Instantly the pain subsided. A small sound of pleasure escaped him, and he didn’t know if the expressive slip-up had more to do with the sudden absence of discomfort, the fact that being on the island was like going back in time to an era when he hadn’t had to manage his every move, or the fact that Mina had just made him feel good.
Her answering smile glowed with relief. “Systems science. Antidotes to the toxins that have evolved in a given environment can almost always be found nearby.”
If she’d still been wearing her glasses, he imagined this would have been the moment she pushed them up the bridge of her nose, but there was no derision in the thought. Her earnestness wasn’t the cluelessness of a sheltered academic. She was just genuine.
He came to his feet to hide just how that revelation hit him, and composed himself before offering her a hand. “And you said a queen had no use for a PhD in biological systems...”
After a slight hesitation, and looking at his offered hand for a beat too long, she accepted it, letting him carry some of her weight as she came upright.
“Thanks,” she said, when they both stood again.
Her green-hazel eyes mirrored the color of the forest around them as she stared at him, revealing herself in the process, as natural and forthright as the woods.
She stole his breath, but she didn’t seem to care that that gave her power—maybe she didn’t even know it.
Heat was coming to her cheeks at their continued eye contact, and she cleared her throat. “Well, should we keep going?”
Watching her trying to hide her reaction to him filled him with an unfamiliar urge to beat his chest and let out a wild howl. And even though the movement wouldn’t have been like any version of himself—not the island-exploring boy, not the passionate student, not the charming heir, and certainly not the King—he realized it came from the same place that made a man hunt and kill and die for his woman. It didn’t matter what version he was of himself. This part was his real essence.
It wasn’t a comfortable realization.
He wasn’t, however, about to wallow in his mind’s damning over-simplifications. The real world offered intrigue enough.
Unlike his present company.
The more time he spent with her, the more he realized she couldn’t offer intrigue if her life depended on it. However her father had managed to secure a royal betrothal so long ago, his daughter didn’t appear to have a machinating bone in her body.
“Tell me about your mother?” he asked, curious to know if her earnestness stemmed from another source.
“Do you know you’re quite bossy?” she retorted, rather than answering his question.
He raised an eyebrow. “I ask about your mother and you resort to name-calling?”
She snorted with a little laugh, watching the ground as she walked, at complete ease, and he realized he couldn’t remember the last time someone had snorted around him.
He tried again. “Will you tell me about your mother?”
She laughed out loud this time. “Even when you use the right words you can’t really ask for anything, can you?”
She sparkled, and he marveled at her while she teased him as if he wasn’t the King.
Glancing at him out the side of her eye, she asked slyly, “Don’t you have some sort of dossier on me?”
Taking on the challenge in her question, he shrugged. “Of course. Your mother was born in Germany and came to Cyrano on a student visa. She dropped out of school and illegally outstayed her visa, during which time she met your father. They married, and through your father—who was a natural-born citizen and had been a military officer—earned her citizenship.”
Her eyes had widened into small green gold orbs in her face and he laughed.
“But what is that? Facts? I want to know what my mother-in-law is like.”
He really was curious about the mother-in-law he had yet to meet, but he couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to laugh at his plans going awry. Mina, however, was unaware of that—completely oblivious to the fact that she and the island were drawing out parts of himself he’d thought long dead—and she laughed, the sound of it as bright as the sun overhead.
“When you put it that way...”
Her voice carried her smile with it, right into his chest, where it blossomed like a hothouse flower.
“She is a devoted mother, and so strong—she had to be after we lost my father—”
The ghost of pain in her voice was a quiet echo of the raw-edged thing that lived inside him, usually clawing its way up to the surface from the deep place where he had buried it the moment he let himself slow down, and in a strange way it was both comforting and hopeful.