Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 123873 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 619(@200wpm)___ 495(@250wpm)___ 413(@300wpm)
Nothing.
Brendan felt as if the last week had been nothing but both of them beginning to say something, and yet never quite getting it out.
“I hate this,” Drake muttered, muffled through his scarf. “I hate you both. I hate that you get in the kind of messes that mean I have to stick myself in the middle of this. Things are freezing in places that don’t need to freeze.”
“…you were looking for a remote island,” Brendan pointed out.
“Keep talking shit to me,” Drake snapped. “I will throw your passport overboard and leave you here.”
Cillian smirked and elbowed Brendan, pulling from his reverie. “So are you intimidated now?” he teased smugly, lifting his head in a proud little toss. “I bet you’re intimidated. I’m royalty, after all.”
Brendan just stared at him.
Really?
Pouting, Cillian huffed. “Oh c’mon. You could at least humor me.”
With a grunt, Brendan snared and arm around Cillian’s waist and pulled him in. Human furnace, seriously, his warmth baking into Brendan even through multiple layers. “Shut up and get over here. I’m cold.”
“Really?” Cillian tilted his head back and looked up at Brendan innocently. “It’s warm today.”
“I am going to hate this from the bottom of my soul,” he grumbled. “And I refuse to call your parents His and Her Majesty. I refuse. Call it a point of Hong Kong pride. I don’t bend to British imperials.”
While Cillian choked on a laugh, Drake let out a long-suffering groan. “…Jesus, don’t get him started on this.”
“Shut it, mainlander,” Brendan bit off.
“…my parents are from Detroit.”
“It’s still in your blood.”
Cillian cleared his throat, as if that could hide his laughter. “Literally no one on the island—not one person—calls my parents that except Maxwell. Mr. and Mrs. Tell is fine.” He leaned into Brendan, voice lowering. “They think we’re really dating. They’re not happy.”
Far distant, Brendan could just make out thin turret spires parting the mist on the horizon—the dim outline of a castle looming high over the island, coming clearer and clearer with each moment. Pale and towering, a thirteenth-century concentric stone construction, from the outlines. Fuck. That just drove it home.
Cillian Tell really was a prince.
And he had unshakable obligations tying him here.
“Hm,” Brendan said. “My first time meeting the parents and they already hate me.”
“First time…?” Cillian questioned, and Brendan cleared his throat.
“You’re technically my first actual boyfriend.”
“Oh,” Cillian said, and maybe Brendan could chalk the pink in Cillian’s nose and his cheeks up to the wind chill…or maybe not, as Cillian ducked his head and leaned into him more, arms slipping around his waist. “You’re technically mine, too.”
l
BY THE TIME THE ENTIRE crew finished offloading baggage and gear at the ferry dock, the sun was starting to set—lighting up a previously gray sky in soft-fade colors and casting its brilliance over an island so small Brendan could practically see from one side of it to the other; the castle presided over a whitecapped central plateau whose slopes ran almost all the way to the sandy shore, while an array of white-sided houses with slate roofs dotted the slopes in clusters, spreading out from a central point to form a fairly decently sized town, their eaves piled with little snow drifts.
“So,” he asked, hefting his suitcase, “just what century are we in?”
“You’re not funny,” Cillian said. “We’re not that backward. Television, internet, might take a little longer for Amazon deliveries, but we’re mostly only a decade behind the rest of the world.”
There was a brittle note to his voice, and Brendan frowned. “Hey. You okay?”
“No,” Cillian replied bitterly. “But I don’t have time not to be. Brace yourself. Here they come.”
The “they” in question turned out to be a small fleet of pickup tricks winding down the paved lanes of the town and onto the single packed-earth road leading out to the ferry docks, with one smaller older model sedan trailing in its wake. Cillian went completely stiff at Brendan’s side, his face suddenly made of wax, his smile more a grimace. Within moments the trucks had parked, and friendly-looking people in comfortable, warm work clothing stepped out, calling greetings to Newcomb, other crew members, already descending on crates of equipment to start loading up.
The sedan parked and sat silent for several moments, though, and Cillian stared toward it fixedly; Brendan frowned.
“Who’s in the car, Cillian?”
“His parents,” came loftily at their backs as Maxwell descended the ramp from the ferry, debarking last. “Come. You’ll want to make their Majesties’ acquaintance.”
Not if they could put that miserable expression on Cillian’s face.
But Brendan glanced down at Cillian, nudging him. “Let’s get through it and then find somewhere private. I’ll be nice to your parents.”
“Don’t trust that, kid,” Drake cut in. “You know his definition of ‘nice’ isn’t in the fucking Merriam-Webster.”
Cillian cracked a smile. “It’ll be fine.”
It was not fine.
They followed Maxwell across the scrubby tufts of grass along the rocky shoreline. As they passed, several of the workers helping the crew load up called out greetings to Cillian; he answered them with a quick wave and a plastic smile, discomfort radiating from him in waves.