waved a hand toward Katy and sniffed. “I cannot believe you would even hesitate, knowing how long she kept that from you.”
The familiar twinge of anger flared in his chest, begging him to let it course through him. Again, he remembered the mind-numbing shock when Katy told him she was pregnant, not dangerously ill. The burst of frustration that Lord Ulrich could have been stopped before he began.
The stab of pain when he learned that she had bargained for his hand.
The jolt of horrified disbelief when she told him what their unlikely marriage would cost them.
“That’s not a fair choice,” he ground out, prying himself away from the swirling feelings.
“You don’t like it?” Lotti set her free hand on her hip. “Very well; you may take her and go. I expect your child will arrive soon, and Fabian will no doubt appear shortly after.”
She took a step toward Katy, lifting her hand as if to use her magic. Axel struggled to decide on a course of action. He couldn’t simply give up their child. But nor could he give up his wife.
“She’s right, Axel,” Katy murmured. Turning, he found her hand reaching toward him. “It’s my fault we’re in this mess. And I didn’t tell you until I couldn’t avoid it. You should take the deal.”
He half expected Lotti to stop him, but she drew back as he stepped up to the bed and took Katy’s hand. Settling next to her, he argued, “But who knows what she’ll do to you? She says she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but she’s already proved willing to do it. I couldn’t leave you here knowing—”
Katy squeezed his hand, her lips quivering. “Who knows what Fabian would do with our child? I made the first choice. Better that I pay the price myself than that our little one does.”
Dropping his head to hide the way his eyebrows drew down and his mouth scrunched, Axel squeezed back. This couldn’t be how it ended. He loved her too much to lose her like this, no matter her mistakes. “There is nothing else you will accept?” he finally forced through his tight throat.
Distantly, he registered Otto’s frustrated mumblings and the heat at his back from the wall of flame across the doorway.
In the end, it had done him little good to drag Katy’s cousin here.
Axel had almost gotten him killed – again – and even if Otto was standing next to him, they were both unarmed.
They would never overcome Lotti’s magic.
Even if they could, he couldn’t guarantee she would relent and offer the name in exchange for her freedom.
When Lotti didn’t answer, he smoothed his expression as well as he could and lifted his head. Her own expression was hidden beneath the hood of her cloak, as always.
“There is one other option,” she finally said.
Her low voice crept across the room toward him, wrapping around him with an almost physical presence.
“If you agree to a magical bargain in which you leave Himmelsburg, never to return to it, while your wife remains here with her child, then I will give you the name.”
How was that better? “You would have me leave them forever?” he choked out. “But why?”
“They would be safe,” Lotti soothed, stepping toward him. “And you would be with me. Picture it, Axel: the two of us traveling the continent, performing on every stage in the kingdoms. You could throw off the reins of your title. You could have the life you’ve always dreamed of!”
He could sing…
“Were you not considering abdicating?” she continued, holding her arms wide as she kept talking in that calm, coaxing tone.
“The throne has never suited you; you know that your place is on the stage, not in a castle, dealing with complaints and petitioners all day. When have you ever enjoyed the life that your parents have forced you into?”
Axel flinched under her words. He knew they were true, but he’d grown too used to Katy’s gentle lies, her sweet assurances that he might not fail too terribly at the role he was born to. Members of the court regularly told him otherwise, but their opinions were easy to ignore.
It was different coming from a friend.
“But if you come with me, you can leave it all behind. No one will ever try to make you fill a leadership position to which you are ill-suited. You will be free to be who you were meant to be. To finally have your dream.”
His dream…
His eyes drifted away from his old voice tutor, seeking Katy’s face.
Her curls were disordered, half in the style for the show, half pulled loose from her struggles to move while pinned to the bed.
Tears glistened in her brown eyes, and as he watched, her hand clenched around his while her mouth twisted in pain.
After a few moments, it passed, and she loosened her grip.
“I won’t think less of you for saying yes,” she whispered. “I know it’s what you’ve always wanted.” A tremulous smile tugged her lips upward. “We may as well let some good come of the mess I put us in.”
Ragged emotions swelled through his chest. Returning his gaze to Lotti, he did his best to pierce her with every jagged edge he felt.
“It would still separate me from my wife. It would also prevent me from even knowing the child I’m trying to save.
I thought we were friends, Lotti. How can you do this to me? ”
The sweet, crooning act vanished as she straightened.
“Friends? You are too naive!” Reaching up, Lotti threw back her hood, revealing her auburn hair and a face so disfigured he jerked back in a moment of shock.
“No one wants to be friends with someone who looks like this. And even if you could look past it, do you not realize what this means?” She grabbed a lock of her hair and shoved it toward him.
“How many people do you know with this hair color?”
“Quite a few, actually.” His surprise at her appearance vied with the desperation inside him. Out of habit, he threw up the defense of his unruffled mask. “One of Princess Arabella’s guards, the royal family of Amitié—”
She dropped the hair and scowled at him. “You would focus on all the wrong people. Remove the brown tones from my hair, and it is as flame bright as my uncle’s.”
Uncle? But the only person he could think of with flame-red hair was—
“Yes, you too-trusting prince. There is a reason I know Fabian’s magical name.”
The knowledge punched him in the gut. He’d spent ten years slipping away from the safety of his home to spend his time with the niece of the man who had cursed his sister. Who had made it possible for him to marry the love of his life, but at the cost of their first child.
And now that niece demanded he ransom that child with either his wife or his future.
“How…how long…?”
She turned away, focusing on something in the mess of old scenery.
“After showing signs of the ability to mold magic with my voice, I spent time training it. So when a curse locked away my beauty, forcing this inhuman appearance on me, I fled to the theater. It was a familiar place where I could be near the music I loved without being visible to the people who would scorn me.”
A tiny bit of hope flickered in his chest. “Then you didn’t befriend me because of your uncle?”
“I—” The hand controlling the fire dipped. “You showed promise. I approached you on my own.”
“But?” he prompted, hearing it in her voice.
She sighed. “But when he learned of our lessons, he offered me something I couldn’t refuse.” Her strange, green eyes flicked toward him. “If I could bring you under my control, he would break my curse.”
Under her control.
“But if you come with me, that will count!” Lotti pled. “Just think: once I no longer have to hide in the shadows, you and I will be the most sought after performers anywhere in the land. It will be everything you ever dreamed and more!”
Axel fought to keep his voice from shaking and his rising anger under control.
“Your face could be the most beautiful that has ever been seen, but it wouldn’t be able to hide the ugliness of your heart.
Your current look is a far better match.
” His hand tightened around Katy’s; it was probably painful for her, but he couldn’t relax it.
“I have no wish to go anywhere with you.”
“You would refuse the opportunity to live on the stage?” Lotti sounded incredulous. “You could live as you’ve always wished. Your wife and her child would be safe here. But you would rather let one of them be lost? Because you object to me? But why?”
“Why do I object to you?” He laughed in disbelief. “You expect me to either sacrifice my future with both of them or else give up one of them for the safety of the other, and you don’t understand why—”
He cut off, straightening a little as the realization hit him. That was it.
“No matter what I choose,” he said slowly, continuing to work it out in his mind, “I must give up something precious to me?” It fit Fabian’s style.
“Then…what if I give up my ability to sing?” Looking up, he continued in a confident tone that didn’t match the ache in his chest, “The beauty of my voice for the beauty of your face. I give up the theater, and I keep Katy and our child.”
Lotti’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “Your voice? You would—you would give up singing for them?”
“But Axel,” Katy whispered before her eyes squeezed shut and her hand tightened around his again. She released a heavy breath, then opened her eyes. “It’s your dream.”