CHAPTER THREE

C RISTHIAN HADN ’ T STOPPED her sneak-away exit. It was best to not share any awkward goodbyes. No matter how often they’d turned into and over each other, they had not shared names. They both knew what it had been.

It had been irregular , the conversations they’d had in between the bouts of unbelievable pleasure, but there was no point in dwelling on that.

But dwell on it he did.

For months.

He couldn’t seem to eradicate the woman whose name he didn’t even know out of his mind. He could have looked for her. Sometimes the memory of one night drove him so crazy, he nearly began a search. He was a finder. It would be easy to do just that.

For what ? One random woman? Who he knew next to nothing about except that she was well-traveled and gorgeous? That she liked music more than art, gardens more than museums. And what she sounded like when she came apart in his arms.

What was he going to do? Track her down? Date her?

It was so ludicrous every time he got to that part in the circular thought process of not being able to forget her, he laughed. And moved on.

For a time.

When a case finally came in, one worthy of his skills and with the kind of payment he preferred, Cristhian took the first plane out to the small country of Lille, nestled in northern Europe.

A job would surely solve this...problem of his. By the end of it, he would forget about some nameless woman and her one night in his bed over six months ago.

But when he was greeted at the airport by a royal guard to the king, Cristhian found himself all too reminded of his mystery woman, because the guard’s accent was exactly like hers. She had called Hamburg home, but he had a feeling even if she’d been telling the truth about her current home, she was from this country.

He was escorted into a blacked-out car and driven to the castle. The country was small and clearly took its traditions very seriously. If not for the people walking streets in jeans and noses pressed to phones, Cristhian might have felt like he was stepping back in time. The architecture was very old, the buildings crowded together, until they reached the center of the capital where a grand square spread out in front of a modest castle. All very old stones and towers and stained glass.

It reminded him of his mother’s country. The one that still tried to lure him back from time to time. For a photo op or to stir up stories that made the royal family look good. Luckily, as his mother had been the seventh child of his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles all had multiple children, Cristhian had only a small title, and a few holdings he had negotiated when he had stood up to his aunt, the current queen, and demanded release on his twenty-first birthday.

He had refused to run away. He had fought instead. And maybe he wasn’t as perfectly free of their titles and their legacies as he’d like, but he was free .

Somehow, even now, worse than thoughts of those people, were thoughts of the woman he was supposed to forget.

He could picture her here. Walking the street to whatever job she had. Shoulders back, that athletic body carefully hidden away in something boxy. Maybe she was some kind of athlete. That would be interesting.

And neither here nor there. Because that had been a nameless night. He would not look for her here. There was no point. He had a job to do.

But if kismet stepped in...

The car pulled to a stop in the back of the castle, and Cristhian was led inside, through curving hallways and up elaborate staircases. He was asked to wait in an interior room, and he seated himself on a plush chair, taking in the surroundings. Old, well-preserved wallpaper in deep blues. Dark wood polished to a shine. He vaguely remembered a visit here as a child. Most of the royal visits of his childhood sort of ran together, but this one he remembered because his father was supposed to have been filming somewhere, but he’d left the set to accompany Mother, knowing she hated taking on these royal appearances alone.

She’d been so happy at his surprise arrival. Sometimes Cristhian thought that was the best memory he had of the two of them, when there were so many. But his father’s important gesture, and his mother’s heartfelt gratitude, had stuck with him in perfect imagery.

It was strange to realize that the memory did not make him as sad as it once had. There was a strange contentment mixed in with the grief. Perhaps their lives had been cut too short, and perhaps they’d had a part in the mistakes that had led them here, but they’d had each other. A love so bright and encompassing they’d both sacrificed for it.

But they’d never sacrificed him, and as Cristhian had navigated the world as an adolescent in high-end circles, he’d realized how very rare that was, and how mixed in all the tragedy he had a little bit of luck on his side.

But none of that was why he was here, so he studied the rest of the room and put the past away.

There was a large royal portrait dominating one wall. Cristhian recognized the current king, and his queen standing next to him. The young girls must be their twin daughters.

Cristhian frowned at the painting. The girls couldn’t have been more than ten or so in it, so it was an old painting. But something about them...felt familiar.

