Page 64 of Mistaken as His Royal Bride

Ari might have smiled at the notion that princesses could just be found—if he’d felt remotely inclined to smile. But right now he was done with princesses.

‘What happened between you and Princess Laia?’ he asked.

Dax avoided his eye. Guilty.

Ari said wearily, ‘It’s not as if I can’t put two and two together, Dax. I had no hold over her. It was an ancient agreement. I barely knew her.’

Dax looked at him. ‘I tried not to...but...’ he trailed off.

Ari could almost sympathise. They’d both been tied in knots by the Isla’Rosa Princesses.

He asked, ‘Did you know Laia was Maddi’s half-sister?’

Dax nodded and sat down on a chair, long legs sprawled out. ‘But I couldn’t get in touch with you. She threw my phone into the sea...’

Ari thought back to Maddi, throwing her phone out the window, and barked out a sudden laugh.

Dax leant forward. ‘What’s so funny? This is a disaster.’

Ari sobered. Dax was right. It wasn’t funny at all. And suddenly there was a weight such as he’d never felt before, settling in his gut and spreading up into his chest, tightening like a vice.

‘Maddi!’

Laia flew across her office and all but jumped into Maddi’s arms.

Maddi hugged her tight. Anything to avoid the awful emotion that threatened to spill over at any moment.

Laia pulled back and ran her hands all over Maddi, as if checking for broken bones. ‘Are you okay? Did he let you leave today or did you have to escape? I can’t believe he kept you there and made you pretend to be me—’

Maddi couldn’t let her go on. ‘Laia, it wasn’t like that. He found out almost straight away that I wasn’t you. But no one else knew. I agreed to slot into your engagement schedule because I thought that was the best way of letting you stay hidden. But the truth is...’

She moved out of Laia’s embrace and went to the window to try and collect herself.

‘Mads?’

She turned around. ‘The truth is that I fell for him. We...we were together.’

Laia paled. ‘Oh... Oh, wow. I didn’t expect that...but I guess it was pretty apparent.’

Maddi frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

Laia took her hand and led her over to the desk, where a laptop was open. Laia had clearly been looking at pictures of Maddi and Ari on their public engagements. There was the walkabout, and Ari leading her away with an indulgent smile as Maddi waved at the crowd, a huge grin on her face. And someone had taken a snap of him carrying her away from the garden party for frontline workers into the palace.

She blushed.

Laia said, ‘I thought he was going to keep you on Santanger as some sort of a threat. That he wouldn’t release you unless I agreed to the marriage. But he let you go...’

A knife sank into Maddi’s heart. ‘Yes, he let me go.’ She had to give him his due. ‘Laia, he knows your marriage is off the table. He realised a while ago that he’d done you a disservice in just assuming you’d marry him. He told me that you’d tried to talk to him years ago and that he all but ignored you.’

‘Oh, well...that’s good. Did he say anything about the peace agreement?’

Maddi nodded. ‘That he’s sure you can discuss it at some point.’

Laia’s eyes widened. ‘Wow! Maybe I didn’t give him enough credit.’

‘He never really forced me to stay there, Laia. I... I wanted to be there, as strange as it sounds.’ She looked at Laia sheepishly. ‘I enjoyed it...pretending to be you...as scary as it was. But it was starting to take a toll...not being me.’

Laia smiled wryly. ‘I can imagine.’