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“Is she?” Andrea nodded in understanding, but her eyes slid away from him as she processed the information. “Well, that’s good. We do want the princess to be comfortable here.”
“Indeed, we do,” he said, watching her leave the room. It annoyed him that she wasn’t wrong. If he wanted any kind of relationship with Mina, he had to let her in. He had to get to know her and be vulnerable for once.
Getting to his feet, he marched out into the hall and sniffed the air to find the direction she and Lucy had traveled. It took a second and then he realized they’d gone out towards the back of the palace where the rose gardens lined the back of the property. The gardens he’d planted for Evangeline.
A phantom pain radiated through his chest, and his heart thumped hard against his ribs as he followed their path. Just once. Just enough to remind him that he wasn’t the man he used to be.
Slipping into the shaded walk, he paced along the garden paths, searching for Mina’s voice, her scent. It was Lucy that he found first, but Mina’s scent came soon after.
“…He’s not so bad, you know,” Lucy said.
“I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman,” Mina answered. “But how can I just ignore twenty years of my father insisting that vampires are monsters? How can I just forget that?”
Erik stepped out of the dark, and into the torchlight lining the walkway. “I’d never ask you to ignore what you’ve learned. All I ask is that you have an open mind, Starlight.”
The women gasped at his sudden appearance, but it was Lucy who recovered first.
Pressing a hand to her heart she laughed. “By the Goddess. You scared the life out of me.”
He gave her an apologetic bow. “Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Mina snorted and smiled up at him. “I think that’s exactly what you meant to do.”
“Who, me?” He pressed his hand to his chest, feigning hurt. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Lucy laughed. “Oh, these next few months are going to be fun. Why don’t you two continue the tour, and I’ll take the princess out into the city later tonight.”
“I don’t want to intrude on your time together. You’ve been apart for a long time,” he said, regretting his choice to interrupt them. Lucy and Mina deserved a chance to spend time together. They were family after all. A fact that he was dying to speak with the witch about. She’d never mentioned that her little cousin looked like Evangeline. She’d seen the portraits. She should’ve known, she should’ve said something to him, at some point.
“It’s no intrusion, Your Majesty. You’ve given me my family back, that’s all that matters. And now that she’s here we have all the time in the world,” Lucy said, bumping shoulders with Mina. “You two behave now.”
Mina rolled her eyes but said nothing as her cousin walked away from them, disappearing into the darkness.
He cleared his throat. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean for her to leave us.”
“It’s okay,” Mina said, turning back to the path she’d been walking down when he appeared. “You did say we have to make a visible effort at this, didn’t you? What better way than a romantic walk in a rose garden?”
“Romantic?” He chuckled. “I thought I scared you.”
“You startled me,” she corrected, wagging a finger in the air. “There’s a difference.”
Erik laughed and fell into step beside her. “Well, I apologize for startling you.”
“I’ll forgive you.” She smiled, glancing sideways at him. “This time.”
He shook his head and gazed at the roses around them. “So, what do you think of our gardens?”
“They’re beautiful,” she said. “How do you get them to grow without sunlight?”
“Enchantments in the soil,” he said. “They draw their nutrients from the light of the moon. It’s why their color is so dark.”
“You know,” she said, drifting over to a balcony that overlooked the lower gardens. “I never imagined you’d live in such a beautiful place.”
“Where did you think I’d live?”
Her cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink, and she cleared her throat. “I expected a cold, scary place, full of death and darkness, but your people aren’t scary. I was only in the actual town for a few minutes, but there’s life here—no one in Distova would ever believe me if I told them.”
“I’d prefer to keep it that way, honestly. Humans aren’t well equipped to face the dangers on this side of the mountain. Your fear of us keeps you safe.”
