Chapter 29 – Desta
DESTA
Iwake up a bundle of giddy anxiety and nervous energy. The sun is just starting to crack open the sky to the east, coating the choppy water with a smoothness it wouldn’t otherwise have. The air is light and fresh and warm, but with a hint of fall tickling its edges.
It’s tonight. The festival is tonight.
But with that, I’m going to have a freaking gun on me.
Ferrin is too. He took the bullets out of Lars’s gun and showed me how to aim and fire it.
He didn’t want the sound of gunfire to echo off the rock and possibly alert someone either not far from here or offshore that we were here.
So I have no clue if I’d actually hit a target or not.
But knowing how to shoot is at least half the battle.
We’re going to keep a low profile. And if my mother decided she wanted to steal me back, she’d know where to find me because she knows this is my end goal. How ironic that she stole me at the festival for the stolen princess.
Ferrin is still asleep, his breathing heavy.
He’s on his stomach with the sleeping bag covering his butt.
His muscular back and tattooed arms are on display, even if he’s facing the other way.
We haven’t talked about what comes next for us, not in any specific way, and I think that’s because we both know nothing comes next.
After tonight, we’ll go our separate ways.
It’s not what I want. Not even close. But he’s intimated that’s how this will go.
I keep telling myself that the things I want for my future aren’t the things he wants.
That outside of this insanity, it’d never work.
We haven’t even known each other for a week, and a future can’t be put together from situations like this. Can it?
If I somehow manage to meet the royal family and they somehow believe my story and all of this turns out to be real, I’ll have him pardoned if I can. It’ll be my thank you to him. I already know I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking and wondering about him. Wishing for things I won’t get.
I could fall in love with him so easily.
Maybe when the dust settles, and everything works itself out, and the danger is gone, I’ll track him down and see where things are then. Still, the thought of him walking away from me tonight or tomorrow hurts so much worse than it likely should.
Quietly, I climb out of the sleeping bag and pad down to the water.
The sand is cool beneath my feet, the wind whipping my hair off my face and straight back.
Today is the day when everything changes.
My thoughts drift to the royal family and to my mother and to what I want for my life and future, uncertainty swimming alongside each of them.
I don’t know how long I stay down here. Long enough that dawn turns into morning, and I’m sitting in the sand instead of standing in it. Long enough that Ferrin wordlessly joins me, both of us lost to our own introspection, even as our bodies are close and our shoulders and arms are touching.
My head falls to his shoulder, and he kisses the top of it.
“Happy birthday,” he whispers, kissing me again.
My heart melts. It’s perfect like this. Heaven really.
Is this a boat I want to rock, or are we already a sinking ship?
The princess’s family thinks she’s dead, and that’s heartbreaking.
I have no clue how I’ll get to the royal family, but I’ll find a way.
Maybe I’ll simply show up at their door and knock.
Who knows. But I’m not sure I’m fully ready to dive in headfirst. I may need some time to figure it out and sort it through before I meet them.
“Getting hungry?” he asks, his voice soft as it plays in the wind.
“Coffee,” I answer instead.
“Coffee is a must, but it means we’re leaving here.”
And just like that, my heart drops to my stomach, and my stomach drops to my feet. In both a good and a bad way.
“Maybe a bit longer then?”
“Works for me.”
Except this quiet isn’t simple. I can feel the heaviness surrounding us. His mind is going, and though he’s holding me, and it all seems like magic, there’s a poison waiting in the wings.
That’s only proven when he says, “Sven and your mother will be there today.”
I tense, but I already assumed that. I need to face my mother. At some point, that has to happen. But that other guy… “I don’t want to put you at risk.”
“Honestly, I think we put each other there.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because you’re a liability to your mother.
She either wants you back, but that’s tough since she knows you don’t want to do that or stay locked away anymore, and she knows that you know who you really are.
Or she wants you taken care of. And Sven is not only working with her but at this point likely knows either you or I killed his brother. ”
“Are you trying to relax me? Because it’s not working.”
He leans in and kisses me, tilting my face up to his and dragging his finger along my cheek. He stares into my eyes, and my belly flutters, and my chest expands.
“What’s your favorite thing to cook?” he mumbles, his lips brushing against mine.
