Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
The investigation was a dead end. Every lead dried up before it could be followed. Every witness had nothing useful to offer. Amos Karp smiled his too-smooth smile and promised progress while delivering nothing but polished reports full of empty words.
The fox guarding the henhouse.
Devyn's hands curled into fists. He wanted to drag Amos into a room with no windows and no witnesses and get the truth the old way. He wanted to stop playing politics and start breaking bones.
But he couldn't prove anything. Not yet. And moving too soon would tip his hand.
So Amos kept circling. Kept smiling. Kept leading an investigation designed to find nothing. His fists clenched, his knuckles cracking as he imagined Amos circling Bailey, and a memory came to him, unbidden.
The Baron of Greenwhich calling out to him just as Devyn had stepped out of his house, uttering words in a voice that was made hoarse by grief and impotent rage over the murder of his flesh and blood.
“You must find him, Your Majesty. Make him pay. Because I have a feeling...he is out for you, too. So find him...before it is your own queen he takes away next.”
Devyn pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window.
Bailey.
He could still feel her. That was the problem. Five days away and he could still feel the softness of her skin. The warmth of her breath. The way she'd looked at him after he kissed her—flushed and dazed, her lips parted, her eyes full of hope.
Hope. In him. For him.
When had he started caring whether she hoped?
He thought of the way she'd defended him at Court. Standing in front of a room full of powerful people, calling him sweet, talking about puppies and blizzards and little girls, escalating into increasingly ridiculous specifics until the whole room was laughing and the Baron's accusations had dissolved into irrelevance.
He thought of the way she'd hidden under a blanket afterward. "Bailey has left. There is only blanket." And he'd laughed. Actually laughed. For the first time in years.
He thought of the way his chest went tight whenever she smiled—that real smile, the one with the dimple she didn't know he tracked. The way he couldn't stop looking at her mouth. The way he'd called three kings, his brothers, his equals, and asked them for a favor because the thought of her alone among wolves had made him want to burn the entire party to the ground.
She was under his skin.
In his blood.
Wrapped around every thought until he couldn't think straight.
She was his weakness.
And someone out there—someone who had already killed a woman under his protection—knew it.
The territory was talking about her. Celine was spreading stories. The staff adored her. She was visible now. A target. A pressure point that could be exploited, threatened, destroyed to bring him to his knees.
His. She was his. And he couldn't even keep her safe.
The thought made him want to put his fist through the glass.
Find him...before it is your own queen he takes away next.
He couldn't protect her. Not like this. Not while she was beloved, visible, the darling of the territory. Not while Amos was circling and the investigation was stalled and the killer was watching, waiting, planning.
The only way to protect her was to make her invisible again.
Make her hate him.
Make everyone think she meant nothing.
Remove the target from her back by removing her from his side.
He hated it. Hated every part of this plan that was forming in his mind. Hated that he'd let himself care enough for it to matter. Hated that he'd been so stupid, so reckless, letting her in when he knew better.
He'd spent his whole life building walls. Learning not to care. Turning himself into something cold and sharp and untouchable because caring was weakness and weakness got people killed.
And then Bailey had appeared in his chapel, confused and terrified and impossibly soft, and she'd looked at him like he might be worth trusting.
And he'd let her in.
Stupid. Reckless. The most dangerous thing he'd ever done.
Because now he had something to lose.
And losing her—watching her body carried out of a dungeon the way Abigail's had been, knowing he could have prevented it, knowing he'd been too distracted by the way she smiled at him to see the danger closing in—
No.
He would not be the Baron. Weeping over someone he'd failed to protect. Begging for vengeance because he'd been too blind to see the threat until it was too late.
He would not stand over Bailey's grave.
He knew what he had to do.
It would destroy her.
It would destroy him.
But she would be alive.
Devyn turned from the window.
He had calls to make. Orders to give. A stage to set.
And a heart to break.
Chapter Fourteen
I WANT TO MAKE HIM proud.
That’s the thought that gets me out of bed each morning while Devyn is away. Not just survive until he gets back. Not just don’t mess anything up. But actually, genuinely make him proud.