Not now.
Not him.
I’m not ready for this.
I’ll never be ready for this.
I want to run. To hide. To flee into the night. But… didn’t I just tell Carter that I’m not the kind of girl who runs? Didn’t I just insist I wouldn’t bolt when things got tough?
Besides, even if Iwasthat kind of girl… deep down, I know there’s no running.
Not from this.
You can’t run from the blood in your veins.
Heart in my throat, I force my feet to pivot around toward the archway. My trepidatious gaze lifts to the man standing within it. His thick, salt-and-pepper hair has just the slightest hint of wave. His skin is weathered with sun and age. His eyes, the deepest shade of green, hold neither warmth nor recognition.
And why would they?
We’ve never met. We’re nothing to one another.
He didn’t want us, Emilia,Mom’s memory whispers.He didn’t want you.
For a full minute, there is total silence in the parlor. I don’t think anyone dares to breathe — not Carter, not his mother, not Simms, not the three suited guards flanking the man with whom I share strands of DNA. Least of all me.
Linus takes two strides into the room, that evaluative stare unwavering as he takes me in — purple hair, exposed midriff, bared thighs, brazen expression.
If he’s shocked by my appearance, he doesn’t let it show. Not that I’d give a fuck if he found me lacking. I stopped waiting for his approval around the same time I gave up playing dolls and dress up.
My chin jerks higher, so he knows I’m not intimidated. Maybe I’m supposed to bow my head in supplication, maybe I’m supposed to play nice —he is the new King, after all— but I can’t bring myself to show even an ounce of respect to the man who threw me and Mom away like the condom he should’ve been wearing the night I was conceived.
Bastard.
Oh, wait. No. That’sme.
His green gaze sweeps around to address everyone in the room and, in a voice that rings with kingly authority, he says the words that alter the entire course of my life.
“Her name is Emilia Victoria Lancaster. She is my daughter. And, as it currently stands… she is next in line for the throne. The Crown Princess of Germania, by blood and by right.”
Chapter Six
“No,”I whisper, reeling backward at his words.
I bump straight into the hard wall of Carter’s chest. It takes all my strength not to lean into him. To let him absorb the weight of my watery bones, now that my knees have gone weak. The room tilts around me as those words spin through my mind.
Next in line for the throne.
Crown Princess of Germania.
He must be mad — that’s the only explanation. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either.
“Linus!” Octavia is out of her seat and across the room so fast, I’m not confident she doesn’t posses powers of teleportation. “Tell me it’s not true.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Linus says, never shifting his eyes from mine.
God, he looks like me. Or, I suppose,Ilook likehim.And I hate it. Hate it so much, it makes me want to smash every mirror in the world, to have my face surgically altered, to burn every picture I’ve ever taken in a sacrificial fire.
“But youcannotbe serious!” Her shrill tone pierces my ears like a knife. “Look at her! She can’t possibly be—”