I smile lightly at the topic change. “Lasagna,” I answer easily. “It takes hours because I make my own pasta, tomato sauce, and béchamel sauce for it. I also make a roasted garlic focaccia when I make lasagna, and that’s my favorite bread ever.”
His stomach grumbles, and it makes me giggle.
“Will you make it for me someday?”
Someday? Shit. It shouldn’t burn, but it does. That’s what the heaviness is. He’s setting me up for the end. The end that comes tonight after the festival and his deal with me is over.
“Sure. Whenever you want,” I say glibly.
His fingers glide through my hair, and he holds the back of my head, pressing our foreheads together. “Your prince husband won’t like that.”
“My prince husband?”
“The one who will swoop in and sweep you off your princess feet.”
I snicker. “Probably not. We won’t tell him you popped my cherry.”
He laughs and kisses me. “Or that I’m better at sex than he is.”
I stare into his beautiful green eyes, doing my best to hold my emotions back. “Definitely can’t tell him that. He wouldn’t like hearing that I think about you while I’m with him.”
He sucks in a rush of air. “Only you and I will know that secret.”
“Yup.”
He kisses the crook of my neck, and my eyes close.
“You know you’re not that evil, right?”
“I’m not good either, and you can’t argue that.”
He’s not. But he’s not a monster the way he thinks he is. It’s as he said to me, most people are shaded in gray, and he’s definitely that.
“We could stay here. Build a hut and be beach people.”
I can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “That’s sort of my goal, you know. Being a beach bum. Just not here.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears. So stupid. I hate feeling like this when I knew how it would go all along. “Can I visit your house when you get one?”
“Absolutely. You’ll have to leave your husband at home.”
“What if I have children?”
He shudders ever so slightly, his thumb dragging along my jaw. “We’ll figure that out then.”
I pull back. “I’m not marrying a prince. I seem to like the villain more.”
His eyes turn soft, his lips tilting down. “You shouldn’t.”
“But I do. I don’t want this to be the end, and I know that’s what you’re trying to set me up for.”
He drags my forehead back to his, our noses brushing. “You should end up with the prince, not the villain. I’m not someone who could be in that world. Baby, you deserve a million times better than anything I am.”
“I think you’re so much better, so much more than you see.”
His lips meet mine, and he kisses me for minutes, but it’s not long enough. It likely never will be. There’s nothing left for me to say. No argument if he’s not willing to fight.
This is it. Our final day together, and I hate it.
After that, it’s more silence, but it’s not tense or awkward.
It’s comfortable and easy because that’s how I force myself to be.
It’s watching the world move while we don’t.
Eventually time catches up with us, and we pack up all our gear and make the trek back up the fucking cliffside, which is even harder to do on the way up than it was on the way down.
We get in the car and music plays, but it’s less than an hour before we’re parking near the festival grounds.
People are everywhere, and there’s an energy in the air along with the scent of food.
The festival grounds are massive, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s the same grounds where the palace the king was killed and I was stolen from used to be.
It’s been razed and turned into a park with a lake and gardens and open area, but still.
This is where I lived as a baby. This is where I was taken from.
I don’t know why any of it happened. I broke my phone, and I can’t even ask my mother or whoever she is.
The questions are mounting, but worse than that, I have a clock ticking in my head.
I fear he’ll leave me the moment he can.
It’s such a contradiction to how he is when we’re alone.
Yet I feel him already starting to pull away.
He’s not holding my hand now, and he’s hardly looking at me despite the smile on his face and his easy social engineering way. He also has his phone in his hand a lot, reading and responding, and I don’t know who he’s talking to.
Has all of this been a ploy? Is he using me to get the tiara after all? Am I part of his game? He warned me, and I didn’t heed it, but how could I have? He’s been perfect. I don’t want to doubt him now. It’s been us, and we have been perfect. I trust him. He told me to trust him, and I do.
His head is swiveling every which way, his body tense. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s working to keep us both safe.
“We can get food and go hide out somewhere.”
His head whips in my direction, then a smile breaks loose, and he tosses an arm over my shoulder. “If I hide out with you, I’ll end up inside of you. Biggest day of your life, you deserve to enjoy every second.”