by Maisey Yates
“I will shame you in the media, your children will know you for the faithless man you are and I will ensure I sign a document that means I get your worldly assets. That’s expensive sex, Xander, she would have to be well worth it.”
A slow smile curved his lips. “You are quite ruthless under those plain clothes, aren’t you?”
“Life has a way of making us that way, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose it does.”
“You’ve managed to live through all of this with very little in the way of consequences. Well, consider me your punishment.” She turned and walked away from him, shaking with rage and sadness, with the tears that were building inside of her, a hard knot of pressure in her chest that she could hardly breathe past.
She’d just agreed to marry Xander Drakos, to become queen of Kyonos. To share the bed of a man who didn’t truly want to be with her. She would never be able to go back to the convent. To the women she considered her friends. Her family.
But she was resolved. She’d made the right decision.
She was taking back a piece of the life that she lost. The life she should have had. It wouldn’t be everything, not for either of them. But if felt like her right. She would be queen. A goal she’d fixed herself on at sixteen, from the first moment she’d seen Xander in person at a ball. She would bear the heirs to the throne, children for her to love. The children she’d given up hope of having.
And she would force Xander to face the consequences of his actions, every morning when he woke, and every night when he went to bed.
And she would try to ignore the crawling humiliation that thought made her feel. Tried and failed. As she walked into her bedroom and closed the door, she dissolved into misery, and gave in to her tears.
* * *
“I won’t be coming back,” she said into the phone. It had been hours since she’d accepted Xander’s proposal. And now she’d realized she had to call Mother Maria-Francesca and confess.
“I thought you might not.”
“You did?”
“He’s the reason you were running all this time,” she said, her tone calm, steady. “And he’s the reason I never advised you to move ahead with your vows.
“He is?”
“You are dedicated, and I have never doubted your faith, so please don’t take me wrong, but I always felt you were driven by your inner demons, and not your convictions. It was good that you had us, to give you the shelter that you needed. But this is a calling that requires your whole life. And it requires a drive that goes beyond fear of the world outside.”
She nodded slowly. “I know.”
Deep down, Layna had always known it was true. Because she had ached for other things. She used convent life to hide from her desires, desires she felt could never be met. So that she didn’t have to see gorgeous men, and mothers with babies, clothes there was no point in her wearing, hairstyles that would make no difference because she would never be pretty again.
She was having some of what she wanted. She felt...in some ways she felt more in control than she had in years. This wasn’t about Xander, or his hold on her. It was about claiming the life she desired.
But if she had known this was what she really wanted, she never would have imposed on the Sisters.
“I didn’t mean to use anyone,” she said, her voice choked.
“You gave back more than you ever took, Magdalena.”
Layna smiled at the use of the name. “Thank you. I’m not sure that’s true, but thank you. I hope...to continue on giving in my new position I...I suppose I’m going to be a princess. And queen one day.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I won’t forget what you taught me. I’m going to use this. I’m going to do good with my position.” Something she wouldn’t have cared about if she’d married Xander as a girl of eighteen. She would have just used it to increase her shopping budget.
“That’s nice to hear. But you’re allowed to want things. You’re allowed to have dreams.”
“I’ve tried hard not to have them,” she said, wiping away a tear she hadn’t realized had escaped.
“I know you have, Layna. You’ve tried very hard to keep yourself safe. But if I could give you one last piece of advice, it would be not to let fear decide things for you.”
“I won’t.”
And she wouldn’t. Her decision was made, and even though the enormity of it made her tremble, there was no going back now.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I TRUST YOU slept well.”
“Your trust is misplaced.”
Xander laughed as Layna made her way into the dining room and sat down at the table. He hadn’t seen her since she’d run dramatically from him in the hall last night, but he’d had a feeling hunger would ferret her out of her room eventually. And here she was, in time for brunch.
“That is too bad. You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”
Hard eyes met his. “No. Sorry, if you were looking for a reprieve you aren’t going to get one from me.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Even though you won’t be permitted to slake your lusts elsewhere?”
“I’ve slaked them pretty well over the past fifteen years. More variety than most, so I can’t truly complain.” Though the idea of monogamy was foreign. Even so, if he promised her fidelity, he would give it. He would hardly sneak around behind her back all for the sake of sex, when he could have it with her if he wanted.
Not for the first time, he was feeling curious about the body beneath those simple shifts. Quite simply, in terms of her looks, he’d been shocked at first. And every time he looked at her, he was shocked. How she’d changed. The extent of the damage. But it was getting easier to let go of. Easier to just accept that it was part of her now.
And honestly, it made him extra curious about her body and if that made him reprehensible, so be it. She was to be his wife, and he hadn’t reconciled the scars yet. They didn’t turn him off but he wasn’t exactly overcome by attraction.
As if to goad his thoughts his gut kicked as she moved into the room, the sunlight spilling over the smooth side of her face, catching fire behind her hair and revealing a golden halo. He got a glimpse of that blonde he’d been missing, subdued without the aid of dye, but there was some there. There was something about her that pulled him to her, there was no mistaking that.
“You will have to be tested,” she said, her tone dry as she took a seat at the table. “I’m not risking catching an STD from you, so I’m sorry if you find that a problem, but you’ve been around.”
