“Yes, love, you were until you took my name.”
Oh. Right.
And his last name was Hawthorne. Noctorno Hawthorne. All together that was a pretty badass name.
“So, what I’m saying is, you’re Cora Goode Hawthorne here,” he went on.
“Well, I’m kind of Cora Goode, um… Hawthorne everywhere.”
“No,” his face went ultra serious, “you’re this world’s Cora Goode Hawthorne.”
My heart started to feel heavy.
“What?” I whispered.
“I think you understand me.”
“These people know me?”
“You’re Cora Hawthorne,” he explained without explaining.
“You mean,” I moved closer to him and whispered, “they know I’m a bitch?”
“No,” he answered.
Oh man!
My heart skipped.
“You mean they know I started the curse?” I breathed.
He sighed in a way that indicated he was seeking patience and he replied, “No, Cora, they know you’re a Hawthorne.”
He pulled back on the reins, Salem stopped but I felt my brows draw together.
“What does that mean?” I asked but he didn’t answer.
He swung his leg around, dismounted with practiced ease then his hands spanned my waist and he pulled me down and set me between him and Salem.
Close between him and Salem.
Then he tipped his chin down, caught my eyes in the bright lights of the gaily lit lanterns and muttered, “Right, your game.”
My previously light heart sunk like a rock.
I wasn’t convincing him.
Damn.
“Tor,” I whispered but said no more when his big hand came up and curled warm around my neck.
“It means, love, that you’re mine and what’s mine is part of me and I’m royalty.”
My body jolted and my voice was a muted shriek when I cried, “What?”
“Quiet,” he clipped, not releasing my eyes.
I got up to my toes and whispered, “You’re royalty?”
“Yes.”
“Royalty,” I repeated, just to confirm.
“Yes,” he forced out through his teeth.
“Honest to God, blue blood royalty?” I kept at it, not taking it in.
His brows shot together as he replied, “Gods, woman, my blood’s red just like yours.”
“You know what I mean,” I returned on a hiss, going further up on my toes and my fingers curling into his shirt to keep myself from toppling over at my precarious position and at the shock of his news.
“No, I don’t.”
Shit. They didn’t have the term blue blood here either.
All right. Moving on.
“What are you? A baron? A duke?”
“A prince.”
A prince!
“What?” I shouted.
His fingers at my neck squeezed and his face got to within an inch from mine. “Woman, quiet.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Can we not do this?”
“You’re a prince?”
He looked over my head. “I see we’re going to do this.”
I shook my head in shock and disbelief while chanting, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again.
“Cora.”
“Oh my God.”
“Cora.”
“Oh my God!”
“Cora,” he clipped, “stop saying that or I’ll kiss you quiet.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“Get hold of yourself,” he ordered.
I stared up at him. Then I asked, “Your father is the king?”
“Yes, love, that’s what being a prince means,” he answered with waning patience.
“Holy crap,” I whispered.
“Cora –”
“So, uh… where are you in line to the throne?”
“First.”
“Holy crap!” My voice was rising again just as my body went solid and his fingers tightened at my neck.
“Cora, damn it to hell,” he bit out.
I sucked in breath then I whispered, “First in line?”
“Yes,” he gritted.
“Wow,” I breathed.
“Are you done?” he asked.
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
He glared at me. Then he muttered, “I see you’re not done.”
I pulled the bunched fabric of his shirt in my fists back and then slammed them against his chest. “Tell me.”
“Dash, the second son, Orlando, the third. Now are we done?”
“Those are your brothers?” I asked in shock.
“Yes.”
“You look nothing alike.”
“Three different mothers.”
“Holy crap!” I cried.
“Woman,” he clipped.
“Right, right.” I glanced around to see eyes on us, a number of them. In fact, we were drawing a crowd. Then again, he was the future freaking king, for God’s sake. “Sorry,” I whispered when I looked back at him.
“Finished?” he asked.
“Um… for now,” I answered.
He looked over my head again and muttered, “Gods, save me.”
Then he let me go, grabbed my hand and guided me into a building with a wooded sign jutting out of it that had a painting of the very village we were in on it over which it said, “The Riverside Rory”.
I let him do this and let him seat us at a table by the window and kind of let the proprietress fawn over us and let him order for me and took a sip of the crisp, cool, pale amber fluid that was set before me (which tasted vaguely of apples and strongly of alcohol) and I did all of this without word because the only thought in my head was, Whoa, I’m married to a prince.
I snapped out of it when something hit me and I focused on him to see he was watching me. Then I leaned across the small, clean wooden table toward him.
“Does this mean I’m a princess?” I asked.
He stared at me looking annoyed for a second then he sat back and sighed, “That’s what usually happens when a woman marries a prince.”
I sat back and looked dazedly out of the multi-diamond-paned, wavy-glassed window, mumbling, “Oh my God, I’m a princess.”
“Gods, that you would have granted me this boon when she wed me and with it gave me one night of this hot, greedy tart rather than the cold, selfish fish you gave me,” he muttered, my eyes moved to him and I saw he was speaking to the ceiling in audible prayer.
But his words penetrated so I leaned across the table again and asked, “What did you just say?”