[Hunter’s POV]
The Valdren family archives smell like dust and buried secrets. I've spent three hours in this basement surrounded by records nobody has touched in decades. My back aches. My eyes burn. My sense of self-preservation screams at me to stop digging immediately.
I keep digging anyway.
The original goal was simple ammunition against the Montclairs. Something useful to pass along to Christina. Instead, I've stumbled into correspondence that makes my blood run cold.
Letters between someone using a Montclair cipher and someone in my mother's inner circle. Dated twenty years ago. Around the time Princess Clara died.
The handwriting on several responses looks disturbingly familiar.
I photograph everything with trembling hands. Cross-reference dates against what I know of the princess's final weeks. The timeline forms a pattern I desperately don't want to see.
This isn't political maneuvering. This is something far more sinister.
I send the meeting request through our established back channels. Urgent. In-person only. No explanation provided. Some information can't travel through text messages, no matter how secure the encryption claims to be.
Christina arrives at our usual location looking exhausted but alert. Pregnancy suits her in ways I try not to notice. The slight glow beneath the fatigue. The softness that's crept into her features.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she observes, settling into her chair with careful grace.
"Possibly several." I slide the folder across the table. "I found these in the family archives. Twenty years old. I wasn't looking for them."
She opens the folder. Starts reading.
Her face drains of color so completely I worry she might faint. Her hands begin trembling halfway through the first page. By the third page, she's gripping the documents hard enough to crease them permanently.
"These suggest—" Her voice cracks. She tries again. "The Montclairs were communicating with someone about security protocols. Palace security. My mother's security."
"Three days before she died," I confirm quietly. "Someone gave them information about her location. Her movements. The gaps in her protection."
"They killed her." The words come out hollow. Devastated. "They actually killed her."
"The evidence is circumstantial. Incomplete. But the implication is clear enough to anyone paying attention."
Christina stares at the papers like they might burst into flames if she concentrates hard enough. I watch grief and fury battle across her features in real time.
"Who's the contact?" she asks finally. "The person in your mother's circle."
"I don't know yet. I need more time to investigate properly."
"More time." She laughs bitterly. "We're two weeks from coronation. The Montclairs are already plotting against me. And now this."
"I'll find proof. Whatever it takes. However long it takes."
Her grey eyes lift to mine. The storm in them makes my chest ache with something I can't name.
"Why?" The question comes out raw. Vulnerable. Completely unguarded. "Why are you willing to destroy your own family for this? To expose a conspiracy that implicates people far more powerful than the Valdrens?"
The honest answer terrifies me. I give it anyway.
"Because they destroyed you first." My voice comes out rougher than intended. "Your mother. Your inheritance. Your entire life. They took everything from you before you could even understand what you were losing."
Christina doesn't respond. Just watches me with those devastating grey eyes.
"You deserved protection," I continue, the words spilling out. "From the Valdrens. From the Montclairs. From everyone who should have kept you safe and failed spectacularly. I was one of them. I failed you more than anyone."
"Hunter—"
"Watching you fight alone makes me want to tear down everyone who hurt you." The words pour out like a confession I've been holding for weeks. "Including myself. Especially myself. If destroying my family is the price of protecting you, I'll pay it gladly."
The silence that follows is suffocating.
Christina's expression shifts. The armor she wears like a second skin cracks completely. Something raw and unguarded breaks through—the girl beneath the queen, the woman beneath the warrior.
She reaches across the table. Her fingers touch my hand.
The contact burns like a brand pressed against my skin. Every nerve ending in my body fires simultaneously. I've touched her a thousand times before, but nothing has ever felt like this.
Before I can think, before either of us can think, she's kissing me.
It's brief. Fierce. Almost angry—like she's furious at herself for wanting it. Her mouth presses against mine with desperate intensity. I taste salt and need and something that feels terrifyingly like surrender.
I barely have time to respond before she wrenches away.
Her face cycles through shock, then horror, then fury—mostly directed at herself. She stumbles backward, chair scraping loudly against the floor. Her composure slams into place like castle gates during a siege.
"That didn't happen." Her voice shakes despite her rigid posture. "I'm your future queen, and you will forget that ever happened."
"Christina—"
"I have—I'm with Daniel." She backs toward the door, putting distance between us like I've become something dangerous. "This was nothing. A moment of weakness. Stress. Sleep deprivation. Pick whatever excuse works for you."
I know better than to push. I've learned that much, at least.
"Of course," I say. My voice sounds remarkably steady considering my heart is trying to escape through my ribcage. "Nothing happened. I don't know what you're referring to."
She nods once. Sharply. The queen has returned, armor firmly in place.
"The evidence." She gestures toward the forgotten folder on the table. "Keep investigating. Find proof. That's all I need from you."
"As you command, Your Highness."
The formality creates exactly the distance she wants. She takes it like a lifeline thrown to a drowning woman.
Christina leaves without another word. The door closes behind her with quiet finality.
I stand alone in the room, surrounded by evidence of conspiracy and murder, her taste still burning on my lips. My heart pounds against my ribs like something caged. My hands won't stop trembling.
Nothing, she called it.
I know better.
That kiss was not nothing. The way she looked at me before the armor returned—vulnerable, wanting, terrified of wanting—that was not nothing.
Whatever she tells herself, whatever she orders me to forget, I felt her response. Felt the moment she stopped fighting and simply wanted.
She chose Daniel. She's building a life with him. She's carrying my child while sleeping in another man's bed.
None of that changes what just happened between us.
I gather the documents mechanically. Evidence of old conspiracies. Proof that the Montclairs are far more dangerous than anyone realized.
Tomorrow I'll return to investigating. I'll dig deeper into my family's secrets. I'll find the proof Christina needs to destroy her enemies completely.
Tonight, I stand in an empty room with the ghost of her kiss burning on my mouth.
This changes nothing, I tell myself firmly.
This changes absolutely everything, my heart replies.
I've spent weeks accepting my role as informant. As protector from the shadows. As the father who forfeited his rights before knowing they existed.
Now I want more. Now I've tasted what more feels like.
And that, perhaps, is the cruelest complication of all.
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