She must know it was him, because she only stood and waited. He knew every inch of her so well that though he saw naught but her cloak, he knew her hand had gone to the weapon at her belt and now eased away from it. Her breath was held as he came toward her.

When he stood beside her, an arm’s length away, he held out her blade. She looked down at it, but did not take it.

“I dreamed of you here,” he said to the tender curve of her lashes, the gentle flush in her cheek. “All my brothers and me, facing you. You were to choose one of us to be king, and I was filled with such a dread that I woke.”

She looked up at him, blue eyes roaming over his face like she was learning it anew. The beauty of her struck him again, but it affected him far less than the simple fact of her nearness. Close enough to touch, when he had thought never to see her again.

“It is not mine to choose who rules here,” she said, answering him in his language, and dropped her eyes.

“Nay, that choice is not yours.” He reached out and took her forearm, slipping the knife into the brace. “Yet the blade is yours.”

His hand held her wrist, thumb over her speeding pulse. There was a calm resolve in her, a certainty at the center of her unease. She waited to see what he would do, knowing she had slain men in the shadow of his keep, not regretting it at all though it may mean her own death.

How poor a prince she must think him, if she believed for one instant that this was why he sought her.

“You would have given him mercy,” she said.

He did not deny it. He only set his thumb over the warmth of her pulse and remembered his first sight of her. “Will you always save me, Nan?”

Her fingers uncurled, knuckles brushing loosely against the inside of his wrist – and then moved against his skin with a purpose, a tiny caress.

“If I could.”

It was barely a whisper. He watched her eyes press closed, just for a moment, savoring the touch. Then she lifted her hand away and turned, reaching to pull her hood up, stepping away as though she would leave now, already, with so few words.

“Stay.” His voice too was barely above a whisper, because to watch her walk away closed his throat. But she heard him and halted, her hands still gripping the hood. “I have renounced my betrothal. I will marry no one but you.”

She did not move for a long moment. There was no expression on her face, only a numb stillness. “You cannot renounce it.”

“I can. I have.”