A large, broad-chested stranger in a well-cut suit. With short black hair, a square jaw and strong, dark eyebrows. He was beautiful in the same way a predator was. Lethal, and difficult to look away from. She had never, in all her life, been held captive by a man in such a way. So far the men she encountered could easily be divided into two categories. Those she had grown up with and seen nearly every day of her life, and those she considered an enemy.
This man was neither, and that made him unique.
She might yet decide he was an enemy, but for now, she would hold off on that assessment. He might well be dangerous, but he could also very well be her only ally. She had realized two months ago, when she was kidnapped from the encampment, that she had only a spare few options. If she tried to escape her captors and go back to the clan, they would be punished. A poor repayment for shared food, clothing and shelter of the past fifteen years.
Escaping and staying in Petras was no more of a possibility.
She had no money, no form of identification. She didn’t know the layout of the city, or of the country beyond. She couldn’t drive, and she had no friends.
She would have to make one.
Zara eyed the man standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She wondered if she could make a friend of him. Well, not a friend. Not in the true sense.
But it would do no good to battle him all the way. She would need to be compliant, to a degree. To watch for the right moment to make her move. Whatever it might be.
“You were bored?” he asked, repeating her words back to her.
“Yes, I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, but it has been quite a while.”
“Perhaps we should start over,” he said. “I am Prince Andres. It appears we are to be married.”
Unease, followed by a rash of unexplainable heat coursed through her veins. “Is that so?”
His words confirmed her suspicions. That he was the owner of this room. That he was now the owner of her.
“I am informed.” He arched one dark eyebrow. “Perhaps you would like to continue this discussion in a more comfortable setting?”
She nodded slowly and began to walk toward him. Then her stomach growled, the sound echoing in the space. “I’m hungry,” she said. She realized then that she hadn’t eaten since very early this morning.
“Then I will arrange for you to be fed.”
It didn’t take long for Andres to procure the promised food. He had a tray of meats, cheeses, fruits and breads sent up to the bedroom, which was how Zara found herself sitting on the bed again, her legs covered with a blanket, eating the spread that had been placed before her.
She could feel his watchful gaze on her as she ate in near silence. He hadn’t interrupted her yet, but she could see that he wanted to. For the first time in a very long while she felt she might have the upper hand. A very slight upper hand, to be sure, but he seemed nearly as confused and put off by the entire situation as she was. Which was, in her estimation, why he was being so watchful. And why he was letting her eat undisturbed. He was circling her, as though she were a potentially dangerous creature and he was concerned about being bitten.
The thought sent a pleasurable rush of power through her, joining the sated sensation in the pit of her stomach brought about by the cheese. Her needs had always been simple. At least, they had become simple once she was sent to live with the nomads at just six years old. They had been simple by necessity. But lately, her needs had shrunk down even further. Warmth, food, shelter. If she had those things, she knew she could keep on going.
Good food and soft blankets were several notches more extravagant than she’d had in the past couple of months. And a bit of power? Very heady icing on top of this unexpected cake.
So she continued to eat in silence, sensing his growing impatience, allowing it to feed her small, mean satisfaction.
“How long has it been since you were fed?”
His question surprised her. “Since this morning.”
“You are too skinny,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. His words offended her, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She had never given much thought to her appearance. The men who had taken her captive had assigned a woman to make her beautiful for presentation to the king, but Zara couldn’t say it had mattered much to her. They had put too much makeup on her, the gold around her eyes her own addition, a nod to the culture she had adopted as her own. Her beauty had never been a topic of discussion among the nomads. She had been under the protection of the leader, Raz, and he had forbidden any man from touching her, or even looking at her in a disrespectful manner.
And now this man was telling her she was too skinny. And she was angry.
“I will say that my captors did not overly concern themselves with the quality of my food.”
“You are a captive?” he asked, his tone fierce.
“I’m surprised you care. Your brother did not appear to be similarly concerned. He was quick to accept me as though I were a...a fruit basket.”
He looked her over. “You are most certainly not a fruit basket, that much is evident.”
“I have been passed around like one.” She sniffed, allowing herself a moment to fully revel in the indignity of it all. At one time, she had been a princess. A member of the royal family in Tirimia. Being in a palace such as this would have been her right. Before she had been wrenched away from the only home she’d ever known, robbed of her family. Her birthright. “I suppose I can only be grateful no one has plucked at any of my grapes and taken small samples, so to speak.”
She looked up and caught his dark gaze, the sharp shock of heat piercing her straight to her stomach. She felt her face warm and she looked away. “Indeed, that would have been a shame. I’m glad your grapes remain...unsampled.”
A muscle beneath her eye twitched. “Remarkable under the circumstances, I should think.” She had spent a great many years being protected, but that did not mean she was ignorant of the ways of men.
“You were the princess in Tirimia,” he said, his tone vaguely accusatory.
“I am the princess. I have been replaced. Not by another princess, but by a farcical government who pretends to care about the freedom of the people, when, in truth, they only care about their own power.”
“I thought the entire royal family was killed during the revolution.”
Her insides grew cold. That always happened when she thought of her parents. Of her older brother. Her memories of them were soft around the edges now, worn like old, weathered photographs. But what remained, as sharp and terrible as ever, was the coldness she’d felt when she learned of their fates.
It hadn’t been sadness in its simplest form. It had been death itself. A chill that had stolen through her, replaced all of her blood with ice. It had taken months to thaw. Months for her to feel anything at all again beyond the frost that had taken up residence in her chest.
“Obviously I wasn’t,” she said, the words strange, thick on her tongue. Because they’d never felt right. None of it had ever seemed right. “Everyone else...my mother, father, my brother, they were all killed. My mother’s personal maid had family living in the forest, people who practiced the old way of life. And she brought me to them. They have kept me, protected me, for years.”
“Until now, clearly.”
She picked up a piece of bread and tore a chunk from it. “Obviously not through any fault of their own. They were ambushed and I was kidnapped.”
“And can you be returned to them?” he asked.
She weighed that question and all of the possible implications. If she told him yes, would he help her? Or was he intent on...marrying her.
The