Randal had been leveling out the ground in the feed room, but he emerged with his rake in hand, looking towards the sound. The vibrations shivered right up from the soles of my boots. It sounded like a whole battalion was coming at us, full speed.
He glanced at me, narrowing his eyes slightly, and rested his enormous forearm on the rake handle. We looked out the door of the feed room and saw two, four, six mounted men approaching on all-white horses, each of them clad in the royal colors. What in the world?
They had one extra horse with them, tied to the reins of the sixth soldier. The rider-less horse was a hand taller than the rest; a fairytale horse if ever I had seen one.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were doing at Millstone Farm. Though I was not well-versed in sigils and armor, I knew at once they weren’t just any soldiers. They were the palace guards. A royal tenancy we may be, but we were hardly a destination for a royal visit.
The soldier in front dismounted with a clatter of his armor as Randal stepped out into the midst of them. There were no explanations, no introductions. Instead, the captain of the guards flipped up his armor visor, turned to Randal, and said, “You’re wanted.”
Astonished, I stared up at Randal.
None of this made sense, but what made even less sense was that Randal didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see them. Annoyed, but not afraid or shocked. His demeanor hardened instantly—gone was the soft, lovely man who had cared for me over the past few days. In his place was an angry, hulking mass of muscle.
“I’m fucking busy,” he snarled.
“You’re fucking wanted,” the guard snarled back.
For a few tense seconds, nothing was said, but I could feel the air vibrate with anger, like the skies before a thunderstorm. Finally, Randal took a deep breath and turned to me. When he looked at me, his eyes softened, his muscles seemed to untense. “I need to go.”
“What?” I said, stunned. “Go where? Who are they? When will you be back?”
Randal glanced at the guards and ground his teeth together, making the muscles of his temples pulse angrily. A lightning-bolt vein throbbed near the old scar that cut through his eyebrow.
“I don’t know. But I promise I’ll be back as soon as fucking possible.”
Rather than embracing me and kissing me as he had every night when he left, this time he took my hand palm-down in his fingers and kissed the back, bowing slightly, and then he turned to go.
I was so shocked that I couldn’t even muster a protest. It was like he didn’t even know me. Or, I realized, like he didn’t want the guards to know how close we had become.
That, at least, I could understand. Randal walked with long, authoritative strides down the path and then mounted the big white stallion in one easy, practiced, effortless movement. And then they were gone, with hoofs pounding.
As the dust settled, I felt both confused and frightened, in addition to shocked and heartbroken. My heart ached with uncertainty and a pinch of embarrassment. I placed my hand over the place where he had kissed the back of my palm, trying to get my bearings, searching my memory of our conversations for any hint of what might have just happened.
Here I’d thought I’d been getting to know him, but I didn’t know him at all. For all our days together, I had babbled away…but what did I really know about him? What had he really told me about himself?
Nothing, I realized. Nothing at all.
Who was he? What kind of man was he, really? And what on earth could he possibly have done to be wanted by the royal guards?
Then I realized. He had been hired as a carpenter by the royal family to repair the barns and buildings. Instead? He’d been here. Helping me. Neglecting his duties.
I’d been selfish and now, he was going to pay the price.
Chapter 6
Randal
Goddamn it.
I saw the fear and confusion in her eyes and I fucking hated that I couldn’t explain to her that everything was fine. If I’d explained anything about who the guards were or how they knew where to find me, I would have given myself away.
And I wasn’t even close to ready to tell her that I wasn’t some carpenter who “happened” upon her farm.
Hell no. I was the bastard prince. The heir apparent. The future king. And I was fucking determined to have her as mine, no matter what I had to give up to do it.
The guards that had come for me weren’t my men; they were my father’s. The whole ride back to the castle, I’d been trying to guess what the hell they wanted. But his men were loyal to him, same as mine were to me, and they didn’t tell me a single damned thing.