Page 35 of Back to Claim His Crown
‘Hityou?’
‘Right on the wound. At first I thought he’d lost control of the hook. But he hit again and then I just dived. I swam underwater to get around a rocky outcrop so I could get away from him. My plan was to get to a beach, find someone somehow and phone for help. But on the other side of those rocks I got caught in a current and got carried out for miles.’
He paused and took a breath. He refused to think of this often. Now he remembered why. He’d been cold. And alone.
Zara put her hand on his wrist. To his amazement, he didn’t flinch. Instead, he covered her hand with his and kept it there.
‘How did you survive in the sea?’ she asked.
‘I was lucky enough to grab a bit of driftwood. I was hauled out of the water almost twenty hours later by a fisherman in a small boat. Miles from where I’d started. I was just lucky that the water hadn’t been any colder.’
But it had been dark and he’d been terrified for too long.
‘I think he thought I was an illegal migrant and he was certainly illegally fishing so we were both happy not to call the authorities. He stitched my split head back together. My eyes were swollen so much when I looked in a mirror that I didn’t recognise myself. I was confused but conscious that I was in trouble. I stayed on that boat a couple of days but I knew I needed to get somewhere safe.’
‘Piri-nu.’
‘Niko, right.’
‘How did you get all that way?’
‘With difficulty. I managed to get a message to him using a satellite phone and stupid schoolboy code we’d developed at school. Niko sent transportation.’
But by the time he’d made it to Piri-nu infection and exhaustion had set in.
‘I collapsed just after I made it there,’ he admitted harshly. ‘The only thing I managed to tell him was to stay silent about finding me. And he did. But it took me more than a fortnight to battle the pneumonia and while I was unconscious my mother rapidly deteriorated. Niko didn’t know about that—the palace kept it quiet. She died before I came through.’
‘Lucian...’
He couldn’t stand to hear her softness.
‘Niko had lost his own mother a few years earlier so he understood the impact of what he had to tell me. He was devastated that he’d not been able to get me home or to get a message to her before she went. But her passing was so sudden. As if any of it were his fault.’
‘I’m so sorry, Lucian.’
He shook his head. It had all been his own damned fault. ‘It took a lot to get my strength back. By then Garth had taken over as Regent for Anders. I knew I wasn’t...fit.’ Not physically, not mentally or morally. ‘It would still be years before my possible coronation and at first I thought Garth might be best for Monrayne in the interim. I decided to get well and keep watch from afar and see.’
He couldn’t look at her as he admitted how he’d let his country down. He couldn’t tell her that he’d been paralysed with guilt about his mother’s death. About his own part in her isolation at the end. He didn’t deserve Zara’s sympathy but right now he didn’t want to lose the comfort of her hand under his.
‘I kept tabs on all avenues for information and unfortunately in recent years the whisperings began. There were rumblings about corruption with Garth. But worse was one story about Anders abusing a woman. Then another. I knew things he’d done as a boy. His cruelty to a stray puppy. His temper tantrums. And when I read his account of the accident he’d lied. He said I went overboard in the afternoon. I didn’t. It was the morning. And he just waited for hours and hours before raising the alarm.’ He gazed into Zara’s white face. ‘I couldn’t let you marry him.’
‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘Not me. Not anyone. And you couldn’t let him become King.’
Her acknowledgement didn’t soothe—it scoured deep inside. It was his fault that accident had happened at all. It had been his selfish desire to be onholidayand not in Monrayne, helping his unwell mother. He wasn’t fit to be King when he’d been self-indulgent and inattentive. But he would be a better King than Anders and he would work to be even better still. He could only do that with rigorous, single-minded focus.
Zara was right. He didn’t trust people now. But the person he trusted least was himself. Which was exactly why he couldn’t give her everything she wanted from him.
Because he wasn’t really worthy of his Crown and he wasn’t worthy of her either.
CHAPTER NINE
LUCIANUNEXPECTEDLYAPPEAREDin the library in the middle of the next day, carrying a laptop.
‘Your sister has been in contact.’ His gaze was unreadable. ‘Apparently they haven’t heard from you and now she’s accusing me of holding you hostage or something outrageous.’
‘Has she confused you with Anders?’ Zara tried to laugh.
He leaned close and took her chin in his hand, making her look up at him. For such a big, strong man his touch was so tender, his voice soft. ‘She wants to know where you are and how you are. The question is: doyouwant her to know these things?’
