Of Heirs and Havoc ✔️ | Of Crimes and Crowns Book 2

four: of shipwrecks and sorrow

"Why would you do such a thing?" Victoria stared her brother down as he shooed the maid out of his bed chamber and folded a pair of discarded trousers, placing them calmly into the trunk. "Why would you bring me with you to this—this deserted island, to meet this exiled prince? Why would you go at all? Perhaps the man doesn't want to be brought back! Perhaps he is happy where he is, away from the pressures of the crown!"

"Because I care about you, Vicki." He remained infuriatingly levelheaded as he spoke, pushing the trunk away from his lithe form and facing her. "Because this—you being angry, on the verge of throwing things at me—is the most alive I have seen you in months. Because I stay up late, terrified that one morning I will wake up, and you won't. That you will choose not to, or that you will give up. And I don't know how else to help you, except to—"

"To bring me away from everyone and everything I know and love?" She stripped off her gloves, and tossed them in his face. He caught them with little difficulty. "Was that your plan to help me, without my consent? Without a care for what I might want?"

"I—"

"Or did you simply believe that because I am in a state, I am unable to make my own decisions?"

Blake threw his hands in the air, moved at last. "If you did not want to go, you ought to have spoken up when I made the decision, not lambasted me when it is too late to change."

Victoria gripped the post of Blake's bed, staring at him without seeing his face. Bile rose in her throat. The gun, the splatters of blood, the shackles, the dank prison she'd been chained in...

She was trapped, trapped agin in that dark space for crimes she had not committed...

Crimes her brother had carried out against her jailor...

She could not breathe... the musty walls pressed in, and then there was Harold with the pistol, firing it into her chest...

She watched her heart pump its last beats, as she pulled it out of her chest with hardly any pain at all...

"Victoria!" Blake caught her, arms warm and solid and his embrace so traitorously welcome. "Vicki—"

"Don't," she choked. Tears burned in the corners of her eyes. "Please."

Arguing with him had made her feel herself again. Fighting for anything, even a cause she didn't believe in, made her feel less like this broken, limping Victoria and more like the goddess of victory she had been named after. Triumphant, whole, alive.

"What did I do?" He held her at arm's length, eyes probing her for injury, for something he could solve. Something he could fix—she was scared to tell him she was unsolvable. "Victoria?"

"I've been blaming you," she murmured. "For something that was not your fault."

"For Harold? For the kidnapping?" His thumb brushed over her shoulder.
"I have blamed myself many a night. I still do. If you don't want to go with me—if you can never forgive me, I will leave you in Arlea, Victoria."

All she heard was I will leave you. But she could not stomach that either—could not bear the thought of Blake abandoning her, even if she could neither stomach his unintended betrayal. "Please don't," she repeated. "I can—I will bear it. I will endure it."

"I'm your brother," he said, the words disintegrating as he spoke them. "Not a burden you have to carry, not a cross for you to bear. I should not cause you any more pain than you already have."

"But I don't—" she shook her head. "I can't bear it without you."

"Is there anything I can do?" His eyes—darker mirrors of her own—were desperate, seeking, searching for answers. "Anything at all?"

She shut her eyes, and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder. "Do not leave me."

"Alright." His words were gentle, his touch firm. "I promise, as long as I live, I will not leave you."

"Thank you." Then she pushed him away. "Come on. Let's continue packing."

His green gaze came alight. "You want to come with me?"

"You're my brother," she said, as happily as she could. "No matter what, even society dictates that my place is at your side. I do need a chaperone, don't you think?"

"You can take care of yourself." His smile was not patronizing. "But I would like to help you stand again, when you fall."

Those words warmed her heart. "Just for that, I'll be sure to slide down the banister."