Page 70 of Luca

Ourversion of normal.

Speaking of the devil, my gaze shifted toward the house just as Cair wandered outside, as if I’d subconsciously known he was coming. His dark eyes lit up the second he noticed me, and warmth settled in my belly. He looked better already—the dark circles retreating, his shoulders looser. He was also sleep-ruffled and sexy as hell in those informal clothes. His shirt was untucked, his hair was flowing down his back, and it was all completely incongruous with the high-maintenance, regal creature I knew and adored.

Country life suited him.

So do those boots.

“Have you been out here long?” he asked, handing me a mug of tea—a fruity blend Gary had conjured up from my dad’s ingredient cupboard—and smiling fondly.

“An hour or so.”

He kissed me sweetly, his breath tinged with mint. “I should have risen with you. Forgive me.”

“You deserve to rest,” I said firmly. “You work hard, and you’ve been through a lot. You don’t always have to put my needs first, you know. It is acceptable to take turns.”

“Alright.” He laughed and rested a hand on the small of my back as he slotted himself against my side. I returned to my position, leaning on the fence, mug in hand.

“Think of this as a vacation,” I added. “You’re not supposed to get out of bed before noon on vacation.”

“I’ll trust you on that.”

“Good.”

I looked back out over the farm, enjoying the way the branches on the rose-tinted trees swayed in the slight breeze, and the sun covered everything in a rich golden glow. I sighed without meaning to, a blissfully happy sound Cair obviously heard.

“You like it here, don’t you?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. This is the type of place where I’d want to live if you weren’t a prince.” Realizing what I’d said, I faced him and started backtracking. “Not that I actively wish for younotto be. I just mean that I think about a simpler life sometimes, but it’s only a fantasy.”

Cair hummed, staring out at the paddock. “Well, hold on to it. It may come true sooner than you think.”

“What do you mean?”

“Losing you…” He clenched and unclenched his jaw before he let out a sigh. “I never want to be in that situation again, never wantyouin that situation again, and the only reason we were is because I’m a prince. If I weren’t, none of this would’ve happened, and as long as I’m next in line or on the throne, it may keep happening, and I can’t do it.”

My heart leaped at the implication in his words, but I couldn’t get ahead of myself. “If you weren’t a prince, we never would have met.”

“I know, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.” He grazed my cheek with his knuckles, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But once we had mated, I could have chosen another path. I could have prevented this.”

I placed my hand over his, bringing it to my lips. I kissed his palm. “You’re not a mystic, my love, and besides, even if you had chosen a different path, the king would still have seen you as a threat, seenmeas a threat. Whatever we did, there were always going to be dangers. I knew that when I mated you. But you couldn’t possibly have predictedthishappening. Neither of us could.”

“Perhaps not, but now that I am aware of it, I could prevent it in the future.”

“I mean, if your dad is declaring war, and you become king, we will be safer,” I mused. “This is all because of him. You’ll change the Otherworld for the better, and we won’t have to worry about assassinations and plots—at least not from anyone who can actually pull it off.”

“If I abdicated once he is overthrown, we would have to worry about it even less,” he said, making my eyes widen. “We would be left alone, in our little haven, without the pressures of the throne on our shoulders, without all this bullshit threatening us at every turn. I could sleep better at night knowing we didn’t have targets on our backs, that we were out of the firing line, and there was no motive for anyone to take you from me.”

That sounded nice,reallynice, and exactly like what I’d thought about for months. I even recalled bringing it up at the beginning of our journey here, and how he had initially dismissed the idea. “Who would take the throne?”

“Orian,” he said without even a hint of hesitation, as if his previous qualms about his siblings being unprepared no longer mattered—and he no longer held the belief that they had a hand in the king’s plot.

I cocked a brow. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?”

He hummed, dropping his hand before he went back to staring at the open space, distant and pondering. “I regret not knowing my brother more. I never had the chance to as I was being primed for ruling. Orian was kept at a distance, away from Teighan and me and doing whatever he had to do to please Father, but… from what Idoknow, he would make a decent ruler. Fair yet firm. He has spent the most time in our father’s shadow, doing his bidding alongside Maeve, but I don’t truly believe he wants to be his reflection. It’s just a means to an end. If our father were out of the picture—and I could guarantee Orian wasn’t involved in all of this—with some guidance, I think he would lead the Otherworld into peace. And not whatever falsehoods my father hides behind, buttruepeace.”

From my brief interactions with Orian, I had the same impression. Not necessarily about his ruling abilities—I wasn’t qualified to make that judgment, nor did I have enough evidence on the matter—but he definitely seemed to be concealing his true nature. Or he’d spent so long being told who he needed to be that he didn’t know how to be himself. Either way, I genuinely believed I’d have sensed it if he’d known something. He wouldn’t have bothered getting closer to me, even with all my attempts to persuade him. He would have stayed detached, a disinterested blank canvas, if only to prevent overcomplicating the situation. It was harder to tear someone’s life apart once you got to know them, right?

Still, that didn’t mean putting him on the throne was the right path.

---