Page 2 of Back to Claim His Crown
As she hesitated the organ stopped. Then the trumpets. She hadn’t actually made it all the way up the aisle, yet now the cathedral was abruptly silent.
Except for those heavy footsteps. They kept going.
She was a full ten feet short of where she was supposed to stop. But there didn’t seem a lot of point to keep going when the music had stopped as well. She looked towards Garth, the chief architect of this entire pageant and her advisor in all of this. To her astonishment, as she watched he changed colour—first turning pale before his skin was suddenly awash with red. It was only deep emotion that caused an uncontrollable reaction like that.
Garth didn’t meet her enquiring gaze but stared hard behind her, his expression aghast. Anders, her groom, finally turned. He didn’t so much as glance at her but also immediately fixated on the person coming up the aisle behind her. His jaw dropped but the rest of him stayed still, apparently transfixed.
She was being upstaged on her wedding day, even when wearing the world’s most ludicrously expensive wedding dress with its diamond-encrusted lace. It was so typical that she couldn’t get through this like aproperprincess would. Not only was her title merely a superficial nod to placate her elderly parents, she didn’t have the education or the experience, nor the looks nor even the polish she needed to really pull this off.
There were hundreds of people inside the cathedral. Hundreds ofthousandslining the streets outside. Yet it was eerily silent except for those footsteps. She straightened her shoulders and made herself turn.
It was a man. A mountain of a man. Tall and unbelievably broad-shouldered, his muscular frame dominated her vision. He simply consumed the space of the aisle. As she turned, he stopped walking—now only three feet away—and stared right back at her.
He was clad in full ceremonial attire—regalattire. Black trousers...starched white jacket. The scarlet sash across his shoulder emphasised the menacing breadth of him. His hair was cropped close in military fashion, making his facial structure prominent—high cheekbones, square jaw and a nose that looked like it might have been broken more than once. He had an incongruously full mouth but it was currently tightly held, while a jagged, puckered scar cut through his left eyebrow and into his eyelid. She suspected he was lucky to still see from that eye. He was motionless now but he emanated repressed energy—anger.
Her heart frantically shoved burning blood through her body. She felt entirely alight—as if she’d somehow spontaneously combusted yet was still standing. He said nothing. He didn’t seem to so much as breathe. But he stared back at her. The rest of the world blurred until she saw only him in the vast cathedral. It was as if they were utterly alone and then she felt the strangest compulsion to step towards him—to reach out, pulled by the emotion barely banked within him. She didn’t. She was too lost in the palest, iciest eyes she’d ever seen.
In fact she’d seen eyes that colour only once before. In a portrait hanging in the corridor of the palace she’d just come from.
In a portrait of a dead man.
CHAPTER TWO
ITHADBEENten very long years but Lucian Monrayne had picked his moment to perfection. Every Royal—major and minor—on the continent was present. Every prime minister. Every president. There were generals and dukes, authors and actors, models and musicians. The crème de la crème of societies both modern and traditional mingled today to witness a spectacle Lucian personally found repulsive. But best of all were the cameras. There were somanycameras covering every possible angle, which was exactly what he needed.
He’d visualised this moment over and over, yet for all the mental preparation he hadn’t factored the impact the cathedral itself would have on him—the deep ache of familiarity, the slicing regret as he took each step further inside. The times he’d spent in here as a boy flashed in his head—memories he had no time or emotional capacity for now. He couldn’t allow such self-indulgent distraction. This moment was vital and he needed to be alert. Yet being here was like taking a spear to the heart—it struck deep and released something long suppressed. After an eternity adrift he washome. And it almost unravelled him.
So he stared at her instead. The woman. He’d stopped the second she’d turned. Not what he’d intended, but he suddenly couldn’t take another step.
She was a few feet from him, a short figure in an enormous jewel-encrusted gown that had to be heavy for her slight frame to wear. Her white-blonde hair was swept back from her face, while the whole of her was enveloped in a gossamer veil. Beneath it he saw her elfin face—pointed chin, smooth skin, full rose-coloured lips and big eyes a far deeper blue than his own. Blue eyes that seemed to search right into him as if seeking out his soul.
She’d been the impetus in this. The cause of an opportunity he didn’t think he’d have and that he couldn’t ignore. If he had any humanity he would feel sorry for her. But his humanity had gone. All that remained was the survivor he’d been forced to become. A warrior. A strategist. He was a disciplined shell burnished by shame. So there was no soul for her to see.
But he would ruthlessly reclaim his rights, not because he deserved them, but because others deserved them evenless. And yes, he would have some small revenge. He would finally do his duty. He would protect his kingdom and his people properly—give them the time he’d taken away. Guilt scoured him but determination steeled him.
And yet still in this most crucial of moments all he could do was stare at the woman in white. Time hung, the vision of her overwhelming him. She gleamed like a beacon of serenity, calming the chaos churning inside. He was instinctively drawn to her light—he who’d hid in the shadows for so very long.
The silence seemed endless. No one in the room breathed. Not her. Not him. Not any of the hundreds around them. So the sound—when it finally came—roared.
‘Lucian! Lucian!Lucian!’
His name crashed into the cathedral in waves, each increasingly louder and more passionate. They were the cries of the commoners beyond the palace walls. The ones watching the large screens that had been specially erected for today’s extravaganza. The chant rapidly became deafening and reminded him why he was here. Because it was the name he’d not been called by in the same decade. He was the prince feared drowned long ago. Breathing. Returned at last.
Lucian finally forced his focus to the ruddy-faced fury standing to the right of her. Garth. Then to the rear of her. To the cruel. To the coward. His cousin and would-be assassin. Anders. Currently frozen in fury.
Lucian lifted his hand. There was the barest delay from the telecast but almost instantly the crowds outside hushed—attentive, agog.
‘I suppose you didn’t think you’d ever see me again, did you, cousin?’ he muttered huskily, opting for English, the language common to most present.
He ignored the collective intake of breath of over a thousand people. He would have found it theatrically comical if he weren’t so bitter. But bitter he was.
The last time he’d looked Anders in the eye was as he’d sunk beneath the water. He’d never forgotten the malevolent glint in his younger cousin’s gaze and his almost gleeful intake of breath as the blood poured, blinding Lucian. He’d wanted to dismiss it as a nightmare—a figment of a confused, concussed brain, his memory filling the blanks with some warped version of events. But the vision was clear. He’d dived and hit his head—thathadbeen an accident. But his young cousin had not attempted to rescue him. Anders had lifted the boat hook not to help Lucian out, but to strike another blow.
‘You’re an impostor.’ Garth stepped forward.
Of course it was Garth who answered. Garth the puppet master. The one who’d wanted control from the start. Not Royal by blood, but whose nephew was. The man who’d been de facto ruling Monrayne, his corruption deepening through the decade. He’d siphoned riches for himself while trying to control—hide—the increasing cruelty of his nephew. Hence this distasteful charade today.
‘Prince Lucian has been dead for a decade,’ Garth added. ‘Where have you been all this time—getting plastic surgery to try to pull off this elaborate ruse? It won’t work.’
