Chapter 98

Amelia

The gala still glittered behind me, chandeliers spilling golden light across polished floors, when I felt her presence. Jenny stepped from the shadows near the grand staircase as though she had been waiting all night for this moment, her eyes sharp and predatory, her lips curled in a smile that promised damage.

The grand hall behind me buzzed with music and polite laughter, but the air shifted with her arrival, and I could feel the tension prickling across my skin before she even spoke. Cameras were still flashing in the ballroom, catching the final notes of speeches and toasts, but some of the hungrier reporters had already trailed after her, sensing blood in the water.

She waited until I was close enough, her timing precise, and then she struck with the venom of someone who had rehearsed the cruelty long before.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she sneered, her voice pitched perfectly for the recorders and lenses surrounding us, every syllable dripping with satisfaction. “You’re just Daddy’s plaything.”

The gasps were immediate, sharp enough to cut through the hum of the gala. The reporters surged forward, calling my name, calling hers, questions firing like arrows into the fragile silence of the hallway. Microphones were raised higher, flashes from cameras brightened into a storm that turned every polished surface into a mirror of my humiliation.

Jenny lifted her chin, her smirk widening as though she had gifted them a feast they would gorge themselves on for weeks. My body betrayed me, heat rushing from scalp to chest in a flush that burned through my gown, my chest constricting as if I could no longer draw in air. Her words echoed louder than the string music, louder than the murmurs of the crowd, repeating endlessly in my head, plaything, plaything, plaything.

I couldn’t find an answer, couldn’t summon a single word, so I turned before my silence could be captured forever on their cameras. My heels clattered across the marble as I pushed through the cluster of onlookers, my breath ragged, my hands trembling.

The floor tilted beneath me with every step, and I struggled to keep upright as the questions shouted behind me grew sharper, more invasive. I fled down a side corridor, my vision blurred by tears, the music from the gala fading into a distant, muffled rhythm. The questions followed, echoing through the walls, until at last I stumbled into a deserted passage lined with oil paintings of long-dead monarchs, their painted eyes watching my collapse.

I pressed my back to the cold stone, sliding down until my skirt pooled around me. My breaths came ragged, my chest heaving, and the tears I had fought to hold back spilled freely across my cheeks.

I hugged my knees tightly to my chest, trying to make myself smaller, trying to hide from words that had already pierced too deep to escape. Shame twisted inside me, sharper with each replay of her sneer, until sobs broke free in shuddering gasps that rattled through the empty hall.

That was when his scent reached me. Pine and leather, steady and grounding, like safety itself. I looked up through blurred eyes, and Richard was there, filling the corridor with a presence stronger than stone or air.

He didn’t ask me to explain, didn’t press for words I couldn’t shape. He crouched beside me and gathered me into his arms without hesitation, lifting me against his chest as if I were fragile glass that only he could keep from shattering.

My face pressed into the warmth of his jacket, and I clung to him with trembling fingers, curling toward him as though his body were the only place in the world where breath came easily.

“She’s wrong,” he said, his voice low but blazing with fury, each word deliberate, each syllable a vow. “She knows she’s wrong. You are not some toy, not something for the world to pick apart or use.”

I shook my head, the words clinging to me like barbs I couldn’t shake loose. “But they’ll believe her,” I whispered hoarsely. “The reporters, the council, everyone who already doubts me. She made it sound so simple, like that’s all I am.”

Richard carried me to a bench tucked into a recessed alcove, a forgotten corner of the hall hidden behind velvet curtains. He lowered me carefully onto the seat, then crouched before me so that we were eye to eye. His large hands framed my face, thumbs brushing away tears even as more fell, unstoppable. His eyes held me captive, fierce and unrelenting, daring me to contradict him.

“Listen to me,” he said, his tone hard as steel wrapped in velvet. “You are clever. You are strong. You are the bravest woman I have ever known. You are the only one in this building who has ever dared to speak to me without fear. You are not defined by her venom or by their cameras. You are mine because you chose me. And I am yours because I have no other choice and never will.”

His words struck me like a lifeline cast into a storm, yet the cruelty of Jenny’s voice lingered, twisting her insult into something almost believable. My throat burned with sobs I couldn’t contain, and I buried my face against his chest, whispering into the darkness between us. “I want to believe you. I just don’t know how.”

“Then let me show you,” he said, his voice steady, unyielding. He rose and lifted me into his arms again, carrying me through the corridors where portraits of past rulers looked on in silent judgment. Each step he took felt like an act of defiance against every whisper, every rumor, every headline. By the time we reached the private stairwell that led to his suite, my breathing had begun to slow, steadied by the cadence of his heartbeat beneath my ear.

His chambers glowed softly in lamplight when we entered. He placed me on the bed as if I were something precious, smoothing stray strands of hair from my face with a tenderness that disarmed me more than his fury ever could. The quiet of the room wrapped around us like a shield, muffling the chaos still raging downstairs.

I reached for him then, desperate to silence the shame another way, pulling him down to me, pressing trembling lips to his shoulder. My hands roamed across his chest, offering myself because it was the only way I knew to prove I was more than her cruel word. But he caught my wrist and pressed my palm against his heart, stilling me with a kiss to my forehead.

“Not tonight,” he whispered, his lips warm against my skin. “Not like this. You don’t have to earn me with your body. You already have me.”

So he held me. He stretched out beside me and gathered me into his arms, strong and steady, curling his body around mine like a fortress against the storm that threatened to consume me.

His breathing slowed until mine followed, each inhale and exhale syncing, every beat of his heart reminding me that I was anchored. My sobs softened into shallow breaths, then into silence, the weight of Jenny’s words stripped away by the patience in his embrace.

Time blurred as I rested in his hold. The world outside his chamber could have been falling apart and I wouldn't have known, not while his arms circled me, not while his warmth pressed against my spine and his voice murmured softly into my hair. At last, when the silence deepened, I tilted my face up to him and whispered into the space between us, my words fragile but certain. “I believe you.”

The weight in my chest loosened. Not gone, but lighter, no longer crushing. For the first time since Jenny’s ambush, I closed my eyes without fear.

He held me as though he would never let go, and I let myself rest inside that truth until sleep claimed me, carrying me somewhere Jenny’s words could no longer reach.