She must have stayed like that for a while because it took her a moment to register the sound of the beep. Frowning, she had to hear it a few more times until she realised that it was her sat phone. She followed the next beep quickly, hoping to get to it before it woke Kjell. She took the phone with her into the boot room and risked the frigid icy cold as she opened the door and leaned out to get enough signal.
‘Your Highness?’
‘I’m here, Gunnar.’
‘We will be with you in about thirty minutes.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ she lied, her words frosting the cold air. The shiver that racked her body had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the thought of leaving Kjell behind. She knew she should wake him, but she’d meant what she’d said the night before. She couldn’t say goodbye. He might have given her the strength to embrace herself and face the public fallout, but no one could ask her to be strong enough to say goodbye to the man who had her heart.
Kjell heard the door to the cabin click shut and his heart lurched. Instantly he was awake, shock severing his connection to sleep. She was gone. He felt it more surely than he’d ever known anything before. Rage roared from his heart as he threw himself into last night’s clothes. The sound of a helo nearby raced his pulse and rode him urgently forward. He had to see her, he had to stop her before she could leave.
He hadn’t told her.
With an arm half in his jacket, his feet thrust into untied boots, he flung open the cabin door and hurled himself out into the snow. Clear blue skies taunted him and he could see Freya up ahead, getting into the helicopter.
His heart yelled her name and, as if she’d heard it, Freya turned at that exact moment and the hurt and sorrow in her gaze nearly felled him where he was. He stopped in his tracks, knowing that to go any further would only hurt them both.
But the damage was done. She’d left without saying goodbye. Without letting him tell her how much he loved her. His body was stuck, torn between the urge to pull her back to him and push her from him. She deserved to be the Princess she could be. To help others—as she always had. She could not do that and be with him. He knew that. He understood that duty and hated that it was a sacrifice they both would make over and over again.
There will never be anyone else.
His words from last night were whispered back to him on the wind as the helicopter lifted from the ground, the downwash throwing snow into the air, and he took them to the deepest parts of his soul.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FREYASTAREDATthe leafy green palace garden and instead saw snow. Cold tendrils snapped out at her and even in the spring sunshine of Svardia she couldn’t get warm. Ever since she had left Dalarna two days ago, she had felt a fine shiver across her heart and it spread a chill through her body. This was what it felt like when a heart broke, she realised. She would have to take it deep within her, because she would live with it for the rest of her life.
Just then it was too raw to think of Kjell. To imagine what he was doing, what he was thinking, to wonder what he’d felt when he’d seen her disappear into the sky without having said goodbye.
Coward.
She cursed herself. He had deserved more than that and she hadn’t been strong enough. She forced her hands to unfurl, not needing to look to know that her nails had imprinted crescents onto her palms. She should have told him. He should have heard the words.
But shehaddone the right thing by returning to Svardia. She could do so much good here and he could be so much more without her. A father. A good and loving husband.
There will never be anyone else.
His promise taunted the future she saw for him but she knew,theyknew, it had been the right decision. Even if it left a scar on her heart that would never heal.
‘Come.’
The command cut into her thoughts and Freya entered her brother’s office, struck hard by the garish baroque design after the stunning simplicity of Kjell’s cabin. She felt Aleksander’s eyes assessing her. And suddenly that ice-cold thread winding around her heart turned to white-hot fury.
‘How did it go?’ Aleksander asked, his tone unusually gentle. But she wasn’t ready to be gentled. No. She was ready to show a little of the less than perfect Princess she had learned that it was okay to be.
‘You bastard.’
Anyone else would have flinched, but her brother simply stared back at her, waiting for an answer.
‘You knew what you were doing when you sent me there. You knew what had happened to Kjell.’
‘Yes.’
‘So, either you set me up to fail because you knew he would refuse the medal, or you set him up to face the most painful experience of his life and take the medal so that I would be free. Because youknewhe would do that for me.’
‘Yes.’
‘That isn’t an answer.’ Her voice was harsh with accusation. She hated this cryptic, cold man her brother had become. Oh, she had absolutely no doubt that he’d be the perfect King, a good ruler for Svardia...but at what cost? ‘When did you become so cruel?’