Chapter Twenty-Six
Nate’s shirt was ruined. Two buttons missing entirely, a third hanging on by a heroic thread. His dinner jacket was gone.
Because she was wearing it.
It hung from her shoulders like a trophy.
The sleeves swallowed her hands. The silk of her gown bunched high, cinched at her waist with his belt in a solution that had seemed clever and necessary approximately three minutes ago.
Her hair had completely given up on decorum.
Her lipstick was no longer only on her lips.
She caught her reflection in the darkened window at the end of the corridor and almost didn’t recognize herself. She looked untamed. Incandescent. Like a woman who had just set fire to her own carefully stacked life.
And okay, yes, her stomach was doing that thing, the one where it felt like she’d swallowed a hummingbird. But the panic could take a number. She had more urgent things to focus on.
“We need to move,” Nate said. “Somewhere private. Somewhere we can figure out the next step without an audience.”
“I know a discreet exit. One that doesn’t involve the front doors and three hundred witnesses.”
Nate blinked at her as if she’d just produced a grappling hook. “You do.”
Honestly. Had he learned nothing about the women in her family?
She nodded briskly. “Old servants’ passages. My grandmother used them to smoke in peace and avoid my grandfather.” Which, in Allegra’s opinion, made her a visionary.
Grabbing Nate’s hand, she yanked him along, the jacket tumbling from her shoulder.
This is fine, she told herself. This is manageable. This is—
They rounded the corner.
And walked directly into hell.
Julien stood at the far end of the corridor.
He was spectacularly red, veins pulsing at his temples, his hair disheveled.
Behind him, the tribunal had assembled like a firing squad: her father, carved from glacial disappointment; her mother, pale as death; Clara, absolutely beaming; and three security guards who looked almost… hopeful.
The air thickened. Sank into her lungs like wet cement.
Julien’s gaze dragged over Nate, then snapped to Allegra. To the jacket. The belt. The bare feet.
“What the fuck is this?” Julien said, his voice cracking like a teenager’s.
“This,” her father said, “is Ryan Steel.”
She felt Nate flinch beside her.
No. Absolutely not.
She stepped forward before Nate could finish the denial forming on his lips.
“For the last time,” she said, lifting her chin, “his name is Nate Donovan.”
Nate tried again. “Mr. von Wildern, sir. I know you think you know me, but I only have the best intentions for your daughter. I’m not looking to—”
“You shut up,” her father snapped. “Arrest him.”
The guards moved.
Something hot and feral surged up from Allegra’s toes.
Nate shifted, ready to intervene.
Then he stopped.
Allegra stepped forward first. If someone was going to face this tribunal, it would be her.
“Stop, Papa. Just stop. The engagement’s over. I love Nate, and nothing you say changes that.”
The guards faltered mid-step.
For a moment, no one did anything. Even Heinrich seemed to hesitate, his anger giving way to something that looked almost like desperation.
“Think, Allegra,” he said tightly. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
She laughed once.
“Maybe not. But I’m tired of everyone else deciding for me.”
She reached for her left hand, wiggled the engagement ring free, and hurled it down the corridor.
It spun end over end and struck a gilt-framed portrait of some powdered ancestor.
Tink.
The ring embedded itself in the painted man’s forehead.
“There,” she said, chest heaving. “Arrest him if you want. But I’m going too.”
Julien stared at the painting. At the ring. At her. His face went ashen.
Mathilde lifted a hand to her mouth, eyes wide.
Clara nearly applauded, checked only by the fact that one hand was occupied with a flute of champagne. She adjusted her grip instead, fingers sliding elegantly along the stem, lips pressed together to conceal the grin threatening to break free.
Heinrich cleared his throat. For a fleeting second, he didn’t look like a patriarch. He looked like a young man who had once wanted something he hadn’t been allowed to have.
“No,” he murmured. “I can’t permit this.”
“Permit?” Allegra said. “I’m not applying for a visa.”
“For fuck’s sake, Allegra—” Julien began.
“Enough!”
Mathilde’s voice rang through the corridor like a bell struck hard. She stepped forward, her dress whooshing against the marble. Then she rounded on her husband.
“I have listened to you talk for years about legacy. About the future.” Mathilde’s voice rose, not shrill, not hysterical, but honed. “You keep saying you want a strong leader to take over when you’re gone. Someone who will modernize the monarchy instead of embalming it.”
Heinrich opened his mouth.
She steamrolled him.
“Well?” She stabbed a finger down the corridor at Allegra. “Isn’t this exactly what that looks like? Someone who holds her ground. Who knows her mind and chooses what she wants, consequences be damned.”
She crossed her arms, daring him to contradict her.
“Maybe it blows up in her face. Maybe it doesn’t. But it’s hers to decide. Which, last I checked, was the whole point of not raising a spineless heir.”
Silence fell again. The awkward, echoing kind.
Heinrich’s gaze ricocheted—from Mathilde to Allegra, to the guards, to the painting, the diamond winking obscenely from his ancestor’s forehead. He shut his eyes and jabbed a thumb into his temple, as though wrestling with a headache or a very stubborn principle.
Then he grunted, his shoulders slumping. “When did I stop being able to command my own household?” he muttered. Louder this time: “Fine. It seems I am outnumbered.”
His gaze softened, barely. “I won’t pretend to understand it, Allegra. But I won’t drag you back from it either. If this turns into a catastrophe, it will be yours.” A faint shrug. “If nothing else, it will put us on the map.”
He glanced toward the ceiling as if drafting headlines. “Perhaps the press office can spin it—reinvention, authenticity, a redemption arc.” A beat. “And I have been dying to tell those vultures at Blitz exactly where they can shove it.”
For a split second, Allegra wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
Fine?
That was it? No thunderbolt? No exile? No dragging Nate away in handcuffs? Her knees nearly buckled from the sheer adrenaline crash of it. The fight drained out of her so fast she had to lock them to stay upright.
Nate’s fingers brushed hers, and she caught his hand, threading their fingers together before anyone could reconsider. She swallowed. “Thank you, Papa. I promise—”
“Putain, non!” Julien’s hands curled into fists, knuckles whitening as he strode forward.
Nate lifted a hand. “Julien, don’t—”
Then everything happened at once. Clara surged forward, champagne from her flute arcing through the air. The golden liquid splattered across the marble in a glittering wave, and Julien’s foot landed in the puddle.
Time did something strange. Allegra watched, horrified and mesmerized, as his foot slid out from under him. His arms windmilled. His face—oh God—his face registered betrayal. Not at Clara. Not at her. At gravity.
There was a sharp crack as the back of his head met the floor. He sprawled there, immaculate suit askew, like a toppled statue of wounded pride.
Clara blinked down at him, empty flute still in hand. “Oops.”
Allegra bit down on her lip so hard she tasted iron. Do not laugh. Do not laugh. Do not—
One of the guards looked faint.
Mathilde exhaled, long and put-upon. “Well, don’t just stand there. Roll him into the recovery position or something.” She turned to Heinrich, extending a hand expectantly. “And for the love of God, someone get me a drink.”