An uncomfortable foreboding moved through him, but he didn’t have time to analyze it as the king walked in.

Cristhian got to his feet and took the king’s outstretched hand. He knew the royal protocol in different countries as he no doubt would if his mother had lived into his adolescence. He considered it a part of his job, but for a strange out-of-body moment he wondered if he’d learned all these silly rules for her , because it would have made her proud.

He gave a short bow with the handshake. “King Rendall.”

“Cristhian. I haven’t seen you since you were a boy.” The man slapped him on the shoulder, then gestured to the chair he’d been sitting in.

Cristhian fortified himself for the inevitable comment about his mother. How beautiful she was, how kind, how she was missed. He settled back into the chair knowing all these things were true, but when strangers commented on her he felt a wave of fury that no one had helped her. That she had suffered under all these people who had seen her as a perfect, untouchable princess.

When she’d just been a woman. His mother.

He forced a smile and tried to ignore the ghost that haunted him so often in these royal meetings.

But King Rendall said nothing else about his mother. He handed Cristhian a leather binder with the royal seal of Lille on it. “I have it on good authority you not only help, Cristhian, but you keep secrets.”

“All my work is confidential, Your Majesty.”

“I am depending on it. This is of the utmost importance to me. None of my own men could accomplish what I need these past few months. We have used every last resource we could. You’re my last hope with the most important thing in the world to me.”

Cristhian opened the folder and was met with a slick trickle of ice down his spine.

“The princess has run away,” King Rendall explained. “It has been months now. Her sister assures us she is alive and well, but she has no other information. I need her found. I need her back.”

The princess .

She didn’t look the same in this picture. Her hair was a deep, dark brown in this royal portrait. Long and around her shoulders. Her eyes were a mesmerizing green that matched her hair and fair skin. But he would recognize that mouth, the quirk of a smirk underneath that royal smile, anywhere.

Princess Zia Rendall was his mystery woman.

And now he had to track her down.

Zia shivered as she tended the cookstove fire. Outside, polar night was just beginning to lift. It was midafternoon, and the sky was an interesting shade of blue. Her life here on this tiny polar island was always interesting .

But it was coming to an end. Not because she wanted it to. She quite enjoyed the cold, the isolation, the stark beauty of it all. But an island like this did not have the facilities for a woman to give birth. So, as she approached her seventh month of pregnancy, she would have to leave.

Maybe she would come back. Maybe she wouldn’t. Everything would depend on how well she kept up her new identity throughout the birthing process.

Zia rubbed an absent hand over her belly. She had expected to be terrified of becoming a mother. After all, it certainly wasn’t planned, but with every month she found herself looking forward to it more and more. To have the space and freedom to take care of her children as she saw fit felt like a gift.

Labor, however, did terrify her. And made her wish for things she couldn’t have. Like her sister at her side, or her mother simply because Mother had actually given birth and would know how to calm her down, or even...

Well, it didn’t make much sense to think about the man who’d had a hand in this. She didn’t know anything about him, and so she was on her own.

The best for all involved. She couldn’t imagine her parents’ reaction to her pregnancy, especially if they found out the circumstances of how it had happened. They certainly wouldn’t allow some commoner to have any part in it. No doubt she’d have to hear about hush money again, like when her father had paid a substantial sum to Leopold, the classmate she’d fancied herself in love with, and sneaked out to shed that innocence everyone had told her was so important.

In the aftermath, she wasn’t so much heartbroken about Leopold. She was just heartbroken that nothing in her life could be normal . It all had to be palace shenanigans, even something as intimate as a young woman’s first time.

So this whole pregnancy was a strange kind of freedom. Running away, for good this time. A new identity. So that the palace didn’t have a say in this thing that she still couldn’t qualify as a mistake.

She rubbed her hands over the paltry heat the stove gave off. She didn’t allow herself to think about how the pregnancy had happened very often. She’d had to focus on the practicalities of everything, and that kept her mind busy.

First, she’d had to accept she was pregnant. Which had not come easily. She’d felt poorly for a good two months before Beau had confronted her about it. In her very pragmatic way, laptop in hand.

Zia, I have searched your symptoms and this combination seems to point toward a pregnancy.

