Chapter 4

I spent most of the morning staring at the note Lucien had left on my pillow and wondering whether I was supposed to be offended by it, worried by it, or impressed by the sheer arrogance of a man who could walk into the Crown Prince's bedroom in the middle of the night and leave instructions as though I were one of his guards.

In the end, I managed all three.

I also managed to discover that Lucien had been ordered to accompany my father outside the palace before dawn.

Nobody had bothered telling me.

Apparently, the King had left at first light to inspect the eastern fortifications after receiving reports of suspicious movement along the border, and Lucien had been ordered to accompany him because the security detail assigned to the inspection was considered insufficient.

I found this out from a guard in the corridor.

I stared at him.

“You are telling me that my father left the palace this morning with Lucien, and nobody thought it necessary to inform me?”

The poor man looked as though I had personally accused him of treason.

“Your Highness, I was under the impression that you had already been informed.”

“Clearly I was not.”

He swallowed.

“I apologize, Your Highness.”

I waved him away before I said something unreasonable, then immediately walked into the next room and said several unreasonable things to myself instead.

I spent the rest of the morning pretending I did not care.

It went terribly.

I kept turning toward doors expecting Lucien to be standing there. I kept almost calling his name whenever I needed something, only to remember that he was not there. During a council meeting, I caught myself reaching backward to hand him a document before remembering that there was nobody behind my chair.

It was ridiculous.

By afternoon, I had become so irritated with myself that I decided to walk through the restricted royal wing simply because nobody could tell me where I was allowed to go in my own palace.

I had barely reached the old eastern corridor when one of the guards stopped me.

“Your Highness, this passage is currently restricted.”

“Since when?”

“There has been a security adjustment while His Majesty is away.”

I frowned. “Who authorized it?”

The guard hesitated.

That hesitation was enough.

“Open the passage.”

“Your Highness, I was instructed not to…”

“I did not ask what you were instructed to do. I asked you to open the passage.”

He stepped aside then I walked through.

I had taken perhaps ten steps when something struck me from behind.

I hit the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of me.

Before I could turn, an arm hooked around my chest and dragged me backward, and I felt the edge of something sharp press against the side of my neck.

The guard shouted. Another guard rushed forward.

The attacker shoved me into him, and I stumbled across the floor, catching myself against the wall while the second guard drew his sword.

Everything happened too quickly after that.

Steel flashed. Someone grabbed my coat.

I twisted away and felt a blade cut across my upper arm, hot pain spreading beneath the fabric.

“Protect the prince!”

One guard lunged.

The attacker drove his shoulder into him and sent him crashing into the wall.

I backed away, pressing my injured arm against my side, when the attacker turned toward me again.

He raised his weapon.

“Stay where you are, Your Highness.”

I had absolutely no intention of obeying him, but my feet refused to cooperate quickly enough.

Then a voice came from the corridor.

“Take one more step toward him and you will not leave this palace alive.”

I knew that voice.

The attacker turned. So did I.

Lucien stood at the end of the corridor.

He was still wearing the dark coat from the King's security detail, dust marked the hem of it, and his sword was already in his hand.

He started walking then the attacker raised his weapon.

Lucien's eyes moved from the blade to my bleeding arm, and something in his face changed so subtly that I almost missed it.

The guard nearest me tried to stand.

“Sir, the prince has been…”

“I can see that,” Lucien said.

His voice was terrifyingly calm.

The attacker suddenly lunged.

Lucien moved. The first strike was blocked so violently that the sound of metal hitting metal echoed down the corridor, and before the attacker could recover, Lucien drove him backward with enough force to send him crashing into the stone pillar.

The man swung again.

Lucien ducked beneath the blade, caught his wrist, twisted, and slammed his arm against the pillar.

The weapon fell. The attacker reached for me instead.

That was his mistake.

Lucien crossed the distance between them so quickly that I barely followed the movement, catching the man's collar and throwing him away from me before turning back with an expression I had never seen on his face.

“Do not touch him.”

The attacker charged.

Lucien met him halfway. There was nothing graceful about the fight anymore. It was fast, ugly, and frighteningly personal, with Lucien taking every opportunity to keep the man away from me while the other guards struggled to stay out of their way.

The attacker managed to land one blow against Lucien's ribs.

Lucien barely reacted. He hit him hard enough to send him to the floor.

When the man tried to rise, Lucien placed his boot against his wrist and looked down at him with an expression so cold that even I stopped breathing.

“You came into the royal wing,” he said quietly, “you put your hands on my prince, and you thought you were going to walk away.”

The man spat blood onto the floor.

Lucien's jaw tightened. Then he looked at the guards.

“Take him.”

They dragged the attacker away.

Only then did Lucien turn toward me.

He crossed the distance between us and caught my shoulders.

“Where are you hurt?”

“I am fine.”

“You are bleeding.”

“It is barely…”

“Adrian.”

The way he said my name shut me up.

His hands moved over my shoulders, my arms, the side of my neck, checking for injuries with an urgency he had spent days pretending he did not possess.

When his fingers reached the cut on my arm, I hissed.

His face changed immediately.

“Does that hurt?”

I stared at him.

He was too close. His hand was still around my wrist, his other palm against the side of my neck, and suddenly the entire corridor seemed to disappear.

“You’re back,” I whispered.

Lucien's eyes met mine.

For a moment, neither of us moved. Then he seemed to realize exactly how he was holding me.

He released me and stepped backward.

I looked at the space he had created between us.

“Were you afraid?”

He said nothing.

“Lucien, when you saw him standing over me, were you afraid?”

His expression closed.

“The King is returning,” he said instead.

And then my father arrived.

He took one look at the guards, the attacker being dragged away, my torn sleeve, and Lucien standing between me and the rest of the corridor.

“What happened?”

The guards explained everything.

My father listened, then turned toward Lucien.

“You protected my son again.”

Lucien bowed his head.

“It was my duty, Your Majesty.”

Something about those words irritated me so badly that I almost laughed.

My father ordered the royal wing sealed and doubled the guards immediately.

Then he looked toward the prisoner.

“I want him interrogated before sunset. If he was able to enter this wing, someone helped him.”

I looked at the man being dragged away.

“Double the security around my rooms as well,” I said. “And when the interrogation is finished, I want him executed.”

My father studied me for a moment before giving a single nod.

“Done.”

Everyone moved. Everyone had something to do.

Nobody noticed that I was still staring at Lucien. Because everyone else had seen a bodyguard protect his prince.

I had seen the look on his face when he thought I was about to be hurt.

That night, Lucien finished checking the bandage and stepped back, but his eyes stayed on me for another second before he forced himself to look away.

“You should rest tonight.”

Normally, I would have found some excuse to keep him there. I would have complained about the pain, asked him to sit down, annoyed him until that controlled expression finally cracked enough to give me something I could keep.

I looked at the blood still staining his sleeve instead.

He had nearly died protecting me.

And somehow, after everything that had happened between us, I was still more frightened by the thought of losing him than I had been when that blade was coming toward me.

So when Lucien turned toward the door, I let him go.

For once, I let the silence between us remain exactly where he had put it.

And maybe that was the only thing I could do now.

Because if wanting him meant constantly forcing him to choose between me and everything he had sworn to protect, then sooner or later, I was going to lose him anyway.