Even though she didn't really believe it anymore. Prince Tor of the House of Asgersen might be twenty-six, but he had the maturity and life knowledge of a man much older. Over the years she'd come to see what it meant that he'd been raised to be a prince.
Maturity and control had been expected of him when other children were throwing tantrums and learning how to respond to social cues.
"We are back to that?" he asked, clearly unimpressed.
"Not really," she admitted.
No one could say this man did not know his own mind, or had living to do before he settled into his future.
Which didn't mean she was ready to break up so that could happen. Not even a little.
He shook his head, his gorgeous face cast in harsh lines. "You are highly intelligent, Blythe. You must have expected that I would want to take our relationship public at some point."
"I thought you'd want to end it." Or that she would. Out of necessity, if not desire.
"Really?" The mockery in his tone lacerated her. "More than three years of fidelity didn't convince you that wasn't the likely scenario?"
Put like that, but those years hadn't been normal ones.
"It wasn't like you had all that much chance to find someone else," she pointed out. "First you were in school and then you were serving oversees."
"You don't think I had opportunity? If nothing else, my father and his new wife have made sure I am surrounded by eligible women whenever I came home on leave."
"I know," Blythe said, feeling unaccountably cranky.
"You did not like that."
"No." She felt far too possessive of him to take the matchmaking with equanimity.
But Blythe had to let that feeling go. She had to let Tor go. Blythe had no choice.
And the longer she let this conversation go on, the more it would hurt when she said the words that needed saying.
"We have to break up," she said baldly, if quietly.
Forcing the hated words from her throat had taken all her will. There was nothing left over for volume.
Tor reeled backward, like she'd landed a powerful blow even the soldier prince found hard to shake off. "You do not mean that."
"I do." There were no choices.
Tor deserved to find someone he could spend the rest of his life with and that woman was not her.
"Why?" he asked. "Are you still that worried Janne will not accept a relationship between the two of us?"
"No. That's not it." Blythe wished it was. "You and I don't have a future and it's not fair to either of us to keep seeing each other like we have been."
Once again she spoke her truth, as she'd done on that long ago night she'd invited him into her body without protection. And she knew, just like then, that he would hear the truth without truly understanding it.
"Why don't we have a future?" he demanded, anger flashing in his grey eyes like lightening in a cloud laden sky.
"You know I don't want to be a princess."
"Snap." He snapped his fingers for emphasis. "My future wife will not be a princess unless my brother wills it."
"You're mincing words. I don't want to be married to a prince. I'm not made to be part of a royal family."
"You already are part of my family."