Page 46 of The King's Pawn
I lean closer to the screen without realizing I’ve moved.
She’s scared.
My jaw tightens.
I could ignore it.Shouldignore it. This is not my role. It was never meant to be. I am not her comfort. I am not her reassurance. I am the man who holds the key to her freedom, not her confidant. That is the line I am supposed to hold.
But… my body doesn’t listen.
The decision is made somewhere below conscious thought, bypassing reason entirely. One moment, I am staring at the feed. The next, I am on my feet. I barely register the tablet hitting the desk. I don’t bother gathering up my files and locking them away like I usually do. None of that matters right now.
The study door nearly rips from the jamb under my hand, the wood slamming back against the wall with more force than necessary. My stride lengthens automatically, muscle memory taking over as I cut through the corridors of the estate, my footsteps striking the marble with purpose.
I don’t give myself time to reconsider any of it before marching upstairs.
The guards posted outside her wing straighten the moment they see me coming, surprise flashing across their faces. Oneof them opens his mouth, likely to ask what’s wrong, to report what they’ve observed over the past few hours in order to follow protocol, but I stop him with a single look.
They fall silent instantly, backs snapping straighter, eyes fixed forward as if they’ve suddenly remembered exactly who I am. No one reaches for a weapon. No one steps in my way. They know better than that.
I don’t acknowledge them again as I move between them and reach for her doorknob.
This is a mistake.
I know that even as I push her door open. Crossing this line means admitting something I have been refusing to name for weeks now. It means acknowledging that the fear I saw on that screen did not leave me indifferent. That I am not as detached from her as I should be.
But I’m already here, and whatever instinct I should have listened to has long since been drowned out by the sound of my own desires. There is no stopping myself now. Turning back would require a discipline I no longer seem to possess where she is concerned.
The room smells faintly of smoke from the dying hearth, but beneath it is something a little softer, perhaps the lingering trace of her.
Alina stands near the window. One hand is pressed flat against the glass, fingers splayed in a wide arch as she watches the sheets of sleet come down. Her shoulders are hunched, her spine rigid, and she is trembling from head to toe in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.
Her breathing is sharp and uneven, quick little gasps pulled into her lungs as if the air itself is scarce.
“What are you doing,Printsessa?” I say quietly.
She jerks around so violently that she nearly slams back into the window. Her eyes are wide. Even in the dark, I can tell her pupils are blown, leaving almost no color. For a split second, she doesn’t see me at all. She looks through me like I’m not standing in front of her but hovering somewhere far away.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Please don’t…”
“Don’t what?” I ask carefully, every edge of my voice sanded down. “Alina.”
She doesn’t respond.
Her arms wrap around herself as if she’s trying to hold her own body from coming apart. Then her knees give out and she sinks down into the carpet, folding in on herself with a broken sound that scrapes against a raw part of me. She presses her back against the wall, her gaze darting frantically to the window, the floor, the shadows dancing on her ceiling from the fire.
Over and over again.
She’s mumbling words that come too fast to discern, too quietly to understand. The fragments are stitched together by panic. I catch nothing concrete, only the rhythm of fear. Her fingers twist together, knuckles whitening, nails digging into her own skin.
She isn’t here.
Whatever part of her is conscious is trapped somewhere else, reliving something I can’t see but can feel radiating off her inwaves. This isn’t anger. This isn’t even grief in the way people expect it to look.
This is a mind drowning in utter sorrow and fear.
I cross the room in two strides and drop down beside her without thinking, my knee hitting the carpet hard. When my hand closes around her shoulder, she flinches violently, recoiling like she expects pain.
“Alina,” I say again, softer this time. “It’s me.”
