Chapter 6
Dara made it back to her room in a state of controlled collapse.
Not dignified. Not composed. Not even especially upright in spirit.
Just held together enough to cross the threshold before the full force of what had happened in the garden caught up with her.
Grace followed her in with the quiet, steady competence of a woman who had seen enough to understand that her lady was currently one wrong word away from throwing herself into a decorative faint out of sheer social distress.
“My lady,” Grace began gently.
“I need you to leave.”
The words came out too quickly. Too flat. Not unkind, but undeniably desperate.
Grace paused at once.
Dara stood in the middle of the room with her shawl half slipping from one shoulder and her entire face still burning like she had been kissed directly by catastrophe. She pressed one hand to her forehead and tried again.
“Please.”
Grace’s expression softened with immediate understanding. “Of course, my lady.”
Bless her.
No questions. No knowing little smile. No unbearable female solidarity.
Just a bow, a graceful retreat, and the soft click of the door closing behind her.
Silence fell.
Dara stood perfectly still for one long second.
Then another.
Then she made a tiny, strangled sound, marched straight to the bed, and flopped face-first onto it with the dramatic despair of a woman personally wronged by romance.
The mattress received her with entirely too much softness.
“This,” she declared into the coverlet, “is unacceptable.”
Cai appeared on the nearest bedpost. “Yes.”
Dara rolled violently onto her back, clutched a pillow to her middle, and stared at the canopy overhead as if the carved wood might offer legal recourse.
“What,” she demanded, “just happened?”
Cai blinked. “The Crown Prince kissed you.”
“I know that happened.”
“Do you?”
Dara stared at him.
Then threw herself back into the pillows with a huff so violent it nearly counted as weather.
The Crown Prince had kissed her.
The Crown Prince.
Not Lord Valerius, suspiciously competent nobleman and intermittent source of irritation. Not that man who kept appearing wherever her selfish little projects became suspiciously impressive.
The Crown Prince.
And not even in some dramatic, reckless, easy-to-dismiss way.
No, that would have been manageable.
If he had kissed her badly, she could have been offended. If he had kissed her impulsively, she could have blamed stress. If he had kissed her arrogantly, she could have hated him properly and moved on.
Instead—
Dara pressed both hands over her face.
Instead it had been gentle.
That was the worst possible option.
Soft. Careful. Honest in a way that made the whole thing impossible to throw away as temporary madness.
She sat up again and glared at nothing. “That was not fair.”
Cai tilted his head. “What part?”
“The gentleness.”
“…Ah.”
“Yes, ah.” Dara pointed accusingly into the middle distance as though Valerius himself might be hovering there invisibly to receive her complaint. “If he was going to ruin my emotional stability, he could at least have done it in a way that let me stay angry.”
Cai looked delighted. “But you are angry.”
“I’m mortified.”
“That is adjacent.”
Dara let out a long breath and dropped backward onto the bed again, one arm flung over her eyes.
This was a disaster.
A complete, unnecessary, emotionally sophisticated disaster.
And the worst part—the truly unbearable part—was that she had no idea how it had gone from I thought we were just friends to the Crown Prince kissed me in the garden and now my entire face is on fire.
How?
What was the bridge between those two realities?
Who had approved it?
Why had no one informed her?
Dara lowered her arm slowly and stared at the ceiling with the bleak concentration of a woman reconstructing a crime.
“We were having a conversation.”
“Yes.”
“He asked if I was truly angry.”
“Yes.”
“And then he said things.”
“A suspicious amount of them.”
Dara sat up once more, scandalized afresh. “He said them well.”
Cai’s expression became one of grave false sympathy. “Very unfortunate.”
“He had no business saying them that well.”
“And yet.”
Dara hugged the pillow harder.
And yes, that was part of the problem too.
Not just the kiss. The whole lead-up.
The quiet. The garden. The way he had looked at her as if she were not some entertaining provincial puzzle but something far worse—something known.
She had all but accused him of changing the shape of everything.
And he had answered that his title was concealed, not his regard for her.
Which was, frankly, an offensive sentence.
She fell back again and stared into the coverlet this time, as though proximity to fabric might muffle memory.
“This is not friendship.”
Cai brightened at once. “No.”
Dara rolled onto her back so fast the bed gave a small offended bounce. Then she pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the side, because lying down had clearly failed to reduce the problem, and sitting seemed marginally more dignified.
