Back to Claim His Crown by Natalie Anderson

Author:Natalie Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-05-15T17:54:18+00:00

* * *

Lucian clamped his jaw shut and stared at her. The exhaustion from touring was getting to him, as was the frustration of being around her and being unable to touch her in the way he craved more and more. He’d been so looking forward to seeing her he’d just had to kiss her. And now—

Now she’d stilled.

And he had worked his issues through with a therapist, as it happened. He’d taken that chance while in Piri-nu in an effort to work out if he could truly trust what he’d seen that day. But now he was furious, and Zara was looking at him with her big blue eyes and he knew she wanted more than the scant details that he’d given to the press. She wanted to know why. But there was so much more to it than that one morning.

‘Anders came to live with us when he was seven,’ he said roughly. ‘My mother had already lost my father and then her sister and her husband died in a plane crash. As Anders was their only child, of course she opened up the palace to him. My mother was generous.’ He took in a breath, remembering his mother’s hurt and hating it. ‘Garth came too. He’s Anders’s uncle. He always seemed reliable and willing to assist. My mother trusted him. I’d just gone to boarding school abroad so I saw Anders only in the holidays. Frankly, I wasn’t as patient as I could have been. I thought he was always a bit spoiled. Of course I was equally spoiled, but I was just too arrogant to see it.’

‘So you weren’t close?’

‘Not as close as we could have been.’ If Lucian had made more effort, maybe things might have turned out differently—that was on him too. ‘My mother wanted me to mentor him but I wasn’t that good at it. I wasn’t...’

‘But you took him on that holiday with you,’ Zara prompted. ‘You took him diving.’

Only because he’d been made to.

‘We’d left the big yacht moored and gone in a small boat to explore some of Greece’s smaller uninhabited islands. Anders was on the boat when I did a bad dive and hit my head on a rock. I resurfaced but I remember the blood streaming in my eyes. I remember it hurt. I remember I called to him.’

Zara watched him steadily. ‘What did he do?’

‘He was only fourteen, Zara,’ he said huskily. ‘Maybe he was frozen with fear.’ He’d wanted to believe that. He didn’t want to believe he’d truly seen such malevolence in someone so young. That chill filled his body. ‘I thought he was holding the boat hook out for me to grab. But he didn’t hold it still for me to reach for it. Instead, he hit down with it.’

‘Hit you?’

‘Right on the wound. At first I thought he’d lost control of the hook. But he hit again and then I just dived. I swam underwater to get around a rocky outcrop so I could get away from him.

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