him—a lot—and Tommy had finally answered and asked him for space. Tommy’s distance felt like the bottom falling out of Kris’s world.
“That’s his prerogative.” Frankie cast him an exasperated glance. “Stop trying to exploit my position. This is between you two.”
Frustration surged beneath his civility for the remainder of his meeting. Tommy hadn’t come to breakfast the past few mornings, and Kris had worked until late. Instead of hunting his brother down after-hours, prowling the palace for the kind of sheltered spaces Tommy preferred, he’d been obliged to play nice and dine with visiting dignitaries. Important in its own way, but he’d be led like a horse in a harness from one critical matter to the next if he didn’t plant his feet.
Tonight, his only duty was to his brother.
“A ride before the drinks reception, Your Highness?” Peter asked as Kris thrust himself from the drawing room. His guards bracketed the door, features composed in the face of his unconcealed temper.
“No.” The rider in him winced, longing to be on horseback at a gallop. Wind loud in his ears, eyes watering, lungs working like bellows. “No ride. No drinks reception. Just Tommy. Tell me where he is and don’t suggest I find him myself.”
Peter cleared his throat lightly. “He’s in the stables, Your Highness.”
“He’s—” Kris blinked, and softened fractionally. “You’re sure?”
“Totally sure,” Hanna said with a nod.
“Then let’s go.”
At the royal stables, Kris burst through the entrance in a glowering temper, and within moments, every groom and stable hand swiftly and silently exited through the rear doors. He’d never seen a mass exodus look so knowing.
Tommy was definitely here.
In the time it took Kris to swallow his impatience, Tommy had noted the quiet and poked his head out of a stall halfway up the stable. His hair was ruffled with work; the top few buttons of his plaid shirt were undone. His features shuttered when he saw Kris.
“Oh,” he said, and pulled back inside the stall.
Yeah. Oh. Hands balling, Kris strode up the aisle, scarcely noticing the horses in their loose boxes. The stable was huge and perfectly presented with a white high ceiling and pristine stalls. Large enough for the horses to stand or lie down, each stall was fitted with partitions that allowed them to see their companions but not engage through the white vertical bars of the stall guard. The sound of a latch snicked the silence and Kris lunged forward just in time to stop the sliding stall door from opening.
“Kris,” Tommy said, his crisp tone adding get out of my way.
“Tomas,” he said, his own tone adding not fucking likely.
The door was just below shoulder-height, the stall guard bars on top halting at their chins. They stood precisely at eye level, and Kris stared back at a face he’d never recognized as a reflection of his own. It didn’t matter that they were identical. Tommy used his features so differently that Kris hardly understood how people could mistake them. Tommy wore his sharp: his eyes razor-cut from all the books he’d read, his jaw and cheekbones honed by self-control, and his mouth perpetually hard, as if the hand of his own mind clamped over it.
“Mark isn’t here to handle this for us.” Kris’s voice was as unrelenting as the concrete underfoot. “We have to do it ourselves, and that means you need to listen to me.”
“Go on.” Tommy’s attention slid darkly to where Kris barred his retreat. “Since you’ve sweet-talked me into cooperating.”
Kris’s fingers tightened around the bars. “I’m sorry.”
Tommy held his stare without reaction. A sleek, sorrel quarter horse watched on curiously behind him.
“I am.” Regret was like a broken rib inside him—it throbbed with every movement. “I’m so sorry.”
Tommy swallowed, glancing to one side. “For what?”
“Assuming you weren’t capable,” he said, pain bright in his chest. “Making you feel useless. Not noticing sooner that it’d pushed you away.” He inched closer, the toes of his boots coming up against the door rail. “I’m sorry this life is the last thing you wanted, and that I haven’t been around to help you to adjust.”
Bitterness curled around Tommy’s top lip.
“I get that I messed up when I took this role from Mark,” Kris continued, and imagined Mark standing beside them, nodding encouragingly at his attempt at peace. “I should never have said it like that. Like you didn’t count. Like you didn’t deserve to be a part of that decision. But I did and I can’t change it. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt