A Throne For The Taking. Kate Walker

didn’t know. But the one thing she was sure of was that she didn’t have the right to keep it from him. The decision, whatever it was, had to be his.

      ‘I’ll make it easy for you, shall I?’ Alexei drawled cynically. ‘Twice now you have told me that I am wanted—and needed—in Mecjoria. You have to be lying.’

      ‘No lie. Really.’

      ‘You expect me to believe that I am needed in the country that rejected me as not fit to be even the smallest part of the royal family? Needed by the place that has disowned and ignored me for the past ten years?’

      The only response Ria could manage was a sharp, swift nod of her head. She couldn’t persuade her voice to work on anything else.

      ‘Then you’ll have to explain. Needed as what?’

      ‘As …’

      Twice Ria opened her mouth to try to get the words out. Twice she failed, and it was only when Alexei turned his narrow-eyed glare on her and muttered her name as if in threat that she forced herself to speak, bringing it out in a rush.

      ‘As—as their king. You’re needed to take the throne of Mecjoria now that Felix is dead.’