I frowned. “This is just a contract marriage,” I said. “Why are you asking me about love?”
Alexander looked at me silently. His breathing became heavier, and then he rose to stand.
He turned away from me, putting his hands on his hips and looking across the room to the open window. Then he spun around and left without another word, slamming the door behind him on his way out.
I sat still for a moment, stunned.
Did Alexander really expect me to love him? We had only just met, and he was the one who insisted he planned to divorce me as soon as our child was born, and our arrangement was no longer necessary.
I realized he had left me alone in his office. It did not stand to reason that he really believed I was the perpetrator of the crime he was questioning me about. He would not have left me here if he thought I was the mole that conspired with my father to reveal his secrets and undermine him. I left the room quietly, locking the door behind me and double-checking to ensure it was secure.
I sighed. Now that I was out of that conversation, I could relax. My stomach was growling, and I knew I needed to eat something. I started walking to the kitchen slowly, my mind swirling.
I replayed Alexander’s words in my mind. He had, in fact, never gotten around to accusing me of being the one to steal from his office. I decided that my fiancé had not gone into that conversation convinced of my guilt. He must have felt obligated to question me, considering the tremendous responsibility weighing on him at this moment when his operation had been made vulnerable.
I wondered where he landed by the abrupt end of our discussion. If he believed what I told him and understood that I was innocent.
And I also wondered… what else Alexander might know.
I reached for my phone, suddenly needing to speak to Nina.
As I neared the kitchen, I could hear the crowd of busy cooks and staff members working inside. Calling out to each other, chopping meats and vegetables, shifting pots and pans on the stoves. A pillar of fragrant steam rushed out of an open window.
But my lunch was going to have to wait. I turned and headed out down a stone path through the rose garden instead, and texted Nina to ask if we could meet up soon.
Waiting for her reply, I strolled slowly through the garden, pausing every few feet to smell the perfume wafting from the blooming roses.
Nina replied: Sure! Want me to see if Kayden can bring me over there?
Me: I’d actually love to get away for a little bit. Can I come to you?
Nina: Ofc! Come on over!
I turned on my heel and hurried back to our room, pausing only as I passed the kitchen door. I thought about going in to grab something to eat, but my mind was on a one-way track right now. I needed to talk to Nina and find out whether she had gotten that letter out of the palace successfully.
I took a car from the palace that dropped me at Nina’s doorstep. She lived at the far edge of town, on the top floor of an old apartment building made of crumbly orange bricks.
Nina was standing on the steps when I arrived. Her hair was bubblegum pink today and tied into pigtail buns. She was smoking a joint and shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other.
Something was wrong.
She ushered me inside quickly, and we started walking up the six flights of stairs to her apartment.
“You okay, Fi?” she asked quietly. I saw her eyes rove my body quickly, checking to see if I was injured.
I nodded at her and darted my eyes upward. She understood and started to move her body faster. We were inside her apartment a minute later, and she spent a minute latching and sliding all the locks on the door while I eased over to the couch and plopped down on it. The stairs had wiped me out.
“You need to eat something.” Nina knelt beside the couch. She pressed a wrist to my forehead and frowned. “Be right back.”
My eyes fluttered closed, and I focused on regaining my breath. My heart was racing, making me realize how very out of shape I had gotten since I put training, and basically all my life activities, on pause.
“Hey.” Nina was stroking my cheek lightly with a cool hand. “I’m all for letting you crash out if you want. But you gotta drink some water first, at least. And eat something too if you can.”
I looked at the coffee table and saw she’d brought over a loaf of bread and a bowl of butter, a sliced apple, and an open jar of caramel sauce with a spoon sticking out of it.
I smiled. “Thank you, Nina.” I sat up slowly and she helped, pushing a pillow behind my back for support. I downed some water first, then endeavored to eat a chunk of bread with butter, finding my appetite coming back enough to let me swallow it down.
Seeing me revive, Nina sat cross-legged on the couch next to me. “There’s something I need to tell you, Fiona. And it might not be the right time, but you need to know, and I wasn’t even sure how I was going to be able to tell you, with everything you said about not being able to talk at the palace…”
I turned to look at her. The color had gone out of Nina’s face as she prepared herself to tell me something horrible.
“You lost the letter.” I meant for it to come out as a question, but the word fell flat. Because I knew immediately that it was true.
“I’m so sorry, Fi. I’m so sorry.” Nina had tears pooling in her eyes.
“Where?”
She looked aside and blinked the tears away, huffing out a tense exhale. “Before I left the palace.” She shook her head and hung it low.
“How? How could you have lost it?” My mind replayed the scene in which I had given Fiona the letter from my father. She had slipped it into the pocket of her shorts. “Did Kayden find it on you? What did he do?”
Nina snapped her eyes back to mine and shook her head furiously. “No, I really don’t think it was him, Fi. I was with him the whole time.”
I narrowed my eyes as I pieced together the scene. “You were with Kayden… but not your clothes?”
She hung her head again and nodded. “I messed up, Fiona. I’m so sorry. We were out on the training field, so I think probably another soldier must have been out there and found my clothes and went through them while Kayden and I were, well…”
I had never known my friend Nina to be ashamed of talking about sex. It told me how badly she was feeling about what happened. Because she knew how bad this could be for me. I felt my body start to shake with anxiety.
Nina pulled a blanket around my shoulders suddenly. “Let me make you some tea,” she said, and she slipped away to the kitchenette on the other side of her tiny studio apartment.
If one of Alexander’s soldiers had found what appeared to be evidence incriminating me in a conspiracy against him and the King Pack… they most definitely would have shown it to him.
I took the steaming mug Nina extended to me, smelling the fragrant herbal steam. It was chamomile with honey.
“I should get back to the palace,” I told her. “I need to talk to Alexander.”
Nina took a shaky breath. “Are you sure? You might not be safe there anymore. If he thinks…”
I shook my head. “If he thinks I’m conspiring with my father, then I need to make sure he knows it’s not true.”
