made a tsking sound. “That’s quite heartless. Especially considering the king and queen assumed great personal cost to send you to safety.”
“I might feel something more if I knew them,” she said, ignoring the slight twinge of guilt in her chest. “As it is, I’m concerned that the mother and father I know are going to be frantic, looking for me.”
“Likely they will be. But soon, very soon, I will be ready to announce to the world that we are engaged.”
“And what’s to keep me from flinging myself in front of the camera and letting everybody know that I’m not your fiancée, I’m a kidnap victim? And you are dangerously delusional.”
“Oh,” he said, “you’ve got me there. Something I didn’t think of. I’ve only been planning exactly how my ascendance to the throne would go for the past two decades. But here, you have completely stumped me with only a few moments of thinking.” He laughed, the sound derisive. “Your country, your father’s country, owes mine an astronomical amount. I could destroy them. Bankrupt them. The entire populace would spend the remainder of their days in abject poverty. A once great nation toppled completely. I, and I alone, have been the only thing standing in the gap between my father and his revenge on Verloren. My own had to go neglected so that I could protect yours. I spent every favor on that. Used every ounce of diplomacy to convince him that it was not the time to move on Verloren. I placated him with ideas that I had gotten leads on your whereabouts.” He shook his head. “I did a great deal to clinch this. If you think you’re going to thwart me with a temper tantrum then you are truly delusional.”
“Well, I was hit by a taxi.”
He laughed again. “True. I should have given the driver a tip. He made this all that much easier. Anyway, you will be well taken care of here.”
“I just have to marry a monster.”
“There is that,” he said, looking completely unfazed by the insult. “What sort of monster do you suppose I am, Princess?”
She couldn’t tell if he was asking the question with sincerity. She wasn’t sure she cared. But as she looked at him, a picture began to form in her mind. His eyes were gold, glinting with heat and the possibility of a kind of cruelty she didn’t want to test. There was something sharp about him, whip-smart and deadly.
“A dragon. Clearly,” she said, not entirely sure why she had provided him with the answer.
“I suppose that makes you the damsel in distress,” he said.
“I’d like to think it makes me the knight.”
“Sorry, darling,” he said. “I kissed you awake not eight hours ago. That makes you the damsel.”
“If we’re going off fairy tales then that should make you Prince Charming, not the dragon.”
He chuckled. “Sadly, this is real life, not a fairy tale. And very often the prince can be both.”
“Then I suppose a princess can also be a knight. In which case, I would be careful, because when you go to kiss me again I might stab you clean through.”
He lifted one dark brow. “Then the same goes for you. Because the next time I go to kiss you, I might decide to swallow you whole instead.”
There was something darkly sexual about those words, and she resented the responses created in her body. No matter that he was... Well, insane almost by his own admission, he was still absurdly beautiful.
And that, she supposed, was ultimately what he meant about the dragon and the prince being one and the same. On the outside, he was every inch Prince Charming. From his perfectly tailored jacket and dark pants, to his classically handsome face and picture of exquisite masculinity that was his body.
But underneath, he breathed fire.
“I am announcing our engagement tomorrow. And you will not go against me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m going to allow you to call your parents tonight. At least, the people you know as your parents.”
“They’ll send someone for me. They’ll contact that... They’ll contact the president if they have to.”
“They won’t,” he said, his voice holding an air of finality. “And you know why? Because they do know the whole story of how you came to be theirs. They know exactly who you are, and they know why they cannot interfere in this. They were charged with keeping you safe from me, and they failed. Now, there is nothing that can be done. Once you have passed into the possession of the dragon... Well. It is too late. Tell them everything that I told you. And they will confirm what I’ve said. You don’t have a choice. Not if you want to keep your homeland from crumbling. Not if you ever hope to see things actually fixed. This is bigger than you. When you speak to them, you’ll know that’s the truth.”
Then he turned, leaving her alone with nothing but a sense of quiet dread.
* * *
“I will be having an engagement party in the next week or so,” Felipe said, staring fixedly out the window at the view of the mountains.
“That seems sudden,” his friend Adam said on the other end of the phone.
Adam was recently married to his wife, Belle, after years of isolating himself on his island country, lost in grief after the death of his first wife, and hiding the terrible scars he had received from the accident that had made him a widower. But now things had changed. Since he had met Belle, he had come back into the public eye, and he seemed to have no issue with public appearances. All the better as far as Felipe was concerned, because he wanted to have as much public support as possible.
“It isn’t,” Felipe said. “Believe me.”
“Why do I get the feeling this is the sort of thing I don’t want to know the details about?” his other friend Rafe said, his tone hard.
“You likely don’t,” Felipe said. “But I would happily give them to you. You know I have no shame.”
He didn’t. Though he was hardly going to engage in unbridled honesty and a heart-to-heart with his friends about the current situation. That wasn’t how he worked. It wasn’t the function he fulfilled in the group.
He’d cultivated the Prince Charming exterior long ago. Out of necessity. For survival. Image had been everything to his father, and the older man had always threatened Felipe and his mother with dire consequences if Felipe were to reveal the state of their lives in the palace.
The consequences of behaving otherwise were dire, and he had discovered that the hard way.
So he had learned, very early on, not to betray himself. Ever. He kept everything close to his chest, while appearing to give the whole world away.
“I would like details,” Adam said, “before I know what sort of circus I’m bringing my pregnant wife to.”
“Congratulations,” Felipe said. “Please make the announcement before you come to my party. I don’t want the impending arrival of your heir to overshadow my engagement.”
“I suppose that’s about all the sincerity I can expect out of you,” Adam said, his tone dry.
“Probably. But you see, I have found a long-lost—presumed dead—princess. And, I’m making her my wife. This is good for me for more than one reason. All political things, I won’t bore you with them. Suffice it to say, this party is going to be quite the affair.”
“I see. And how exactly did you find this princess?”
“Well, there’s an app. I just opened it up and trapped her inside a little ball.”
Adam snorted. “I wish that were true, Felipe. But I have a feeling that a lot more skullduggery was involved.”
“There was skullduggery. I cannot deny the existence of skullduggery.