“Playing?” Affront pushed her across the old carpet, and she stopped a few feet from him. Days ago, she’d wanted him to believe he’d only been a job to her. Tonight, wrung thin by the whole damn thing, she was offended he’d believe that so easily. “You’re not a game to me.”
“No?” His breath lurched furiously. “Then what am I to you, Frankie? An obligation? An inconvenience? A private joke? A sucker who never—”
“My prince!” Her words cut through the air like a solvent, stripping away her anger and leaving the grain of raw emotion in her throat.
Kris looked like she’d just landed an uppercut to his chin.
Suddenly shaky, she wrapped her arms around her middle. “You’re my prince,” she said again, much quieter. “You don’t seem to realize that yet—that I don’t exist outside of this hierarchy just because we used to be friends. You’re my prince, and everything I’ve done has been to protect you.” She paused. “Your Highness.”
He took a swift, stiff step back.
“It doesn’t make sense to you now.” Her hands pressed harder against her sides. “You accuse me of being cruel, of punishing you, but I’m not. One day you’ll understand that I’m trying to do the right thing.”
His breath was sharp as he shook his head.
“You want to know why I ordered your guards to detach around you?” Damn this lump in her throat, inflamed by the scratch of her words. “Because they have a job to do. They must be prepared to make an objective, snap decision in a potentially life-threatening situation, and your tendency to befriend everyone around you could put that at risk. What could seem like a harmless conversation, a casual laugh, could make them lose focus right when they need it most.”
His lips lifted into a pissed-off-and-superbly-sexy curl.
“You once threw yourself into a bar fight in fear for my safety because we were friends,” she continued, remembering how she’d lost sight of him in that brawl—the prince she’d been hired to protect. Remembered how she’d turned her iced-gut fear into anger in the hours after. “It’s too easy to imagine you doing the same for your guards. They’ll act when your safety is threatened—and you’ll put yourself in harm’s way to help them.”
His sneer had faded into a frown.
“And I knew you’d want them to be your friends,” she said. “You’d want to draw them into your circle. Chat and get to know them. But they aren’t your friends. They aren’t supposed to be. They work for you. A future king can’t be friends with the help.”
His eyes were burning. When he spoke, his voice was so rough it seemed to catch on her skin. “Who are we really talking about here, Frankie?”
She stared him down.
They both knew she didn’t have to answer that.
Cursing, he turned his face aside—and finally seemed to notice her room. His gaze tracked across her unremarkable, unmade bed to her old backpack hanging from a hook beside the closet, then jumped to his other side, where he quickly ran out of things to look at.
Nothing labeled her as lower class as markedly as a room built in a time of the invisible servant.
She supposed she owed her gratitude to the old royal family that the staff quarters weren’t literally underground, but still, Hanna would have led Kris through the lower courtyard to get here, an architectural division between the grander areas of the palace and this sparse servants’ wing.
His mouth pulled down at the corners as he stared at her damp towel, flung over the desk. Then he looked back at her and said, “Explain why I’m deluded to think I’m innocent.”
She shouldn’t have brought that up. “It’s nothing.”
His jaw slid. “Explain it.”
“Is that an order, Your Highness?”
Her cheap attempt to throw him off almost worked. He pulled back. Swallowed. Ran his tongue along his back teeth.
Then he said with a chilled calm, “Sure.”
She stiffened. “You’re a hypocrite.”
“Really?” He gave a weak snicker. “I wormed my way into your life with lies and hid under your nose for months on end?”
“You lied to me since the day I met you.” She gestured jerkily toward the door and the better part of the palace beyond. “I waited years. Years for you to trust me enough with this secret. How important could I have been to you if you never told me you were royalty?”
His frown was slow, but serious.
“You talk about friendship and betrayal, but what trust did you show me?” She tried to raise her voice, but it just cracked. “You never let me in.”
He mirrored her gesture toward the door. “None of this mattered.”
“It’s always mattered.” A flush ran up her neck as she exposed the hurt she’d kept buried. “You’re a prince. And you didn’t tell me. How can that not matter?”
“I tried to tell—”
“Don’t,” she said, raising a hand. “Don’t pretend that day was significant. You were only going to tell me because you had no other choice. You didn’t want me to know. You didn’t trust me to keep it secret. You can’t pretend that it was meant to be special to tell me hours before the rest of the world found out. It would have meant nothing, so I didn’t want to hear it.”
His steady gaze was troubled by realization. “You’re right.”
She blinked.
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I should have told you. As a sign of trust. Because I did trust you. My lineage didn’t mean anything to me, but I shouldn’t have assumed it would mean nothing to you.”
She pressed her lips together to stop herself from answering.
It means everything to me. It rules me as tightly as it rules you.
Then he moved.
Not to the door, as he should have, but to the armchair. For a moment, he stood in front of it, digging a hand into his back pocket—then, withdrawing a crumpled paper bag, he sat down with a sigh. Knees wide, elbows on his thighs, he unrolled it and dug his hand in.
In a subdued kind of silence, he started eating cashews.
She frowned. The palace kitchen offered any snack he could crave, and he’d chosen cashews? Whenever they’d shared mixed nuts, he always fished them out for her, because he didn’t particularly like them, and he knew she—
Oh. He knew she loved them.
Frankie swallowed. “Comfortable, are you?”
He glanced at her. Cocking his brow, he held out the bag and gave it a little shake.
Woah, no. She didn’t budge. “I’ll escort you back to your suite.”
His expression seemed to say suit yourself as he tucked back into the bag. “I’m not ready yet.”
Exhaustion slumped down her spine, rapidly replacing the fight in her. “You should be.”
“Why?”
“Because . . .” She raised a shoulder, almost helplessly. Because he’d threatened ‘an end’ when he’d arrived, and this wasn’t it. “You’re supposed to hate me.”
His hand stilled, and for a few moments, he watched her. “How am I supposed to do that, Frankie?” he asked quietly. “I can’t stand being angry with you. This week, I’ve felt . . . wrong—like the earth’s rotating backward or something and just existing makes me sick. If that’s anger, I can’t imagine how I could possibly hate you and keep living.”