He dug into the folds of his coat and presented a flash of brilliant blue. Both our fingers trembled as he gently glided the blue-diamond ring down my thumb.
Without letting go of my hand, Nick laced his warm fingers into mine. “I bid you take me with you, Emmie. Can you forgive me for these past weeks? I have thought of naught else but the countless errors of my judgment through all of this. My lady, I beseech you to forgive me. The loss of your person would truly put an end to my heart. Forgive me for all my sins.” His head bowed with shame and torment, his long fingers sinking into his messy curls.
I could hardly speak through the boulder in my throat. The last few weeks had been the most chilling of my life. Nick’s secret plan to condemn me so he could freely orchestrate his departure from Tudor England was shockingly dangerous, hideous for me, and thrown together in a moment of panic, but he’d done it all to save our relationship.
I’d been wrong. He never wanted me to die, he wanted to come with me…to give up his kingdom for my small life in modern-day America. That’s why he didn’t let me go when I was in the gardens; he needed time to defeat Henry Howard and ensure that his sister Kit was safe.
He wasn’t Nicholas the Ironheart, he was just…Nick. He hadn’t stopped loving me at all.
“What about Kit?” I said, still spinning. The thought of all this being another trick was too much to bear.
He squeezed my fingers tightly. “Lord Warwick and his wife will heartily care for my sister, which I have made clear. Francis shall be a worthy Lord Protector, and when Kit is of age, I have full belief that she will be as gracious a queen as her mother Elizabeth.”
“And you?” I added, tears dripping onto my cheeks. “What about all this? You said you could never leave this place.” I shook my head at the Tudor world that surrounded us from all sides…his kingdom, his duty.
“I will learn to live without it,” he said in a strangled voice. He nodded with assurance, but I could feel his heart breaking.
“But Nick, I’m—I’m no royal.” I thought of the decadence that followed him at every turn. “You’ve seen where I live. We eat cheese on toast; we—we clean our own houses. Well, unless you’re my mom. Cleaning isn’t her strong suit.”
“Say not such things,” he said, his hands finding my cheeks and pulling my face close to his. He wrapped both his legs around me in a protective circle. “You have you. You are my choice. You.” He dropped his forehead to mine again, and I breathed him in.
Nick’s heartfelt words filled me with shame. At one time, he’d been my choice before things went south. I’d then tried to break off the relationship and go home. Surely he deserved the same chance: to try living in my time but be able to come back here if things didn’t work out.
“I have to tell you something,” I said as he pressed his soft lips to my tear-stained cheek. “The soothsayer that I saw also told me that the enchanted ring was never meant to be used more than once, especially by two people.” Lines appeared in Nick’s brow as I delivered the bad news. “The ring barely functioned when I went back to get medicine for Lucinda Parker. When I tried to use it in the garden the other day—before I was arrested—I already had a plan. If the ring failed, I was going to go back to that soothsayer to try to get her to re-curse it.”
Nick’s shoulders had stiffened. “What are you saying?”
My fingers loosened in his, preparing for the worst. “I’m saying that this ring might not work anymore. And if it does, and we travel to the modern world to live there, the chances of you getting back here could be zero. If you come with me now and you don’t like it there…if you regret it and you want to come home—you might never be able to.”
Nick leaned backward with a heavy sigh.
My mind was racing. “Could we just go to that soothsayer near Robin House now?” I suggested. “Maybe she can curse it again—like, recharge it—before we even try using it.”
Nick’s fingertips tugged at his bottom lip in thought, but he soon shook his head. “I cannot reverse what occurred at your trial. I could assuredly pardon the execution in favor of another punishment, but I cannot be seen to be taking you from here. Men would believe it to be the makings of a plot between us. At such a troubled time, the Privy Council may move to depose the Tudor line. Kit would be imprisoned, or worse. It is too dangerous.”
“So to disappear is a better option? You think it’s better for the king to just vanish with the former queen on the day of her execution?”
“Not to vanish…to die.”
I stared at him. “Come again?”
Nick nodded at the window. “I have the key to open the bars, and the Council will come to determine that we have willingly plunged to the bottom of the river. Kit will not suffer if I am thought to have taken my life, but she will pay for it if I abandon the throne and go into hiding with a queen convicted of treason and heresy. I have prepared a letter which declares that I could not live without you after all, and I will leave it in this room.” He produced a folded piece of parchment from his coat. “The lords may wish to see our bodies to believe it completely,” he added uneasily. “To that end, there shall remain suspicion over my fate, but I can think of no better alternative.”
All the pieces slotted into place like a puzzle. Nick wanted us to feign a double suicide so the crown could pass to Kit.
I paced to the window, considering the plan. When the frame was open, the space was just wide enough for someone of Nick’s size to slip through at an angle. The towering outside wall was impossible to scale. If we both disappeared from this locked chamber, and the window was left wide open, people would possibly believe that we jumped.
My voice was barely audible. “What are we waiting for then? If you’re really sure.”
Nick leaped forward to hug me tightly. I squeezed his shoulders, burying myself in his embrace as he used his free hand to unlock the window and swing the frame of bars out into the biting cold wind. There wasn’t enough time for us to make up properly now. In my heart, I also knew it’d take time to get the image of Nicholas the Ironheart forsaking me out of my head. But in my world, we’d have plenty of time to talk through what had unfolded and set things right.
“We’ll fix the ring,” I assured, holding his forearm. “We’ll find a soothsayer in my time, and we’ll have it enchanted again. You will be able to get back here if you want.”
A sad smile touched his lips. “Self-murder means the damnation of the soul, Emmie. If I am believed to have taken my life before God, I can never return. Once I leave this way, I am finished with this world.”
“And Kit?” I reminded him again, tightening my hold on his wrist. After all that he’d done to protect his sister…could he really just abandon her?
He shook his head at me, his despairing face shutting the question down. He couldn’t talk about it. A new wave of pain engulfed my heart. Kit was going to be Nick’s most difficult sacrifice of all. But the last few months had proven that he couldn’t keep both her and me, and now he was choosing me. Except that, unlike when I’d been given the same choice, Nick knew there was no way back. His sacrifice would be irreversible.