“Good night, Your Highness.” And it might as well have been good-bye. He’d keep his distance, emotionally. Physically, he’d guard her with his life. He’d yearn for her, yes. But he was a man of control, after all. Wasn’t he?
He pulled the door shut before she could say another word. He didn’t trust himself to resist her if she asked him to stay. He’d reorder his thinking tonight and remember how close he was to what he’d been planning since his father was murdered. A goal that would not only bring justice to him but to his entire legacy. To the Romanov family and who they were before they were forced to recreate themselves and hide their lineage in order to stay alive.
His whole plan hinged on Mina taking her rightful place as Queen of Arkadia, of helping the Black Lily alongside the Bloodguard, of winning this goddamned war. Even if King Agnar from the west joined forces with the Black Lily, it wouldn’t be enough. He’d already calculated Queen Morgrid’s numbers, using his resources to report the number of Legionnaires coming and going from the Glass Tower. His men in hiding in Izeling sent regular reports of the northern villages being raided—the men turned vampire and rabid with sanguine furorem, their women and children taken as slaves to King Dominik’s fortress, Dragon’s Eye.
He ground his teeth thinking of his mother’s home, Kellswater, one of the first to be ravaged by the butcher king and his men. It had broken Mikhail’s mother’s heart to hear that the village where she grew up had been razed to the ground, the people stolen away like cattle. Mikhail had been grateful her parents were no longer living to have witnessed such an atrocity, but it was little consolation for the poor bastards who’d been set upon by the king’s vampire army. Just one more debt the king and his witch of a mother would have to pay.
His thoughts drifted from their army back to the one the Black Lily and the Bloodguard had been building. The westerners were not a warring people. But the southerners were. Aristocratic lines who’d fought in the long-ago Thorn Wars and beat back revolutionaries time and time again, who trained and honed the best equestrian soldiers in all the land. With the force of the Arkadian army, they’d surely win. At least, they’d have a fighting chance.
That was why he must keep his distance from the princess, he told himself as he stormed toward the Bloodguard encampment. Every kiss he stole from her was another distraction from their cause, which was far more important than a lovers’ tryst. No one else had figured it out, but Mikhail had. Their success depended upon Princess Vilhelmina. His infatuation with the woman only muddied the waters, clouding what was first and foremost—the future of Varis.
So he’d keep his cock in his pants and his thoughts as pristine and clean as frigid, glacial waters in her presence. Even if the woman drove him insane with desire, he’d stay calm.
“Stay calm,” he repeated to himself, combing a hand through his hair, ruffling it in a very not-calm manner.
Downy snow flurried from the sky. Mikhail paused on the trail and turned his face upward, letting the flakes hit and sting his face. He needed it to cool his heated blood, his heated thoughts.
“Is that working?”
Mikhail snapped to a defensive stance, blade in hand, before he realized it was Dmitri. “Don’t sneak up on me, Brother.” He sheathed his dagger.
“I wasn’t.” He was leaning against a trunk, arms crossed. “I was waiting for you.”
“Why? Do we have news from Marius? From Cutters Cove?”
“Neither. I was wondering if you have news for me.”
“Regarding?” Mikhail rolled his shoulders and marched on down the path.
Dmitri stepped in line beside him. “Regarding the princess.”
“You’ll have to get straight to the point, if you have one.”
“All right. I wanted to speak to you regarding your intentions toward her.”
“I think that’s perfectly clear. Protect her till she takes her place as ruler of Arkadia.”
“Protect her? That’s all, Mikhail?”
He jerked to a stop. “What the hell are you getting at, Dmitri?”
Unperturbed as always, his younger brother replied simply, “I’m wondering if you’re falling in love with her. And if so, does that mean you plan to be king at her side?”
Stupefied into silence for a moment, Mikhail finally found his voice. “Are you utterly mad?”
“Not at all. I’ve never seen you this way around a woman. You would be a good match. Perfect actually, with our family ancestry. It only seems—”
“She’s destined for a royal throne.”
“As are you, Brother. And you know you deserve it.”
“Stop it.” Mikhail marched back down the trail. “We won’t go down that road. Not now.”
He didn’t want to listen to Dmitri’s logic, because he was absolutely fucking right. It was as if they were destined for each other. As if that simple blood kiss in the tower wasn’t simple at all, but an ordained tap from Lady Fortune’s wand, saying “finally.” Mikhail stared up, unable to see the stars above the snowy clouds. The heavens seemed to mock him. Or they were forcing him down a path he’d never planned to travel. Of course he wanted to claim his birthright. But this wasn’t part of the plan. She wasn’t part of the plan.
“Why not?” Dmitri kept in step. “Right all wrongs. That’s what you told me this was about. The Bloodguard. Our training. Our living away from our home and fighting these bloody rogues. Our alliance with the duke and with the Black Lily.”
“And it still is. That has nothing to do with…with bloody marriage, becoming king, or for God’s sake, falling in love.”
“Falling? I believe you’re already there.”
“I’ve known the woman a week.”
“You can’t take your eyes off her. Won’t tolerate any of us getting too close. This is more than lust, Mikhail, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t consider—”
“I’m the goddamned captain of the Bloodguard,” he grit out. “I made a blood vow.”
Dmitri sobered, his smirk slipping, showing his tender-hearted brother beneath. “You’re right. You couldn’t be both.” He clasped Mikhail’s shoulder in a rare show of affection. “But one of us will eventually have to leave the Guard.” Snow fell in soft flakes, catching in Dmitri’s black hair. “One of us must have a family. We can’t let our line die, my brother.” Dmitri rarely ever spoke with such heavy emotion weighing his words. “It’s too important. You know that.”
Mikhail exhaled a heavy sigh, refusing to acknowledge the truth.
The truth. Something Mina wouldn’t let him walk away from. This was too much for him to face right now.
“What I know is I need a good feeding and a good fuck. And that is all.” He gestured in the direction of the encampment. “You’re in charge of the men tonight.”
Then he tore off toward Hiddleston in search of anything, anyone who’d wipe his memory of the fair-haired vixen who did indeed already have her hooks in deep. Entirely too deep.
Chapter Eleven