Page 71 of North Queen
A silhouette in the darkness made her jump, and she laughed as she recognized him, feeling silly. “You startled me,” she said, reaching out and taking his hand. She could see his face in the moonlight.
He wasn’t smiling back at her.
“Is everything all right?” She looked around him, noticing he wasn’t holding anything: no supplies, no belongings. “Where’s your pack?”
“There is no pack,” he said, and she felt a strange pit in her stomach. “Norah, I can’t take you from here. We can’t go.”
“What?” She shook her head. “What are you saying?”
“We can’t go. You can’t go.”
Confusion flooded her. “I don’t understand. We planned, we—”
“You’re going to be queen, and if you leave now, you’d be abandoning your people.”
“I don’t want to be queen! I want to be with you! I love you, and this is the only way we can be together.”
He pulled his hand from hers and stepped backward.
“Alexander,” she pleaded, stepping forward to bridge the gap. “We love each other. We’re going to be together.”
“No,” he said. “We can’t.”
A surge of desperation ran through her. “We can! We can go right now. You don’t even need your pack. Let’s just go!”
“Norah, we’re not going,” he said more firmly.
The heat of emotion sprang across her cheeks.
“We can’t,” he whispered.
“I don’t accept that!” she cried.
His face hardened. “I don’t love you!” he said sharply.
Her breath caught in her throat at the harshness of his words. “That’s not true,” she breathed. “That’s not true.”
“You’re going to marry King Phillip. Everything you want, he can give it to you.”
“I wantyou!”
Alexander shifted in the quiet. “That will pass. Go back to the castle, Norah.” Then he pulled back, fading into the darkness.
She was alone.
Norah sank to the base of the tree as a sob escaped her.
She broke away from Alexander and stumbled back against the tree, touching her cheek, wet with tears. It was just one memory, but every emotion she had ever felt came flooding back: the love, the deep affliction of the heart, the agony of it breaking.
“You left me.” Her voice didn’t sound like her own.
“Norah—”
“Like I meant nothing to you.” She shook her head as she bit back the bitterness of shame. How foolish she felt to have developed those affections for him all over again.
“Your grandmother discovered us,” he told her. “She reminded me of my duty and told me what I should have told myself.”
“Then why do you play with me now?” she cried.
