Jean-Michel, a jarhead from France, slapped the table and laughed. ‘No way, mon ami, no way!’
This was what he liked most about the UN secondments. It didn’t matter whether a team had been together three days or three months, there was an understanding, a bond—a family. What was shared on downtime stayed on downtime, and Kjell never begrudged Enzo pulling out Freya to taunt him. He only ever did it when a team needed to let off steam, or just to laugh.
Sometimes Kjell would rip into Enzo about the beautiful Italian wife he’d left behind to bring up their two adorable children, dark-haired and dark-eyed, just like their father. Because there were times when they had to laugh or they’d go mad.
‘You’ll go to your grave with blue balls, my friend,’ Enzo teased.
Kjell had promised to kill him for that.
Only he’d not had to.
On another continent, six months later, someone else had got there first.
Snowflakes were hurled on the raging wind, as helpless as confetti, their jagged trajectory as chaotic as it was fleeting. Freya sat in a nest of throws on the sofa tracing flake after flake, heart bruised and mind numb.
I’m renouncing my royal title.
She’d told him. She’d said the words. And the world hadn’t ended.
It should have been a relief—a release, the confession that set her free. But, instead, it was the moment she’d realised the horrifying truth of it all: that this wasn’t even the hardest part.
Freya thought of the calm she’d consciously wrapped herself in throughout the invasive tests and check-ups, the different hormone medications to thicken the womb lining. She had borne the mood swings, sweats and the horrifying feeling that her body wasn’t her own with a serenity that befitted the perfect princess. She had allowed them to test her as if she were a faulty machine.
And when she’d overheard the doctor giving his final diagnosis to herbrother, not her, as if her womb was more important to the throne than her as a person, as a woman, as a little girl who had always dreamed of having her own family...she’d clenched her jaw and said nothing. Because she understood that a king needed to know anything that affected the lineage. Because she knew—had always known—that her duty was first and foremost to that throne. Just like the doctor, just like her brother. And all three had known that the best way for her to do her duty was to step down, even if Aleksander still fought her on it.
Throughout it all, she’d believed that the hardest point would be renouncing her title. The sacrifice she would make to ensure that Aleksander’s rule wasn’t questioned or tainted by the fallout. Yes, there would be questions, but between Henna and the palace’s communications team they would come up with a reasonable out. An out that would have them focused on her, not the fertility of their King or their younger sister. An out that wouldn’t jeopardise all the good that her siblings could do for Svardia. Freya would doanythingto make that possible.
But last night, when she’d finally revealed her intention to Kjell, she’d truly realised that facing the press, stepping down, wouldn’t be the hardest part. It was what would happenafter. After the furore died down, after the practicalities had been dealt with. It would be in a year, maybe two, when there was nothing left to fight, when there was no one around and she had to finally face the fact that her body was broken and she’d never have what she’d always wanted to have.
The hurt in her heart made her selfishly want to reach out to Kjell for comfort. A comfort that, no matter the years of distance, the pains of the past, she still felt was possible between them. The familiarity of him, even in spite of the changes, of the man he had become, a hope in her soul. But the tension between them was a reality she couldn’t ignore. And his demand one she couldn’t deny.
Don’t bother asking me again until you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on.
She knew him well enough to know that he was serious. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than the truth now. She hated that she would have to tell him. And it was so much easier to hold onto that anger, the fury at the injustice of it all, after everything that she had sacrificed, all the good she had done, it raged in her heart.
A rage that demanded to be heard. It scratched along her skin and clawed at her chest. She wanted to howl at the moon, it was so unfair. It was so horribly unfair. A strange, determined fury fizzed in her veins, unpleasant but invigorating. It pushed away the numbness and made fissures in the serene mask she had made of her features. It broke and shattered the façade into a thousand pieces.
And now, staring at the fading shadows bleeding across the snow, she knew only that the seal on her anger had finally broken. And it was all coming out. The pain, the hurt, the shame, the anger, the fury.
Don’t bother asking me again until you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on.
She flicked the tears away from her cheeks as she thrust herself into her own clothes, now dry in the boot room. Her shaking fingers were barely able to tie the laces of her boots, and she just remembered to grab a scarf as she launched from the cabin towards the outbuilding where she knew Kjell was.
Wind battered her, snow pelted her, butshewas the wild one here. She felt the elements rise up within her to match the fury of the storm raging around her. Through the swirls and currents of the snow, she could make out the door to the outbuilding and was still too angry, too untethered to feel anything other than grim determination to confront the man behind the door.
Kjell spun round when the door flew open, his pulse still pounding in his ears from the brutal workout. Freya stormed into the outbuilding, slamming the door shut behind her, as angry as he’d ever seen her.
‘You want to know why I need to step down?’ she shouted at him. She looked incandescent and devastatingly gorgeous with it.
‘Yes!’ he yelled back, turning to face the fury coming towards him full-on. He welcomed it, the anger, the challenge—but if he’d thought it would cut through the desire he felt for her, he had been very wrong. Instead, it only inflamed his need. Too much had been kept locked away for too long. Something had to give.
She came to within kissing distance, their breaths clashing in an unsustainable rhythm. She looked at him, shaking her head as if he was wrong, as if she knew that he didn’t really want to know.
It was the first inkling he had that something was very, very wrong. This was worse than the night of Marit’s accident, but he honestly couldn’t imagine what it could be. Freya was shaking with rage and he wanted it unleashed. He’d take every single blow, every strike she could give him if it meant release from whatever terrible hurt held her in its grasp.
‘I can’t have children.’
His mind flatlined. There was a high-pitched whine in his ears and no thoughts in his mind. It was the last thing he’d ever expected her to say.