Something moved across Azrin’s face then, and she let the words trail away.

“He has announced that he is an old man, and has only the weapons to fight one battle left in him,” he said. Kiara felt frozen in place, and she didn’t understand it. It was something to do with the way he was looking at her, the set to his jaw, that made her … nervous. Much too nervous. “He doesn’t think he can care for the kingdom and for himself, not now. Not the way he did the last time.”

“Whatever he needs to do to beat it,” Kiara said immediately. Staunchly. “And whatever we need to do to help him.”

The silence seemed to stretch taut between them.

“He is stepping aside, Kiara,” Azrin said. Almost gently, yet with that steel beneath that made a kind of panic curl into something thick and hot in her belly. “Retiring.”

For a moment, she didn’t know what he meant.

“Of course,” she said, when his meaning penetrated. “It will be good practice for you to take the throne while he recovers, won’t it?”

“No.” Again, that voice. His eyes so hard on hers. As if she was letting him down—had already done so—and she didn’t know how that could have happened without her knowing it. Without her meaning to do it. She locked her knees beneath her, afraid, suddenly, that they might tremble and betray the full scope of her agitation.

“No?” she echoed. “It won’t be good practice?”

“It won’t be temporary. He is stepping aside for good.”

She blinked. He waited. Something inside her seemed to go terribly still. As if she could not comprehend what he was telling her. But she did.

“That means—” She stopped herself. She had the urge to laugh then, but knew, somehow, that she did not dare. That he would not forgive her if she did, not now. She shook her head.

“It means I will be the new king of Khatan in six short weeks,” Azrin said in that strong, sure voice, as if that hardness was a part of him now, as if it was part of who he was becoming. As if it was a necessary precursor to the throne.

“Six weeks?” Kiara did laugh then, slightly. Her voice seemed too high, too uncertain. “I’d hardly got used to you being a prince over five years of marriage. I can’t get my head around you being king in a little more than a month!”

She thought he might smile at that, but his mouth remained that flat, stern line. His eyes were the coldest she’d ever seen them. She felt, again, as if she’d been thrown neck deep into something that she ought to understand, but didn’t.

“You don’t have to get your head around it,” he said with a kind of distant formality that made her tense up in response. “I’ve been getting my head around becoming king my whole life. This was always going to happen—it’s just happening a bit more quickly than I’d originally anticipated.”

Pull yourself together, Kiara ordered herself then, suddenly aware that she was standing stock still in the middle of the bathroom floor, staring at him as if he’d transformed into some kind of monster before her very eyes. Hardly the way a good, supportive spouse should behave at such a time.

She imagined there was no one in the world who wouldn’t feel out of their depth at a moment like this. Thrones! Kings! But this was her husband. This was real. She could sort out her own feelings later. In private. She walked over to him, rising on her toes to press a kiss against his hard jaw.

“This can’t be easy,” she said softly. “But I love you. We’ll figure it out.”

“I suspect he must be sicker than he wishes to let on,” Azrin said, his voice gruff. “He always promised he would die before he abdicated.” He let out a sound that was not quite a laugh. “But then, he took the throne when he was all of nineteen. There was only one way to hold it. He came by his ruthlessness honestly.”

She kissed him again, determined to ignore that tension simmering in him and all around them. She knew that Azrin’s relationship with his father had never been easy. That the king had never been pleased with the way the kingdom viewed Azrin as some kind of savior-in-waiting. Azrin had always said that if his father had only managed to have another son, Azrin would never have remained his heir. But he hadn’t.

This is real, she told herself again.

“You can do this,” she said. “You’ve been preparing for years. You’re ready.”

“Yes, Kiara. I’m ready,” he said quietly, his eyes again too dark, his mouth too grim.

Something gripped her then, some kind of terror, but she shoved it aside, annoyed with herself. Again. Was she really so self-involved? She could only stare up at him as he ran a hand over the back of her head, smoothing down her wet hair, gently tipping her head back to gaze at him more fully.

Azrin’s mouth curved slightly then, though it was in no way a smile, the way she wanted it to be. His gaze seared into hers, and she was afraid, suddenly, of the things he might see there.

“But are you?” he asked.

IT WAS a question her own mother echoed a week later when Kiara was back at the winery, trying to handle her responsibilities in one part of her life so she could go to Khatan and do her duty in the other part.

She’d assured Azrin she was ready and willing to do it. Eager, even. She’d been so earnest she’d nearly convinced herself.

Nearly.

“Are you honestly prepared to be a queen, Kiara?” her mother asked coolly, as if she’d looked inside and managed to articulate all the dark and unpleasant things Kiara was pretending she didn’t feel. “This isn’t a game, you know. Khatan’s monarchy is not ornamental.”

Kiara forced herself to silently count to ten, sitting there in her mother’s pretty office with the breathtaking view out across the Frederick vineyards, green and healthy-looking in the afternoon light—not that she could concentrate on that now, though the view usually calmed her down. She had to keep herself from succumbing to the temper she knew her mother would view as a weakness. And, worse, as a confirmation.

Besides, she was all too aware that the temper was just a camouflage for the guilt that lay beneath. A lifetime of guilt, because she knew she was the reason her mother had dedicated her life to this place, these vineyards, after Kiara’s father had died. Without Kiara, who knew what Diana might have done with her life?

Was it any wonder that Kiara was in no rush to have any babies herself?

One, two, three …

She eyed her mother across the wide expanse of Diana’s always-neat desk, seeing far too much of herself in the older woman. As ever. It was like looking into some version of her future, much as she preferred to deny it to herself. The same narrow shoulders and long-legged frame. The same way of holding themselves, though Kiara knew she would never have her mother’s innate elegance. That was all Diana.

Kiara was the only one who had seen beneath her mother’s polished exterior. She was the only one who knew what it had cost Diana to give up so much for this place. For Kiara. For the legacy she thought Kiara’s father would have wanted to give her himself, if he could have done.

Five, six, seven …

Diana had taken over the Frederick wine business with more determination than skill after her husband’s early death, and had ushered it into its current state of prominence by the force of her will alone. She’d hardly been around at all during Kiara’s formative years, leaving the day to day raising of her daughter to Kiara’s late grandmother, Diana’s mother-in-law. And yet none of that prevented Diana from being far too opinionated about the choices she thought Kiara should have made. And judgmental about the ones Kiara actually had made.

Meaning, her mother did not approve of Azrin. At all. Of what he represented, as she liked to put it. She thought that Kiara should have married that nice Harry Thompson who’d been her first boyfriend, whose family was also deeply entrenched in the Barossa Valley—and who could, she had always maintained, understand Kiara in a way Azrin never would.