Claire’s POV
I would never be able to compete with a dead woman. No one could. I also didn’t know that I would even want to try.
I cared about Ivan, but not in the ways the King was thinking. If Ivan cared in any kind of way for me, he had never purposefully expressed those feelings. We had some moments of pause where the mood might have gone romantic, but neither of us had pushed for that.
The King had to be mistaken. Or…
I didn’t really have intentions for Ivan, but I supposed I could see myself learning to care for him in enough time, with enough attention from the both of us. But now, thinking on it, that seemed even more unlikely.
If I reminded him of what he had lost, anything romantic between us simply wouldn’t happen.
Even if this wasn’t the most pressing issue in my life,
