you and softened you. I understand. Sadly, I’m not looking for love.” The very idea almost made him laugh. “No chance of softening. But I do believe that in the end this is going to be the best thing for Santa Milagro. If it isn’t the best thing for one woman, when all of my people could be benefited, I have to say I’m going to side with my people.”
“So,” Rafe said, slowly. “You are asking us to attend your engagement party, where you will announce your intention to marry a woman that you kidnapped, who doesn’t want to marry you, but who will have to pretend as though she does so that you don’t bring terrible consequences down on her mother and father, and her entire country.”
“Yes,” Felipe said.
“That sounds about right,” Rafe responded.
“My wife will be...unhappy,” Adam said.
“Then don’t tell her. Or, tell her that’s how all the girls meet their husbands these days. Stockholm syndrome.”
Adam growled. “I’m not going to keep it from her.”
“Fine. But I do expect that she fall in line,” Felipe said, having not considered that his friend’s potential loose cannon of a spouse might be an issue. Who knew what Belle might say to the press?
“Belle does not fall in line,” Adam said. “It isn’t in her nature. However, I will explain the sensitive political situation. I know she would not wish to cause harm. And while I don’t trust that you won’t cause any harm, Felipe, I do trust you’re trying to prevent greater harm.”
“Of course. Because I’m an altruist like that. Details will be forthcoming, but of course I had to call and give you the good news myself.”
“Because you’re such a good friend,” Rafe said, the words rife with insincerity.
No, the truth was, they were friends. True friends, the kind that Felipe had never expected to have. The kind that, he imagined, had prevented him from becoming something entirely soulless.
They had some idea about his upbringing. About the way that he was. But mostly, he showed them the face he showed the world. Prince Charming, as he had just discussed with Talia.
The dragon, he kept to himself.
Usually.
BRIAR WAS ABOUT to give in to despair when there was a knock on the door. She knew immediately that it wasn’t Prince Felipe, as she had a feeling he didn’t knock. Ever.
She was proven correct when a servant came through the door after she told her to come in.
“This phone is programmed so that you may call your parents,” the woman said. “I will give you some privacy.”
She turned and swept out of the room, leaving Briar there with the phone. The first thing she tried to do was call 911, which was stupid, because she knew that it wasn’t an emergency number in Santa Milagro. The phone wasn’t connected to the internet, so she couldn’t search any other numbers, but she had a feeling that even if she could it was programmed to only connect to one other number.
She should dial them immediately. After all, except for when she was at school, this was the longest she’d gone without contact with them. And even when she’d been at university it had been...different. She’d been in an approved location, doing exactly what they’d asked her to do.
Right now she was...well, somehow rootless, even as she learned the truth of where she’d come from. On her own, in a way she never had been before, even while she was being held captive.
For one moment, she thought about not calling. It was a strange, breathless moment, followed by her stomach plummeting all the way to her toes, even as she couldn’t believe she had—for one moment—considered something so selfish.
They were probably sick with worry. And it was her fault, after all. She was the one who had approached Felipe. She was the one who had opened herself up to this. She had failed them. After trying so hard for so much of her life to make sure she could be the daughter they deserved to have, now they were going through this.
With shaking fingers, she dialed her parents. And she waited.
It was her father who answered, his tone breathless in rush. “Yes?”
“It’s me,” she said.
“Briar! Thank God. Where are you? Are you okay? We’ve been searching. We called the police. We’ve called every hospital.”
“I know,” she said. “I mean, I knew you would have. But this is the first chance I’ve had to call. I wasn’t... I’ve been kidnapped,” she said. As much as she didn’t want to cause her parents any alarm, kidnapped was what she was; there was no sugarcoating it.
Her father swore violently, and a moment later she heard the other line pick up. “Briar?” It was her mother.
“I’m okay. I mean, I’m unharmed. But I’m in...”
“Santa Milagro,” her father said, his tone flat.
The world felt like it tilted to the side. “You know? How do you know?” He had told her they would. But she realized that up until that moment she truly hadn’t believed him.
“Perhaps it was a mistake,” her father said slowly, “to keep so much from you. But we saw no other way for you to have a normal, happy life. It wasn’t our intention to keep your identity from you, not really. But we didn’t know what kind of life you would have if you knew that you were a princess that couldn’t live in a palace. If you knew that you had parents who had given birth to you across the world, who didn’t want to give you up but had felt forced into it.”
“It was selfish maybe,” her mother said, her tone muted. “But your mother and father did agree. They agreed that it would be best if you knew only us. They agreed it would be best if you didn’t feel split in your identity. But we all knew it couldn’t go on forever. We simply hoped this wouldn’t be the reason.”
Briar felt dizzy. “Am I Talia? Princess Talia. That’s what he keeps calling me. Is that true?”
“It is true.” Her father said it with the tone of finality.
“How? How can everybody just keep something like this from me? This is my life! And yeah, you were always overprotective and everything, but I didn’t realize it was because I was in danger of actually being kidnapped by some crazy prince from half a world away.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t realize it was because I was...a princess.”
It felt absurd to even think, let alone say.
“It lasted longer than we thought it would,” her mother said, her voice soft. “And I can’t say that I’ve been unhappy about it. You’re all we have, Briar. And to us, that’s who you are. Our daughter. We wanted so badly to protect you.” She heard the other woman’s voice get thick with tears. “We failed at that.”
Briar felt...awash in guilt. A strange kind. They were distressed because of her. Because they had been embroiled in this and probably hadn’t a clue what the best way to handle it was. Of course there wasn’t exactly a parenting book called So You Have to Keep an Endangered Princess Safe While Raising Her as Your Own. It might hurt, to find all this out now, but she certainly couldn’t blame them.
“He says I have to marry him,” she said, her voice hushed.
“The king?”
“Prince Felipe,” she said.
The sound of relief on the other end of the phone was audible. “At least he’s not... His father is a devil,” her father said. “That was why your birth parents, the king and queen, sent you away from your country. Because they knew a life with him would destroy you.”
“I