Page 47 of The Prince and the Double Shot
I still wanted him to hold me closely against his chest. I hadn’t slept so well in years. I got lost in his eyes, so deep and thoughtful – so full of secrets.
Petra would be mortified. His family had been granted asylum when he was just a child. They left the mountains and created a life in Grandir. It was rare for one of them to seek helpsomewhere else. The mountain people were proud – so I’d been told. But his family came to our borders and was finally granted access. They were given a small plot of land, and within a few years had turned it into a thriving farm on the edge of the valley.
He never spoke about it. He barely remembered it. All he remembered was his father’s fear that they would not be able to eat the next week.
Zane was so much like him, in many ways. Besides their looks, there was a ferocity within him, just like Petra. He would have done anything for me. Would Zane?
God, I was being selfish. I set the newly created air plant into its pot and offered it a little extra energy – pushing hard enough to create small buds. I would feed them over the next twenty-four hours until they blossomed and showed off for all the guests.
Mother will be here tomorrow. I groaned, knowing that I had shirked any responsibility for my future. I had opened the satchel a few times, but could not find the desire to look inside. What did I know of any of these people my mother had chosen for me? They were strangers.
In some ways, so was Zane.
I stood up and grabbed the satchel from the floor where I had thrown it a couple of days ago. I should look at it, shouldn’t I? How could I prove that I was ready to step in if I hadn’t done the only thing that she had asked?
I reached in and pulled out a small pile of papers that had been stapled together. Each one had a printed photo attached.
“Oh, God, no.” I threw the Duke of Exham on the floor immediately. He had once cornered me at a gathering and blathered on about his pet goose for almost an hour. I’d rather anyone but him.
Then I got to the next one. And the next one. One horrible choice after another.
What was she trying to do? I was positive that she had better taste than this. Perhaps, these were the only people she found suitable, but she had apparently never spent any time with any of them.
A prince from a small kingdom near the North Pole? What was she thinking? I hated the cold and could barely stand our own winters in Grandir. I usually huddled by the fireplace under a blanket through those four horrid months. She knew better.
She knew more about all of these men. None of them were someone I would want to spend time with, much less the rest of my life.
I turned back to my plants and admired their perseverance. They could face hardships and wither with neglect, but with the right amount of care, they always came back. They hid underground in the winter only to sprout once again in the spring’s sunshine. I had started to sprout once again myself, hadn’t I. But I hadn’t done it alone.
Not by a long shot.
The trip, and reconnecting to my roots, to the land and the plants that thrived upon it, had been the start of my journey. But it had been Zane who truly helped me heal. He had not taken no for an answer.
No, he didn’t. Why?
I slumped against the wall and held my legs tightly.
Once again, I could only think of one thing. Did he know who I was? Had this been some nefarious thing?
I couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem or feel like anything that he could do. He had only wanted what was best for me, hadn’t he?
I sat there and let the night come. I had no idea what it was I should do.
ZANE
When you love something, let it go. If it returns, it was meant to be.
Such stupid fucking bullshit.
The person who came up with that saying was a bystander in their own fucking life and needed to have a good talking to.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt like the world had just caved in around me, and I was falling into a dark pit and couldn't see the bottom. Eventually, I knew I’d go splat. But until then… I was blind and free-falling.
He walked away. He didn’t trust me, and I… It made sense when you grew up in Grandir. A place I had never seen in my entire life, by the way. I was supposedly this major villain to a country I had never been to. A holdover from a time long ago, when my people grew hard in a hard land. They had come from a fertile valley and into a mountain range where life was much harder than it had once been.
They made it work by becoming big game hunters and surviving on meat and the little crops that would grow in the high altitude. Their magic eventually faltered, and the crops dried up. Why they attacked the valley, no one knows. Perhaps fear of starvation back in those days.
But there was a record of the first time their magic shifted. The son of Lionel discovered that he could alter the face of the mountain. The rocks and ground became his to control. It changed them. Instead of being nurturers, they became stone masons. The palace was magnificent, but it didn’t help the people eat.
