Page 140 of Claiming Glass

Without turning away from the actors below, I sensed him slide into the chair next to mine. We were alone and yet public. Anyone who looked up would spot the freshly crowned king next to the Mind Witch of Lowtown.

My breath hitched and hands clenched, remembering staring into his unseeing eyes and believing itthe end.

“I wanted to take you here after you told me how you enjoyed the theater, Princess.”

“Stop calling me that.”

My cheeks heated as I forced my hands to relax.

The white dancers fell, dead and ready for rebirth, while a red one rose into the air.

“But it’s the truth. Your cousin confirmed it in Oberwalden a month ago.”

Shaking my head, I did not argue. Others might call me princess, but it sounded different coming from him. Carried lies and deception, reminding me of a time when he did not know my name. The fact that I had a noble cousin had been easy to accept. My unknown father had, after all, visited my mother, proving he had both money and a taste for women. That he was the brother of the Queen of Oberwalden was still in the pile of things to deal with much later.

Dimitri bent closer and like a flower feeling the warmth of the sun, I inched closer still.

“Can we talk in private?” he said in a voice others might have thought cold.

I heard the pain and hidden plea.

I had imagined our reunion countless times. Reality was nothing like it, as he was neither ripping the clothes off me, devouring me with kisses, nor having me arrested for remaining in Tal.

“I don’t think that is a good idea, my king.”

My own pain shook my voice.Don’t hurt me,it said. I was building a life of my own, one out in the light, without lies and deceptions.

“Just a moment of your time.” His eyes drifted down to the clock I still had around my neck. “You kept it. I—”

“It wouldn’t begood for you to be seen with a heart turner.”

I was still healing, and one look from him would tear open every scabbing wound.

The silence stretched. Dancers twirled. The finale built.

The pounding orchestra music crashed into me. Tears stained my cheeks. Furious at myself and him, I wiped each away. He had no right to invade the one luxury I had allowed myself. To believe the tears for him.

The last note hung in the air. People stood and applauded. Still, we sat there in silence. Only when he placed his bare hand on my gloved one did I turn. He was as I remembered him despite the superficial changes. The wound on his left cheek the healers had not been able to fully remove was slowly fading. The black hair had regrown until it brushed his shoulders, unbound and wild like when we flew.

His blue and brown eyes cut into me from behind the familiar closed expression. The plain uniform was impeccable.

“Tempest.”

I pulled my hand away. “That’s not my name either, my king.”

“Vanya,” he said, as if tasting the syllables for the first time. Never had my name sounded that good before. “Whatever else has changed, to you I always want to be Dimi.”

The earnestness stole my breath away and my stomach clenched, the tears from before threatening to return.

“Why are you here, Dimi?” His nickname was a decadence I should not allow myself despite his words.

As he pulled his fingers through his hair, I remembered burying my own in it. Playing with it, clenching it in passion.

“You haunt my dreams,” he said, peeling away my glove and I could not move. “You enter my every quiet moment. It doesn’tmatter what you did, what you are. I trust you and love you. Vanya von Heskin, I have come to ask you to dance.”

For once, I was speechless. How I had dreamt of him saying those words. For I loved him, Dimitri Alexandre Ivanov, King of Tal.

There had been no escaping that truth the previous months. But I had also had time to think. So, I made the hardest decision I had ever done, because it was the right thing to do.

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