Chapter 17: A Breach of Privacy

Karina’s shriek bounced off the rustic wooden walls, loud enough to wake the dead.

Leonidas blinked, the spell finally breaking. The arrogant Panther King suddenly looked like a massive, overgrown boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A faint, dusky flush crept up his thick neck, and he hastily averted his purple eyes, though not before taking one last, agonizingly slow sweep of her legs.

"I—my apologies," he stammered, his deep baritone unusually strained. He took a half-step back, though his massive frame still completely blocked the exit. "I did not mean to intrude. I was knocking for several minutes."

"I don’t care if you were knocking for a century!" Karina screeched, clutching the pathetic, fluffy white towel hard. She pressed her back against the wooden bedpost, wishing she could simply phase through the mattress. "Leave! Now!"

"You did not answer," Leonidas continued, as if trying to logically defend his position against a screaming banshee. "After the ambush on the road today, I grew... concerned. I thought perhaps another beast had breached the inn."

"The only beast breaching anything right now is YOU!" Karina yelled, her face burning with the heat of a thousand suns. How was this her life? She had survived a traumatic bathroom incident, plummeted through the sky, and fought off a rabid zombie panther, only to end up as a free peep show for her emotionally constipated fake-husband! "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

Leonidas’s cocked a brow, his initial shock slowly giving way to a flicker of amusement. The panic in her eyes was so strangely unhinged, that it completely baffled him.

He crossed his massive arms over his chest, leaning slightly against the doorframe. "There is no need for such theatrics, Empress," he drawled, a hint of his usual cockiness returning to his voice. "It is not as if I haven’t seen you naked before."

Eh?

Every single drop of blood in her body rushed directly to her face. Seen me naked before? Her inner college student wanted to dig a hole to the center of the earth and die there. Yes, technically, he was married to the original Karina, which meant they had definitely.....done things. Four children didn’t just appear out of thin air! But she was the new Karina! She hadn’t even held a boy’s hand since high school, let alone stood buck-naked in front of a six-foot-five fantasy supermodel!

"GET OUUUUUUUT!!!!" she roared, her voice cracking hysterically.

Leonidas almost chuckled, clearly bewildered by her level of prudishness. The old Karina used to parade around in sheer silk nightgowns just to beg for a scrap of his attention, and now she was guarding her collarbones like a fortress. But, recognizing that she was entirely serious and likely to throw something heavier than soap at his head, he simply nodded.

"As you wish."

He stepped back into the hallway, pulling the heavy wooden door shut with a solid click.

The moment the lock caught, Karina’s knees gave out completely. She collapsed onto the floorboards in a dripping, pathetic heap, gasping for air.

"Oh my god," she wheezed, burying her burning face into her knees. "I’m going to die. I’m literally going to die of embarrassment. Take me back, Cheshire. Send me back to the toilet. The men’s bathroom was less humiliating than this!"

Nope. You are doing an amazing job!

"Shut up!" Karina hissed to the empty room.

She scrambled off the floor, shivering from the cold air, and tore through the trunk the servants had brought up earlier. She threw on the first things she could find: a modest, long-sleeved linen nightgown that buttoned all the way up to her chin, and a thick woolen shawl wrapped securely over her shoulders. She looked like a Victorian grandmother, and she didn’t care one bit.

She was just tying the thick ribbon at her collar when a deep, muffled voice rumbled from the hallway.

"Are you decent?"

Karina sprang three feet into the air with a yelp. "AHHH! You are still there?????"

Before she could even properly brace herself, the iron handle turned and Leonidas opened the door again. He stepped inside, completely unbothered by her outrage, and his purple eyes swept over her. He took in the heavy, excessive layers of linen and wool, and a strange, almost disappointed expression flickered across his face before he covered it up.

"Do you not know how to wait for an answer?!" Karina snapped, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "What do you want, Leonidas? Have you not terrorized me enough for one evening?"

Leonidas ignored her hostility, his expression growing serious. He stepped further into the room, the flickering candlelight reflecting and placing shadows over his chiseled jaw.

"I came back to assure you," he spoke quietly. "About what happened on the road. I truly did not know there would be a sick panther this close to the main trade routes. If I had known the affliction had spread this far from Shadow’s Edge, I would have brought a full battalion of guards."

Karina didn’t soften. In fact, her eyes instantly narrowed. The embarrassment of the naked encounter was instantly overridden by the terrifying memory of Valen trembling in her arms.

"I do not care what you knew or didn’t know!" Karina snarled, taking a step toward him. "You put our son at risk! Valen was in that carriage, Leonidas! He could have been torn to pieces because of your ’kingdom security crisis’!"

Leonidas froze, his brow furrowing deeply.

He stared down at the fierce, furious woman standing before him. She wasn’t yelling about her ruined dress. She wasn’t crying about being scared. She wasn’t begging him to stay in her room to comfort her. She was glaring at him with a murderous maternal instinct, demanding accountability for a six-year-old boy she had historically ignored for his entire life.

When did she start caring so deeply about the Prince? Leonidas thought, utterly baffled. Just last week she couldn’t even remember which wing the nursery was in.

He searched her eyes for any sign of deception, any hint of the manipulative, clinging Empress he had despised for years. But there was nothing.

Leonidas felt a strange, unfamiliar tightness in his chest. He didn’t know what to make of this woman anymore. She was a complete stranger wearing his wife’s face.

Unable to form a proper rebuttal to her very valid anger, Leonidas gave a stiff, formal bow.

"Well," he said gruffly, his gaze dropping to the floor. "My apologies, then."

Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Karina stood in the middle of the room for a long moment, listening to his heavy footsteps fade down the hallway. Only when complete silence settled over the inn did she let out a massive, shaky exhale.

The adrenaline finally completely crashed. She crawled into the massive four-poster bed, pulling the thick, itchy woolen blankets all the way up over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut, but every time she tried to drift off, the image of Leonidas standing in the doorway, staring at her dripping wet body, flashed behind her eyelids.

She groaned loudly into her pillow, kicking her legs in mortified frustration until exhaustion finally dragged her into a restless, deeply embarrassing sleep.