[Daniel’s POV]
The security briefing blurs before my eyes. I've read the same paragraph four times and retained nothing.
Coronation protocols. Threat assessments. Guard rotations requiring my signature. Words swim across the page like drowning things, and I cannot make myself care about any of them.
Christina occupies my thoughts instead. The way she looked standing in her chambers yesterday, one hand pressed over her heart. The fire in her grey eyes when she argued with me about the guest list.
The way my name sounds in her mouth. Low and warm, like she's testing its weight.
I push back from my desk, disgusted with myself. I'm forty years old. I've served this crown for two decades. I've maintained professional boundaries through proxy-wars, scandals, political upheavals of every conceivable variety.
And now I'm undone by a nineteen-year-old girl with storm-colored eyes and a spine made of steel.
The betrayal stings on multiple fronts. Her grandmother trusted me. Asked me to protect Christina, guide her, ensure her safety in a world of wolves. She did not ask me to develop feelings like some lovesick schoolboy incapable of basic professionalism.
Christina is vulnerable—even if she'd gut anyone who called her that. She's lost everything and gained everything in the span of a week. She needs stability, not complications.
The knock at my study door makes me straighten instinctively. "Come in."
Christina appears in the doorway, and my chest does something inconvenient. She's carrying two paper cups from that dreadful coffee shop I showed her—the one her grandmother used to escape to.
It's become our ritual now. The worse the day, the worse the coffee. Tonight must have been catastrophic, because she's brought the large sizes.
"Brought provisions." She kicks the door shut with her heel. "The barista looked personally wounded when I ordered, by the way. I think you've traumatized him permanently."
"I simply mentioned that their espresso tasted like burnt motor oil." I accept the cup she offers, our fingers brushing briefly. "Factual observations shouldn't cause lasting psychological damage to grown adults."
"You said it in front of six customers. On a Tuesday morning. While he was holding a very sharp knife."
"Tuesdays deserve honesty. And that knife was for pastries."
She snorts and claims the leather chair by the fireplace—the one my ex-wife described as hideous and begged me to discard. I'd kept it purely out of spite, and now Christina has declared it hers.
"This chair," she said when I told her, settling into the worn cushions, "is the most comfortable piece of furniture in the entire palace. Your ex-wife had terrible taste."
"In furniture and husbands, apparently."
My ex-wife would be appalled by this entire situation. Which makes me enjoy it unreasonably.
"Long day?" I ask, watching her curl into the leather.
"Endless." She pulls her feet up beneath her, looking smaller than she should. "Protocol sessions. Advisors explaining constitutional law like I'm a particularly slow child. Then three hours with Margaret teaching me how to smile without looking deranged."
"Margaret means well."
"Margaret thinks I have too many teeth. She actually counted them."
The observation startles a laugh out of me. Christina grins, and for a moment, something loosens between us. The tension of yesterday's argument dissolves like morning fog.
Then I notice the shadows under her eyes. The careful way she moves—stiff, guarded, like she's protecting something. The pallor beneath her skin that wasn't there a week ago.
Something is wrong beyond the obvious stress.
I don't push. Instead, I pour tea from the pot I always keep ready—a habit her grandmother instilled decades ago—and slide the cup across the side table toward her. The ritual of it calms us both.
"You don't have to tell me," I say quietly. "But if you want to, I'm listening."
Silence stretches between us. The fire crackles in the hearth. Christina stares into her teacup like it contains prophecy rather than Earl Grey.
"I'm terrified," she says finally, her voice small. "Not of the throne—I can handle the throne. I think. It's... something else. Something I can't name."
"Unnameable fears are the worst kind. They're terrible conversationalists. Never buy their share of drinks."
A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "How do you do it? Stay so calm when everything is chaos?"
"Practice. Also, I've already made every possible mistake known to man. There's nothing left to fear." I settle into my chair across from her, coffee forgotten. "My first year advising your grandmother, I nearly caused a diplomatic incident by insulting a foreign ambassador's wife."
"What did you do?"
"I implied her hat looked like a diseased peacock attempting flight." I sip my terrible coffee. "In my defense, it truly did. The feathers were molting."
Christina's laugh is small but real. I continue, because her smile makes something ache behind my ribs.
"I was young. Arrogant. Convinced my intelligence excused any rudeness I inflicted." I stare into the fire. "Your grandmother threw a biography at my head. Told me being right means nothing if I couldn't be kind about it."
"She threw a book at you?"
"A substantial biography. Nearly eight hundred pages. She had excellent aim for a woman of sixty."
Christina laughs again—really laughs this time, the sound filling the study like unexpected music. The tension in her shoulders releases visibly.
"I had a marriage," I say quietly. "Years ago. It collapsed because I chose duty over presence. Over and over, I chose work instead of showing up when it mattered."
Her laughter fades to something softer. More attentive. "What happened?"
"She left. Correctly." The admission costs something, even now. "I spent years rebuilding my reputation, my career, myself. Learning that competence without humanity is just efficient emptiness."
"Do you regret it?"
"Every day. Every single day." I meet her eyes. "But regret teaches, if you let it. I'm a better man for failing catastrophically."
"That's oddly comforting."
"I specialize in odd comfort. It's my only marketable skill at this point."
She smiles—a real one, reaching her grey eyes and warming them. The firelight catches the angles of her face, and my breath catches with it.
The conversation has turned intimate without becoming inappropriate. We sit in comfortable silence, the weight of shared vulnerability settling around us like a blanket neither of us expected.
"I should go," Christina says eventually. She unfolds from the leather chair, and I rise with her out of instinct. "Early meetings tomorrow. Margaret wants to review my curtsy again. Apparently my knees bend wrong."
"Your curtsy is perfectly adequate."
"Margaret disagrees quite strongly."
She pauses at the door, turning back. "Daniel? Thank you. For... this. For not pushing."
"Always."
The word comes out rougher than intended. Something shifts in her expression—recognition, perhaps. Or curiosity. Or something I shouldn't let myself hope for.
Then she's gone, the door closing softly behind her.
I stand alone in my study, staring at the space she occupied. Her teacup sits abandoned on the side table. The leather chair still holds the impression of her body.
The truth I've been avoiding settles into my bones with terrible finality.
I'm falling for my dead queen's granddaughter. This girl half my age, fragile and formidable in equal measure, who looked at me tonight like I might be worth trusting.
I should distance myself. Should maintain professional boundaries. Should remember that I'm supposed to be her protector, not her—
Not her anything.
I pour whiskey and don't drink it. The fire burns lower.
This cannot end well. I know that with absolute certainty.
But for the first time in twenty years, I'm not sure I care.
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