But Max didn’t know what to do with radio silence from Dani. It was turning him into a captive animal pacing a too-small cage. He had told her about his fears and his secret ambitions. He had told her about the pain he had never thought to try to put into words. He had looked at her and allowed a blade made of ruthlessness and tenderness in equal measures to pierce him.

And now she was gone, and he was still bleeding.

What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been, clearly. He’d just been so swept off his feet.

His phone rang, and as it did every time, he jumped. Every call, every text notification, had him falling over himself to see if it was her. And if not her, he hoped for his brother.

It was Marie, and he didn’t answer it. She was due back, so it made sense that she was calling, but he didn’t want to talk to her. She would have some version of tough love to lay on him, which ordinarily would have been fine—ordinally he might even have signed himself up for it—but Max really didn’t want to start up some kind of childish “Don’t tell Leo I said this, because he might tell Dani” chain.

He wanted his brother.

The phone rang again, startling a small smile out of him. Finally. He fumbled to answer it. “Are you back?” Max was still in the hotel in Innsbruck. Every day he woke up and told himself today was the day he’d go home. And every afternoon before checkout, he called the front desk and extended his reservation. Going home to Riems felt like too much. That last disastrous dinner aside, he and Dani had had such a wonderful time there. He didn’t know how to go up to the attic and find her not there.

“I’m on the way home,” Seb said. “We just landed in Zurich.”

“Is Torkel driving you?” His own situation aside, Max wanted to meet Torkel outside the context of the palace.

“No. We landed with no leeway before he had to go back to work, so I ordered a car.”

“Did you have a good time?”

Max could practically hear Seb smile in response to his question. Good. At least someone was happy.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch. We were . . . off the grid this past week.”

“I wager you were.”

“How did it go with Daniela?”

“I asked her to marry me and she said no and ran away and now she’s not talking to me.”

“What? Max! Why would you do that?”