25. Chapter 25 #3
His eyes held mine for a moment before he spoke.
“I never really have. But I don’t want Hart to have it.
That’s why I keep it. And my father ensured we would never be able to change that.
” There was a whole world behind the facade Kaed had chosen to show me.
Would I have thought any differently of him if he’d let his true title show the day we’d met?
Hardly. Being a prince didn’t excuse him from his actions.
“What do you mean ensured?”
Kaed looked at me in the dark light of the night air spilling into the study.
As his eyes lingered on me, the heat of their gaze warmed my blood.
His chest rose and fell rhythmically as he held himself, restrained and stoic, before me.
For a moment, I thought we might just sit together all night in the growing nightshade.
Something about being around him was intoxicating enough to forget how I got here in the first place.
And it was going to ruin me.
I swallowed a rush of shivers that flowed through me.
Mentally undressing him should not be what ran through my mind as he spoke. And yet …
“Another time perhaps.”
I sagged with relief as he dismissed me and ended our conversation. I wasn’t sure I could hide the thoughts that were growing like wildflowers in my mind.
But I couldn’t leave on that note. On knowing he’d lost something vital with his brother. For whatever reason, it must not have been easy.
“That day. In the meadow. When you … found me … I was leaving.” I paused, unsure now why I was babbling.
“I have … an unusual … relationship with my sister. It’s not cold because she doesn’t care.
She does. We do, for each other.” Speaking more to myself, I didn’t lift my gaze to Kaed.
“She isn’t trying to take my birthright from me—I don’t have one to take.
” I looked at Kaed eventually as I tried to make light of that in some way.
“But … she’s just everything I’m not. That’s why I was there that day.
Alone.” I paused but didn’t look up. “I … I always knew something was missing, that I was different. It had ground down something deep inside me to dust, so I left. But now I’m not so sure that was right.
” My voice had drifted to a whisper in the darkness.
Kaed had gone perfectly still in front of me. But then he crossed the room, closing the distance between us. “You only ever talk about leaving here. But you’d already left what you knew,” he eventually said. “Do you want nothing here?”
That elemental aura, the heat of him, waged war on the nerve endings of my skin as he stood beside me. “I suppose my perspective on what I wanted, or thought I needed, changed when my choices were taken away …”
I thought he might reach for me, but he pulled his hand back.
“You always have a choice, Imogen. They might not seem worthwhile, but there is always a choice.”
Our chests were just a few inches from each other now.
“You had a choice in the Cage. And you chose to free me. They’d have happily let me rot in there for a few years. Just to enjoy the spectacle. But you chose to free me.”
Years? They’d hold a prince that long? Could they even do that? Some part of me feared what power they had to withhold a prince from the Crown.
“I owed you that.” I swallowed against how dry my throat had suddenly gone.
“You think because I saved your life, you had to save mine?” His voice was soft, searching, but it was tipped with something sharp, a thorn that pained him.
Yes. I did.
I looked away in answer.
“I will not hurt you. And I will protect you.” The darkness had ebbed from his eyes when I looked up at them again.
“Whether you feel you owe me your life or not. I will protect you.” Kaed didn’t look away.
Stars glimmered in them as they sparked with something I couldn’t place.
His eyes darted between mine as though he were searching for something in them.
Pulling my gaze from his was like trying to shift a current from its path. The weight of his stare had my breath hitching.
I wanted to joke about it, to shake off the gravity that hung in his words, but the reality was, he was being serious. “That’s a promise that isn’t yours to make, Kaed.” My words were guarded. Stiff.
His jaw tightened. “Thank you,” He finally breathed after a considered pause, and his chest and shoulders relaxed. “For choosing to free me.”
The sincerity in his words hit me. And I felt something deep and low twist in me.
I hadn’t done it for his gratitude, but having it now was a nebulous thing I wasn’t sure what to do with.
The arrogance of the male I’d first met was shifting like sand beneath my feet.
Every time he did something like that, disarming me with that rawness in his voice, I saw another part of him.
It was getting hard to reconcile the facets of him as they glinted from the shadows.
The earlier revelations Eryk had given me, the fact that the Crown had vanished—destroyed—Aurora wasn’t new information to me, but forcing that to live alongside Kaed was more difficult in that moment than I had thought it would be.
He was more than a prince of the Crown. He was more than the male who had taken me—saved me.
But I just wasn’t sure what that meant yet.
His blue eyes looked deep into my violet ones, and the current pulled me to him.
“Goodnight, Kaed,” I breathed hastily and pulled out of his bounds.