Page 39 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘I’ll come with you.’ His voice was low, gruff.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she said, far too quickly, and had to force a smile to avoid arousing suspicion. ‘That’s not necessary,’ she added with a lift of her shoulders. ‘I’ll be okay. I just need an early night.’ She turned back to the King and Queen, curtseying without thinking about it—a small gesture that was always observed, regardless of how close they were.

‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Ellie asked. ‘You look pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ she stressed, reaching out and squeezing her friend’s hand, but not before the sting of tears threatened at the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t bear the solicitous enquiry. Not when she was lying her butt off to these people, her makeshift family.

It wasn’t the lie though, she realised, when she was safely back in Adrastos’s suite, having a cup of tea on the balcony, wrapped up in a thick, woollen blanket. It was the intimacy they’d shared last night. Not sex. Intimacy. True, life-changing closeness and connection. It was more than just physical desire. Somehow, being with him like that had kickstarted a response inside Poppy that had intensified as the day went on. It was as if he’d become a part of her soul, and with every breath his hold on her spread, until he became all she could think about.

‘How are you feeling?’

She should have expected his return—surely she didn’t think he’d just let her run away to his room with the complaint of a headache and not come to check on her? And yet surprise was on her features when, not fifteen minutes later, Adrastos stepped onto the balcony and frowned, because snow was in the air and Poppy had chosen here, of all places, to drink tea?

‘Fine.’ But her smile was stretched and her gaze frustratingly skittish, just as it had been over dinner, so he wanted to kiss her more than ever. It seemed to be the simplest way to make her relax, to simply exist and not overthink, to bring her back into the light, but it was also a way of delaying, of running, and Adrastos had never tolerated cowardice.

‘No headache?’

She pulled a face. ‘Brain ache, more like.’

‘Explain.’ He crossed his arms over his chest, mainly to stop himself from reaching for her, from bringing her to stand against his chest. He wanted to comfort her, but something held him back, something vital that he didn’t fully comprehend, yet respected nonetheless.

‘I just hate lying to them.’ She wrinkled her nose and lifted a hand as if to forestall his possible response to that. ‘I know, I know. It was all my idea. My stupid, stupid idea.’

His nostrils flared with the force of his sigh. ‘Deliciae,as you pointed out, we had very limited options once those photos were printed.’

‘Yes, but I know you would have just faced the music without flinching.’

‘Far less frightening for me to do so.’

She blinked up at him.

‘They’re my family,’ he said, gently, crouching down then, ignoring his better instincts and putting a hand on her knee. ‘And while I know they love you as if you were their biological child, it’s understandable that you would feel less secure in that love. You didn’t want to lose them, as you lost your own parents, and so you did the one thing you could think of to make that unlikely.’

A tear rolled down her cheek and he bit back a curse.

‘You will never lose them, Poppy. Our stupidity on that night aside, you are their daughter.’

She shook her head, as if to clear his words from the sky.

‘It’s untenable,’ she whispered. ‘After this is over, how do we go back?’ Huge, haunted eyes looked at him, but she wasn’t really looking at Adrastos, so much as desperately hoping to find strength in his frame, a strength he wasn’t sure he could give but knew she needed.

So he forced himself to convey it, to show absolute certainty even when he didn’t completely feel it. ‘We simply go back,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s not complicated.’

Her eyes skimmed his face thoughtfully, as though she was analysing that from every angle. ‘I want to believe that.’

‘You have no experience,’ he reminded her.

‘But you do.’

He dipped his head, not wanting to think about former lovers. For the first time in his life, he felt an unusual sense of remorse, a wish that he’d known fewer women, a wish to erase them from his memories so there was room only for Poppy.

‘So this is normal,’ she said with a slow shift of her head. ‘You can turn this on and off, like a tap?’

The directness of her question caught him off guard. It wasn’t accurate at all. ‘It’s more that I can enjoy an experience for what it is, be grateful for it, and then move on,’ he said after a moment, glad that his voice sounded so measured and reasonable. ‘I am grateful for this experience with you, Poppy, even though it is far more complication than I would usually entertain in my personal life.’

‘Why?’ she asked, eyes locked to his as she sipped her tea. All night at dinner, she’d avoided looking at him, so he’d wanted to reach out and draw her chin towards him, to force their eyes to meet, so he could understand why she was so quiet. But now, in the delicate silver of the moonlight, she wouldn’t stop looking at him, so he felt almost too seen, far too visible.

‘Do I really need to answer that?’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘You were here last night, weren’t you?’

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