It did not help.
Nothing helped.
Not sitting. Not lying down. Not pressing her hand to her burning face. Not staring at the floor and wishing to become decorative furniture.
Because the real problem was no longer just the kiss.
The kiss was one disaster.
What it meant was another.
Dara went still.
Then very slowly lifted her head. “Oh no.”
Cai’s whiskers twitched. “The route panic has arrived.”
Her eyes widened. “No, because this is actually very bad.”
“Yes.”
“This affects the route.”
“Yes.”
“This affects the payout.”
“Yes.”
Dara shot to her feet and began pacing.
Not gracefully.
Her shawl was still half slipping. Her hair was still not entirely where it belonged. Her slippers made soft angry sounds against the carpet.
“The route was already in trouble,” she said. “The Crown Prince reveal was already a problem. The guards were already a problem. The grounding was already a problem.”
“Mm.”
“But now he has kissed me.”
“Yes.”
“That is not neutral behavior.”
“No.”
“That is not helpful behavior.”
“Also no.”
Dara turned in the middle of the room and stared at Cai like she expected him to personally explain the audacity. “How am I supposed to get exiled and go home with one billion dollars if the Crown Prince is kissing me?”
Cai folded his claws. “With difficulty.”
She made a sound of raw outrage and resumed pacing.
One billion dollars.
That was the point.
That had always been the point.
Going home. Getting paid. Being done.
That was the dream.
That was the reward.
That was the whole point of this ridiculous second life.
And now the heir to the kingdom was wandering into her garden after dinner and kissing her with gentle sincerity like he had every right to complicate a billion-dollar exit strategy.
It was outrageous.
“He is interfering with my future,” Dara said.
Cai nodded. “Yes.”
“My modern future.”
“Yes.”
“My refrigerator.”
“Yes.”
“My television.”
“Yes.”
“My private island.”
Cai paused. “That one remains emotionally ambitious.”
“It is a billion dollars,” Dara snapped. “I’m buying the island.”
“Fair.”
Dara resumed pacing.
This was not merely a romantic inconvenience.
This was financial sabotage through tenderness.
The worst kind.
Because it was very hard to remain strategically cold when someone had just looked at you in a lantern-lit garden like your continued existence mattered more than political reason and then kissed you as if he had been holding that decision back for days.
Rude. Deeply rude.
Dara stopped pacing and pressed both palms to her face.
Then pulled them down very slowly.
“This is not friendship,” she said again.
“No,” Cai agreed. “It is much worse.”
She dropped her hands.
And then, because the world had apparently not finished humiliating her, another realization struck.
She stared at the wall.
Wait.
Wait.
“He kissed me,” she said slowly.
“Yes.”
“In the garden.”
“Yes.”
“At night.”
“Yes.”
“On a bench.”
“Yes.”
“With Grace nearby enough to remain a moral problem.”
Cai looked thoughtful. “Also yes.”
Dara went utterly still.
Then, with all the horror of a woman who had only now remembered witnesses existed, whispered, “Oh, I’m going to die.”
Cai tilted his head. “You already did.”
“This is worse.”
“That’s fair.”
Dara flung herself backward onto the bed one final time, landing on her back with the full tragic force of a villainess betrayed by the very concept of emotional progression.
Her hair spread around her like a dramatic accusation. The pillow slid half under one shoulder. One arm landed over her eyes again.
“This is mortifying.”
“Yes.”
“I cannot look at him tomorrow.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“You absolutely can.”
Dara removed her arm from her face and stared upward.
The worst part was that it did make sense.
That was what she hated.
The route had changed again.
Not broken. Not yet.
But changed.
And she, unfortunately, had no idea what the new shape of it was supposed to be.
Cai curled up near her knee with all the comfort of a creature who had no personal stake in dignity.
“So,” he said, almost pleasantly, “what now?”
Dara was quiet for a long moment.
Then she exhaled.
“Now,” she said, with the exhausted gravity of a woman addressing her own downfall, “I have to somehow survive tomorrow.”
Cai’s whiskers twitched. “Ambitious.”
Dara did not answer.
Because tomorrow contained the Crown Prince, the memory of his mouth on hers, her own catastrophic embarrassment, Grace’s continued existence, and the horrifying fact that whatever this had become, it was very clearly not friendship anymore.