A Prince on Paper (Reluctant Royals #3)(37)

Her grandmother looked like she’d been slapped, and though she had just chastised Johan for his disrespect, Nya didn’t care as much as she should have. She was tired of swallowing her anger like stinging nettles, cutting herself on the way down so she wouldn’t harm others.

“They have experience,” Annie explained in the same voice Nya had used with the youngest children at the orphanage. “Others are not easily influenced like you, especially now that you have no one to look after you.”

Nya grit her teeth, her ears ringing from an anger that threatened to overwhelm her. She tried to walk toward her grandmother, but her shoe was still stuck—she was stuck, and she hated it. “Eh! If you’re so concerned about me, you might have paid more attention twenty years ago. My whole life! You were perfectly happy to turn a blind eye to a father who treated me like a prisoner instead of a daughter, who purposely made me ill! And now you care about my well-being?”

There was a sudden unnatural silence in the gazebo, apart from Nya’s heartbeat pounding in her ears and her breath coming in shallow gasps.

No. She hadn’t meant to say that.

“What? What are you saying, child? Alehk has made many . . . mistakes. He has hurt many people. But he loves you. Everyone knows that.” Annie raised her hand to her chest, and Nya remembered that, though she was tough, her grandmother was old.

She remembered the few times she had spoken back to her father when she was younger. Sometimes she would get sick right after, ending the discussion. Other times, her father would leave for a day and come back with medicine from the doctor for himself, saying that he’d been warned he would die of a broken heart if she didn’t listen to him.

You must be a good, obedient girl, Nya. Or do you want to be in this world alone?

That threat had lost its potency over time, partly because of age and common sense and partly because she hadn’t thought it possible to feel more alone.

“Nya? What are you saying?” Annie asked again, pulling her from her thoughts.

“Nothing,” she said, wringing her hands and looking down. She hadn’t swallowed her anger this time, but it seemed those nettles stung her when she spat them out, too. “I’m sorry. I’ve behaved very improperly toward you. But you are mistaken. I am not . . . no one wants . . . there is nothing between Johan and me.”

Annie was still silent, but Lineo would not be deterred. “If that is true, then why did we catch him down on one knee with a ring held out to you, Ms. Jerami?”

“Because sometimes the goddess needs a laugh?” Nya whispered, fighting scalding tears of humiliation.

“Because I was proposing, actually,” Johan said. He was speaking in the strange tone again, and she recognized what it reminded her of. It was how she imagined Phokojoe the trickster god would sound as he lured hapless humans to his lair.

He looked at her, and his gaze was unreadable as he took her hand in his.

“If you accept, you can come with me to Njaza, and then to Liechtienbourg. There’s no pressure, and you can return home whenever you want.” He leaned closer to her and whispered, “I expect nothing of you if you say yes, and it is fine to say no.”

Her head was spinning. Arguing with Annie. Accused by Lineo. A proposal from Johan. “I need to sit down,” she said.

“Hold on.” Johan knelt again and fiddled with the clasp on the strap of her shoe, a band of sunlight highlighting the orange and gold of his hair. When he spoke, it was still quiet enough not to reach the others. “You should know that my stepfather asked me to bring you home because a newspaper article suggesting we were dating made the royal family gain points in the referendum polling. That’s what I was going to tell you. I’m not asking you this because of that, but you should know what I stand to gain before you make a decision.”

He tapped her ankle when he was finished, and the brush of his fingertips jolted her back into reality. A reality in which Johan, Tabloid Prince of Liechtienbourg and renowned fuckboy, had just asked her to be his fake fiancée, and then told her a truth he could have kept to himself without her ever knowing.

People always thought she couldn’t handle the truth, but he’d given her information she needed to make a decision that should have been NO. But really, what he was offering was no different than what Hanjo and Rognath and all of her sim dating heroes had—a brief adventure, with all of the highs and lows of love, but none of the risk. Johan wouldn’t smother her or try to hold her in place when she wanted to be free. He wouldn’t treat her like she was nothing but a weak extension of her father. She could end this arrangement as easily as tapping “no” when asked if she’d like to continue playing in One True Prince.

She stepped out of her shoe, but instead of heading for the bench to sit, she turned to him. Her friend who would help her like this, because he opted for the most dramatic route whenever possible. She ran her fingers through his hair, the silky auburn locks sliding over her fingers as he stared up at her, eyes intense. She might have thought it mattered to him, whether she said yes or no.

“I accept,” she said, and he grinned. He took her shaking hand in his and slid the silver band onto her ring finger, where it fit exactly right. The stone was the same blue as Johan’s eyes, and they were both twinkling in the sunlight that slanted through the gazebo.

Oh goddess.

She looked at her grandmother, chin raised to hide the panic in her eyes.