Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(140)

I blink a few times. His private quarters are a castle unto itself, within the main fortress, right down to its own walls and courtyard.

“I have been instructed to ask you to wait in the hall. You will know when you see it. Straight ahead.”

I nod and nervously walk across the yard. It’s small, at least compared to the rest of this place, maybe twenty feet by twenty. Another set of oak doors banded with wrought iron stand open, and inside must be the hall, a huge room with a high ceiling and a hearth at one end that stands cold, unlit.

There’s nowhere to sit but a pair of old chairs at the far end. When I say old chairs I mean they look like they were carved hundreds of years ago, not that they are anything less than impressive. The bigger one, sitting in the middle of the room with its facing away from the hearth, has a back taller than I am, carved with the phoenix coat of arms. A smaller chair sits next to it.

I take that one, figuring the big one is for the prince. If the penalty for slapping is chopping off my hands, I don’t want to know what the penalty for putting my butt in the wrong place is.

So, I wait.

Wait.

Wait some more.

Finally he walks into the room, and after all that waiting I cross my legs and fold my arms as he slips out of his black uniform jacket, revealing a cream-colored shirt beneath. He folds the jacket over the arm of the big chair and flops into it, leaning heavily over the arm.

“You would choose the princess’s seat, wouldn’t you?”

I sit upright. “Oh. I should have realized.”

“Stay, it suits you. I like the idea of having you at my right hand.

“My ancestor was an odd man. The first prince to rule these lands. He married a local woman, and decreed that all his sons that would come after him would marry a local woman, never a member of the nobility, native or foreign.”

“He sounds like a smart guy.”

“Speaking of the native nobility, he invited them all to dinner, left the hall where they’d gathered, and burned them all alive inside.”

I stare straight ahead for a minute then clear my throat. “Is everyone in your family nuts?”

“I like to think I am not,” he says, leaning forward to rest his head in his hands, “but I wonder if perhaps I am.”

“I’m ready to talk to you. Calmly.”

“You anger me,” he says, lifting his head to sit up straight and lean back into the seat. “Yet it pleases me, and I don’t know why.”

“Your life is too easy.”

He looks at me sharply. “You presume too much. This is not easy.”

“When was the last time someone told you no?”

“Not since I was a child.”

“You want to tell me something. I know when someone is feeling guilty. I’m here with you and we’re alone. You can take the armor off.”

“I’m not wearing any armor.”

“Yes you are,” I say, and touch his shoulder. “I can’t see it or touch it, but I can feel it.”

He flinches when I touch him but quickly turns and rests his cheek on my hand.

“Your skin is always so warm.”

“My prince.”

“My name is Kristoff. Call me Kristoff, Penny.”

“I understand the pomegranate, now.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You were trying to tell me.”

“I have no words for the way you make me feel. I sound like a superstitious peasant. Grown men do not believe in things of fairy tales, that they can fall in love with a woman just by laying eyes upon her. Yet I have, and every word that falls from your lips brings me to love you more.”

“Kristoff.”

“I have built a clockwork hell,” he says softly. “I have hidden myself behind machines, and tried to turn my people into machine men with machine minds. You are right. It is easy to tell myself I am right when I am alone, when I do not see what I am doing to my people. They are afraid of me. When your friend was frightened by my presence I told myself it was the trauma or the propaganda you’ve heard about my country and my leadership, but that terror was well earned. Yet it was not her fear that swayed me.”

“What was it?”

“I did not want to build a world to make little girls afraid of me. Hate me. Don’t you understand? I designed those schools to make sure no one would be left behind. Everyone would have a place, no one would want or suffer. I wanted parents to be relieved of the burdens of child rearing and enjoy their children. I wanted the sick to be healed, the weak to be cared for. I wanted everyone to be happy, but they’re not and I don’t know why.”

“You can’t shove happiness down someone’s throat,” I tell him, rubbing his arm. “They have to want it, to choose it. Some people choose hardship. You have to guide people, show them the way, not lock them in chains and drag them with you.”

“There is a poetry to your words I never thought I could see. Lesser men have thrown such sentiments in my face ever since I took the throne.”

He looks up and gazes intently at me. “What do you want me to do? Ask and you will have it. Tell me how to prove to you that I am not the monster you are so afraid of. Tell me what I need to do to make you stay with me.”

“You can’t,” I say, and watch him look away in fury and disappointment.