He cupped her cheek with his free hand. “We could leave,” he said. “Go anywhere on the continent. We’ll make a new life.”

That he could do. He might not be able to give her a palace, but the riskiest hunters could name their price. He’d get her as close to a palace as was possible in the wildlands. Skies, the two of them together, they could carve out their own territory to protect. Who needed Stormlings at all?

She was already shaking her head. “I cannot do that. Look at what’s happened in my absence. My mother is ill, the city is under attack, and a ruthless family has taken over my kingdom.”

The words hung in silence between them. Her kingdom. He had simply been a reprieve from this life, this place. He had been a pause, the same as she had asked for tonight.

“And how, exactly, do you plan on regaining your kingdom?” he asked, his stomach lurching painfully. “Will you marry the prince?”

“No,” she insisted, horrified.

“You should,” he answered, bile rising in his throat. “It’s the simplest way to make things right.”

“If I cared about simple, I would not have staged my own kidnapping and run away with you.”

Skies above, he had forgotten that part of the princess’s story completely. The soldiers they had encountered in the wildlands had said she was kidnapped. What would have happened to his crew if she had been discovered then? What would happen to them if she was discovered now?

He pulled away from her, crossing the room to put distance between them as his temper flared to life. “Do you have any idea how much danger you’ve brought on the rest of us? I told you what the Lockes did to my sister. They took a child to the gallows for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What do you think they will do to the people who took away the prince’s intended bride?”

Her bright blue eyes were covered in a sheen of tears as she answered, “You did not take me away. I took myself.”

“That won’t matter much when there’s a noose around our necks.”

This was his fault. It was his responsibility to protect his crew. Sly had told him, told everyone that there was something not right about Roar’s story. But he’d been too blinded by what he felt for her.

“I know,” she whispered, a single broken sob cracking through. “I know how selfish I have been. But I promise I would never let that happen.”

“Are you paying attention, Aurora? This isn’t the home you left. Things have changed. You can’t just waltz back in and demand your crown back, not unless you plan to marry to do it.”

“There are other ways. Yesterday, I saw an old member of my personal guard. I followed him.”