‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to Nicky.’ But he was letting her go nowhere.

‘He’s safe. I’ve had security guards watch you both from the moment you set foot on the island.’ He smiled, apologetic. ‘Longer, in fact. Even in Manhattan. You lessened the risk by telling Demos he could have the throne but even then we didn’t trust him.’

‘We?’

‘There are many islanders whose livelihoods hang on you inheriting,’ he said. ‘Demos’s heavies don’t have it all their own way. For if Demos succeeds…’

‘You really think he’d hurt Nicky?’

‘Yes.’ It was a flat statement with no equivocation.

‘Then I’m leaving. He can have it. I don’t want it. Not if it puts Nicky in the slightest danger. Let me go!’

‘Thena, do you really want Demos to destroy these islands?’

His voice was grave, low and urgent, and something about his tone stopped the rising hysteria, the rising panic.

This was the real Nikos. The Nikos she’d spent her teenage years with. The Nikos who cared about this place so passionately that he’d taught her to care as well.

Until she’d met Nikos she’d been taught to feel as trapped as her mother was trapped. ‘We’d leave if we could afford it,’ her mother had told her. ‘I’m so sorry you have to stay here. I’m so sorry the royals are destroying your life as well as mine.’

That was how she’d been raised, but then along came Nikos, with his passion, his fire, his certainty that they could make things right.

She’d fallen in love with his fire.

And she heard that fire now, the sheer single-minded determination to create justice for this island, to do whatever needed to be done to achieve that end.