Zia had scoffed at her sister. Then...

You did use protection with that one-night stand, didn’t you? Beau had demanded, like she knew anything about sex or one-night stands.

But Zia had been forced to come to a rather startling conclusion.

Some of the time...

Beau had tsked and shaken her head and procured her a pregnancy test without anyone at the palace getting wind of it.

When Zia had seen the positive result, she hadn’t had the good sense to feel chastised. For a moment, there’d been the strangest bubble of joy. Like having a connection to that man meant something and wasn’t just irresponsible. Like this was her way out when there was no way out. Because she could hardly marry Lyon while pregnant with someone else’s baby, or anyone else for that matter. An illegitimate child meant her father could not control her life in all the ways he always had.

But slowly she’d come to realize that didn’t make it a good thing. There were consequences for imploding everyone’s lives. And so, to Zia’s way of thinking, the only way to deal with this new wrinkle in her life was to run away.

For good this time.

Beau, per usual, was her saving grace. She had figured out everything to allow Zia to start a new life as someone else. She had insisted she could handle the consequences of a life in the palace without Zia there to guard her or act as heir.

Zia had argued. Vehemently. With tears, but Beau had been surprisingly determined. And the only thing that had gotten Zia to let her sister take on the consequences of Zia’s own actions was the fact she now had someone besides her sister to protect.

Innocent, helpless babies growing inside her. Who did not deserve a life in that castle, being treated like mistakes.

All Zia had had to do was escape then...and she’d proven she was an expert at that. So she’d gotten out, and with Beau’s help built this little life under a fake name on a tiny polar island that had mostly been shrouded in polar night for the duration of her pregnancy.

She’d built a small little business designing online exercise programs for people who wanted to do everything at home and only talk to their trainer via email or text—another one of Beau’s brilliant ideas. Zia loved it. She even loved life on the polar island, the cozy mystery of polar night. She loved the village and her introverted lifestyle.

Trips to the mainland for her monthly checkups had yielded another surprise.

Twins.

Maybe it should have concerned her. A higher-risk pregnancy, the doctor had explained. But she’d been overjoyed. Just like she’d always had Beau, her babies would always have each other.

She tried to think of things in happy terms only—she was quite positive that was better for the babies growing inside her than anxiety and fear. She refused to consider the scary . Like never seeing Beau again outside of a screen. Like being alone, without a partner or a friend to lean on when she needed it. Like the father of these babies never knowing they existed, and being happy that way.

No, only good thoughts were allowed. Her babies would have each other, and they would have her. Maybe she’d failed at protecting Beau, maybe she didn’t know how to find the identity of their father, but she’d work so hard to not fail her children. At least not in the ways her own parents had failed her.

She’d learned something from failing Beau. She could never put herself first. That way led to pain.

Which wasn’t a very happy thought either, so she focused on making herself a little lunch, ignoring the fact she had to decide where she was going to have those babies. Beau had given her two options where she thought she’d be safe from her identity being discovered.

She’d have to chop her hair off again and hope that and the way her body had changed with the pregnancy would throw people off.

She was still surprised news of her disappearance hadn’t found any media outlet yet. There were no stories about a canceled wedding. Short missives from Beau came and assured Zia everything at the palace was fine despite it.

Since she had babies to grow, Zia allowed herself to believe that even if it was very unlikely.

Happy, happy thoughts.

Her routine and internal reverie were interrupted by a harsh knock on the door. Odd . She had hired someone closer to town to deliver her mail and groceries, but that was only on Tuesdays. This was Thursday.

Maybe something important had come through. Or maybe ... Fear jostled through her, but that was ridiculous. If her father had found her, sent men to collect her, they wouldn’t knock.

Zia edged toward the window next to the door, tried to look out without being seen. There was a man out there. Bundled up in all black, a stocking cap low on his head. Despite the swirling winds, he didn’t look the least bit cold.

But there was something familiar in that height, in the way the man stood...in everything. Her whole body seemed to go lax as she recognized the figure on her porch.

It was him . Something like joy surged through her. Silly, she knew, and yet there it was. How had he found her? Why had he found her? She nearly smiled.

Until his gaze lifted, met hers through the glass, and offered nothing but pure icy fury.