Page 7 of His Hidden Royal Heirs

He forced a smile and tried to ignore the ghost that haunted him so often in these royal meetings.

But King Rendall said nothing else about his mother. He handed Cristhian a leather binder with the royal seal of Lille on it. “I have it on good authority you not only help, Cristhian, but you keep secrets.”

“All my work is confidential, Your Majesty.”

“I am depending on it. This is of the utmost importance to me. None of my own men could accomplish what I need these past few months. We have used every last resource we could. You’re my last hope with the most important thing in the world to me.”

Cristhian opened the folder and was met with a slick trickle of ice down his spine.

“The princess has run away,” King Rendall explained. “It has been months now. Her sister assures us she is alive and well, but she has no other information. I need her found. I need her back.”

The princess.

She didn’t look the same in this picture. Her hair was a deep, dark brown in this royal portrait. Long and around her shoulders. Her eyes were a mesmerizing green that matched her hair and fair skin. But he would recognize that mouth, the quirk of a smirk underneath that royal smile, anywhere.

Princess Zia Rendall was his mystery woman.

And now he had to track her down.

Zia shivered as she tended the cookstove fire. Outside, polar night was just beginning to lift. It was midafternoon, and the sky was an interesting shade of blue. Her life here on this tiny polar island was alwaysinteresting.

But it was coming to an end. Not because she wanted it to. She quite enjoyed the cold, the isolation, the stark beauty of it all. But an island like this did not have the facilities for a woman to give birth. So, as she approached her seventh month of pregnancy, she would have to leave.

Maybe she would come back. Maybe she wouldn’t. Everything would depend on how well she kept up her new identity throughout the birthing process.

Zia rubbed an absent hand over her belly. She had expected to beterrifiedof becoming a mother. After all, it certainly wasn’t planned, but with every month she found herself looking forward to it more and more. To have the space and freedom to take care of her children as she saw fit felt like a gift.

Labor, however, did terrify her. And made her wish for things she couldn’t have. Like her sister at her side, or her mother simply because Mother had actually given birth and would know how to calm her down, or even...

Well, it didn’t make much sense to think about the man who’d had a hand in this. She didn’t know anything about him, and so she was on her own.

The best for all involved. She couldn’t imagine her parents’ reaction to her pregnancy, especially if they found out the circumstances ofhowit had happened. They certainly wouldn’t allow some commoner to have any part in it. No doubt she’d have to hear about hush money again, like when her father had paid a substantial sum to Leopold, the classmate she’d fancied herself in love with, and sneaked out to shed that innocence everyone had told her was so important.

In the aftermath, she wasn’t so much heartbroken about Leopold. She was just heartbroken that nothing in her life could benormal. It all had to be palace shenanigans, even something as intimate as a young woman’s first time.

So this whole pregnancy was a strange kind of freedom. Running away, for good this time. A new identity. So that the palace didn’t have a say in this thing that she still couldn’t qualify as a mistake.

She rubbed her hands over the paltry heat the stove gave off. She didn’t allow herself to think about how the pregnancy had happened very often. She’d had to focus on the practicalities of everything, and that kept her mind busy.

First, she’d had to accept she was pregnant. Which had not come easily. She’d felt poorly for a good two months before Beau had confronted her about it. In her very pragmatic way, laptop in hand.

Zia, I have searched your symptoms and this combination seems to point toward a pregnancy.

Zia had scoffed at her sister. Then...

You did use protection with that one-night stand, didn’t you?Beau had demanded, like she knew anything about sex or one-night stands.

But Zia had been forced to come to a rather startling conclusion.

Some of the time...

Beau had tsked and shaken her head and procured her a pregnancy test without anyone at the palace getting wind of it.

When Zia had seen the positive result, she hadn’t had the good sense to feel chastised. For a moment, there’d been the strangest bubble of joy. Like having a connection to that man meant something and wasn’t just irresponsible. Like this was her way out when there wasnoway out. Because she could hardly marry Lyon while pregnant with someone else’s baby, or anyone else for that matter. An illegitimate child meant her father could not control her life in all the ways he always had.

But slowly she’d come to realize that didn’t make it agoodthing. There were consequences for imploding everyone’s lives. And so, to Zia’s way of thinking, the only way to deal with this new wrinkle in her life was to run away.

For good this time.

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