Page 109 of The Royal Throne
At that, he looked at her. “Have I given you reason to think I want you dead?”
“When I first came to Lynk, I didn’t like or trust you.” Axel always felt safer to her since Anton kept a wall up between them.
“I didn’t trust or like you either,” he admitted.
“Axel tried killing me. Twice.”
Anton’s shoulders slumped, making him appear defeated.
“Did you know?” As the head of Rainer’s spies, it seemed likely Anton would be aware of what was going on.
“I had my suspicions. But then the Avoni delegation arrived and things got muddled. Complicated. I wasn’t sure. I don’t think I really wanted to know the truth.”
She happened to believe him.
“At first I wasn’t sure of your intentions,” Anton said. “For Lynk and my family.”
“I’ve always wanted peace and what’s best for all kingdoms.” And she’d wanted love. Friendship. Loyalty. She hadn’t found any of that with the Lynk royal family. “So where do we go from here?”
He shook his head. “I guess I’ll suffer the same fate as my brother.”
“Is that what you want?” she asked him, curious. Did he want things like love and a family? He never spoke about it to her.
He shrugged.
“What do you want?”
“No one has ever asked me that,” he admitted.
“Well, I’m asking.”
“I want peace. I’d like to downsize my spying operation. I don’t want to have to marry if I don’t want to. And I’d like not to have to train every day—I don’t enjoy it.”
Sabine laughed. “Anton, I think we can arrange that.”
His brows pulled together. “What are you saying?”
Leaning against the bars, she said, “I wrote to the League. If you die because of your brother’s actions, then Lynk has no one to serve in the League. Therefore, the League has granted you a special pardon. You will not suffer your brother’s fate.”
“I’m not going to be executed for treason?”
“Are you guilty of treason?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve done nothing wrong and do not deserve to be in here.” She turned to Drew. “Let him out.”
Drew unlocked the door.
Anton slowly rose to his feet and came to stand before Sabine. “I can’t believe you wrote to the League on my behalf.”
“I wrote to them about that and one other matter that we need to discuss.”
“Which is?”
She chewed on her thumbnail, trying to figure out how to broach this with him. “I never consummated my marriage with Rainer.”
“No one has to know.”
