He didn’t miss the innuendo, but his ego required her to say it aloud.

“Meaning...me?”

She drew her knees up under her chin, her cotton flowered sundress bunching and slipping under the afghan that protected her bare legs from the drafty room, and wrapped her arms around her shins. “Yes,” she murmured to her knees. Then, darker, “Especially you.”

He waited a moment for more, but she remained as she was, lowered eyes and silence and a veil of hair across her face.

“I didn’t kill Morgan,” he finally said.

“I heard,” she said. Her fingers dug deep into her upper arms again. “But you didn’t let her go either.”

Was that condemnation in her soft tone? A fleeting distaste in her half-hidden expression?

“Her betrayal has cost us a great deal, Jenna. Some of our finest men have been lost, our defenses have been breached. Our protected existence is over. Who knows what the future holds for us. And you—”

He stopped himself abruptly. When he spoke again his voice was very low. “She almost cost you your life. What would you have me do?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” she said quietly and looked up at him. “And to be totally honest...I don’t know.” Her eyes were clear and almost colorless in the light. He could not read her expression. “But I made a promise...a promise I have to keep. Somehow.”

She stopped speaking and he frowned at her, waiting. She said nothing more, only glanced up at him, expressionless.

Doe eyes raked his face and then his chest, where a white bandage peeked above the open collar of his shirt.

“You’re injured,” she murmured.

He gave her a very dry smile. “I’ll live, I’m afraid. It wasn’t very deep, nothing like...” His smile slowly faded. His jaw began to work and he looked away from her, to the petals crushed in his fist. He opened his hand and they tumbled slowly to the floor.

“How is Daria?” she asked softly, after a time. “Christian told me she’s doing well, better than could be expected but...” She swallowed and dropped her lashes. Her arms tightened around her legs. “She looked so bad. I thought he must be trying to cheer me up with a little finessing of the facts.”

Leander raised his gaze to her face. She had her lower lip caught between her teeth and rocked, very slowly, in the chair.

“It’s too early to tell. The probability of permanent injury is there, the doctor tells me. And,” he added, sharper than he intended, “there will be scars aplenty.”

She pressed a pale hand over her eyes. “God. If only I had gotten there sooner,” she whispered. “It took me so long to find her, nearly all day. If I had gotten there faster...” She drew a ragged breath and shook her head. She squeezed her eyes together. A line of tears beaded her lashes. She swiped them away with the back of her fingers.

“Jenna,” Leander said, his voice roughened. “It’s not your fault. If you hadn’t found her, if you hadn’t gone looking for her, she’d be dead. What you did, back there...”

He lost the words.

Staring at her now, so beautiful and fragile and visibly despondent, twilight sliding like a lover’s touch across her face, sent a terrible ache through his body, a fierce burning through his lungs that left him stunned and breathless. He tried to inhale, he tried to catch his breath, but he couldn’t seem to manage it.

How long did he have? How many more days or hours or minutes until she left him behind with a gaping hole in his chest where his heart used to be?

The thought of living without her was like acid in his throat.

“So...” She drew in a long breath, gathered herself, and sat up straighter in the chair, folding her hands primly together in her lap. She gazed down at her hands and spoke in a small, quiet voice. “When are you going to do it?”

The hopelessness in her voice snapped him back to reality. His eyebrows ruched.

“Do what?”

She sent him a dark, resigned look. “Imprison me.”

He stared at her, aghast.

“With Morgan,” she explained, when he still didn’t speak.

“Who...why...what?” he sputtered.

She waved a pale hand in the air in front of her face, weakly dismissive. “You don’t have to put on an act for me, Leander.” She sighed. “I know you think I helped Morgan. You accused me of it, that day in front of the Assembly. On top of that, I ran away—again—and broke the Law—again. That’s your job, isn’t it? Enforce the Law? Protect the colony?” She stared at him, her gaze grim and unflinching. “Punish the enemy?”

“Jenna,” Leander said, choked, his eyes full of shock. His face had gone very pale. He knelt down on the floor in front of her and grasped her hands, pulled them into his. “How could you ever think such a thing? How could you ever think I would hurt you?”

“Because you”—she began slowly, blinking—“you said it yourself, in the Assembly meeting that day. You said—”

“I asked if you had anything to tell me,” he broke in before she could finish. “You hate bullies, remember? I hoped you would stop hiding from me, stop keeping secrets. I was just giving you a chance to tell me yourself. You were always so stubborn, always so defiant. I wasn’t going to force you into anything, not again, not when you should have just admitted to me then and there what I already knew—”

“What you already knew?”

She pulled her hands out of his grasp and stood up. The afghan pooled in blocks of primary color around her feet. She stepped over it, crossed to the bed, and sat down on the edge of the mattress with her back, rigid, to him.

Her voice came strange and unsteady across the room. “What is that supposed to mean? What exactly is it that you already knew?”

He came to his feet. His heart pounded against his ribs. “What you are. Who you are.”

She turned her head a fraction of an inch and he caught a glimpse of her profile. Pinched lips, flushed cheeks, long, downswept lashes. Fingers clenched into the glossy fur coverlet.

“And who might that be, Leander?” she said past stiff lips.

He crossed to her in slow, measured steps, never taking his gaze from her face. The scent of roses and her was warm in his nose, the glow of the sunset flooded the room, lighting her hair to fire. He stopped just in front of her and put a finger under her chin. Her head came up.

She lifted her eyes and a sunbeam fell across her face. It illuminated her eyes to a fierce, brilliant green, shining and lucent like an emerald held to the light.

“Well...” she whispered. “Who am I?”

“You are Queen of the Ikati,” he murmured, holding her gaze. “My Queen. My heart and soul...my true love.”

Her lips parted. She didn’t blink. She said nothing.

“You are the woman I’ve waited for my entire life, the woman who makes me want to be a better man, who makes me think I have a chance to be the man I’ve always wanted to be.”

He sank down next to her on the mattress, framed her face in his hands, turned her body to his. “You are everything I’ve ever wanted, and the thought that you’re going to leave—that you’re only waiting until you’re well enough—makes me want to die.”

She stared at him, openmouthed, pale as a sheet. The fire popped and sputtered. A log fell through the grate. Somewhere outside, a nightingale began to sing.

“Well,” she finally managed, blinking away tears, “and here I thought leaving wasn’t an option.” She dropped her gaze, but he caught the tiny smile that crossed her lips, fleet and wry.

“On the contrary.” He allowed himself a smile to match hers. “The Queen is allowed quite an astonishing array of liberties.” He gently lifted her wrist to his lips, then spread her hand against his cheek.

She pressed the smile from her mouth. “There’s that word again,” she mused, her eyes still downcast. “I don’t think I want that title.” She paused. “I definitely don’t deserve that title.”