Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, but he heard her clearly. “I do,” she whispered on the edge of tears. “I always will.”
Later he would marvel at how easy she had made it for him. Later he would wonder why she still loved him after he’d caused her so much pain and humiliation. Later he would be awed and humbled that she still trusted him so completely. For now all he could do was be grateful.
“Then come back to Colorado with me. Marry me. Build a life with me. Teach me—” He swallowed hard. “Teach me how not to be so afraid of losing the most precious thing in my life I make it happen.” His voice dropped a notch. “And then...when you’re ready...let me give you children we will both love and cherish the way children should be loved and cherished. The way I love and cherish you. Always. In all ways. I swear I will never again give you cause to regret loving me.”
“Yes,” she said, raising her face to gaze into his eyes. Her green eyes were alight with the blazing fervency of her love. “Oh, yes.”
* * *
King Andre Alexei IV stood on his private balcony overlooking the formal gardens that encircled the palace, watching as his beloved sister walked in the moonlight arm in arm with the man she loved along one of the winding, snow-dusted pathways. The twinkling lights of the sleeping city of his birthplace, Drago, shone in the distance, lights that didn’t dim the silvery starlight from above.
She is free, he told himself thankfully. Mara is finally free after all these years. I did it. I brought her out of the darkness into the light just as the first Andre Alexei did with his beloved Eleonora. But not alone—I could not have done it without his help. I could not have done it without the help of a man who by his own words is an American bastard who does not even know his father’s name.
He had told McKinnon no more than the truth that afternoon—he had deliberately engineered this by sending Mara to America, praying he was doing the right thing. And for once God had answered his prayers. Mara was finally free of the past, finally free of the malignant shadow cast by their father.
A touch of bitterness crept in as the king wondered what it would take to free himself in the same way. Wondered if his one-time threat to his father would be realized after all—that the unbroken line of Marianescus ruling Zakhar for over five hundred years would be broken. Wondered if he would ever have a son to follow in his footsteps as son had followed father since the first Andre Alexei had ruled Zakhar in the sixteenth century. Must I pay forever for one mistake?
His expression settled into determined lines. No, he resolved. Now that Mara is free, I am free to seek my own salvation—or my own hell. Everything is ready. Everything is in place. The waiting is over. Now I will act.
He breathed deeply, letting the strain bleed out of his muscles, and cast one last lingering glance at the lovers below him before walking back through the French doors of his balcony and closing them firmly behind him. He wasn’t there to see as Mara and Trace stopped abruptly, turned toward each other, and their two shadows blended into one.
Epilogue
Mara thundered across the open Colorado landscape on Suleiman’s back, then took the fence flying, not slackening her pace for an instant. The sound of another horse just behind her made her bend over Suleiman’s neck and urge him to even greater speed. “Come on, boy!” she whispered in Zakharan, though she knew he couldn’t hear her, not at this speed. The cool October wind slashed across her cheekbones—if she wasn’t wearing her riding helmet her hair would be flying wildly, blinding her.
Another fence loomed, and she threw her heart over it mere seconds before Suleiman took it in his powerful stride. Then she was pounding along the home stretch. Now the other horse—her wedding gift to Trace—was drawing closer, until the two horses were neck and neck, first one then the other in the lead. Half a furlong, she thought with a fraction of her brain as she lay herself almost flat against Suleiman’s neck and pressed her heels into his sides. Faster. Faster!
One last fence, which Suleiman and the other horse sailed over side by side, and then both riders were pulling up sharply as the stables came into view. Trace’s arm snagged her body as soon as they stopped, pulling her close for his fierce kiss. Mara’s heart had already been pounding from exertion, but now it kicked into overdrive as she gave him back kiss for kiss.
“You witch,” he whispered breathlessly in Zakharan between kisses. “God, you scare the hell out of me every time you ride Suleiman that way. But somehow you always come off unharmed.”