“I get tested every six months. I’m promiscuous, but I’m responsibly promiscuous.”
“Oxymoron.”
“Judge not,” he said, looking back down at his food.
“You can judge me all you want in that area of my life. I find myself quite blameless.”
He raised a brow and looked back up at her. And found himself unbearably curious. How long had it been since she’d been with a man? Since before the convent? Before the accident?
Had she ever?
A ridiculous thought. She was thirty-three. A woman would have had to have been living in a convent to be a virgin at her age. But then, she had been, so all bets were off.
He found himself unreasonably intrigued by the idea.As if there was any doubt of his debauchery. Being fascinated by her innocence confirmed it.
“I find myself lacking in regret,” he said. “Which I suppose isn’t the same as blameless.”
“That would be a seared conscience,” she said. “And I have no desire to hear about your exploits beyond looking at medical records and seeing a negative result on the test.”
“You’re a savvy little thing for a woman who’s spent ten years in a convent.”
“I wasn’t born in one.”
“I suppose not. I propose that we set the wedding for early spring.”
“That’s very soon. Only a couple of months.”
“I know,” he said, “but it will create a nice celebratory atmosphere. Also, you’ve told me I have to remain celibate until our wedding night so I’m not eager to put it off.”
Red bloomed in her cheeks, visible even beneath her scars. “I shouldn’t have thought you would be overly concerned with that.”
“You thought wrong. Now—” he reached in front of him and pulled a black velvet drape from over a tray that contained six rings, all a part of the Drakos family collection “—I have a selection of rings for you to choose from. There is, of course, the one that you had back when we were engaged the first time. It’s sized to fit you, assuming that’s stayed the same. But I know that women often change their tastes, so I wanted to give you options.”
Layna swallowed hard and stared at the jewelry in front of her. She’d come down hoping for some coffee and fruit. Maybe eggs and bacon. She hadn’t expected diamonds. It was, in her opinion, a little early in the morning for diamonds.
She couldn’t tear her eyes from the pear-shaped diamond, surrounded by citrines, glittering in the midmorning light that was filtering through the window.
It had been hers. She could still remember King Stephanos asking for it. He’d called her in with her father, deeply regretful to have to ask for it back. But it had also belonged to his wife, and since Xander was now gone and the wedding wouldn’t be taking place, he simply couldn’t bear to have it out of the palace.
Leaving, her hand had felt bare and her heart...
How could he leave her? How could he leave all of them? And why had she never kissed his lips?
Looking at the ring made her remember all of that. She hated those memories. They made her feel too much. They interrupted her contentment. But then, her contentment had been interrupted for a while now. Also Xander’s fault.
She reached out, her fingers hovering over that ring. It was the one she wanted. She’d been allowed to choose back then, too, and it had been her favorite. But this wasn’t the same moment. She wasn’t the same girl. He was not the same man.
“I don’t care,” she said, putting her hand back at her side. “You can choose it for me.”
He arched a brow and picked up a ring with a square cut solitaire and an ornate white gold band. “This one, then,” he said. “If you don’t care.”
“I don’t.”
He stood from his place at the table and walked to where she sat, standing in front of her and taking her hand in his. Then, with her sitting and him looming above her, he slipped the ring onto her finger. “It fits fine, doesn’t it?”
She pulled her hand back and curled her fingers into a fist. “Fine,” she said, trying to swallow and failing, her throat too dry to manage it.
She looked down at her hand, at the completely different ring that was now on her finger. This was different. This wasn’t just going back in time. Recapturing what might have been. He might have the same name, but he was a different man. Just as she was a different woman.
Time had changed them. Time had changed their circumstances. She was no longer half in love with him, that was for sure.
Neither would she be falling in love with him any time soon.
“I do need to go and see my father sometime soon.”
She nodded slowly. “I imagine you do.”
“And we shall have to plan a party. To celebrate my return, and to celebrate our engagement. And hope it isn’t perceived as tacky since my father is ill.”
“Maybe you can talk to Stavros about that?”
“Oh, yes, I could talk to Stavros, though it seems he would rather not talk to me.”
“Eva, then?”
“I should talk to both of them.”
She frowned. “I’m sure we can find a way to make sure it doesn’t look tacky. If we try and portray it as a show of strength for the country. No matter how dark the night, the dawn is coming, and so on.”
“See,” he said, smiling, “this is why I need you.”
Those words did something to her. Made her heart feel like it was unfolding, like it was expanding. Made her feel a little bit of pain, a little bit of pleasure. But it was stupid. It wasn’t flattering. He only needed her because he was a gigantic PR nightmare. Such a gigantic PR nightmare that a scarred almost-nun looked good by comparison.
“Well, I’ll do what I can to help. Though, it’s not for you.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“It’s for my country.”
“Do you owe this country anything?” he asked. “After the way they treated you, do you really owe them anything?”
“One man with a cup of acid isn’t Kyonos, Xander.”
“And one man with a cup of acid shouldn’t be your whole life, Layna,” he said, his voice rough, his eyes suddenly serious.
“To what do I owe the sincerity?”
“I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
“Then why are you so often the one who hurts me?” she asked, her newly unfurled heart closing tightly again. Like a flower suddenly deprived of sunlight.
“It’s a gift I have,” he said, looking away from her, out the window. “It’s what I seem to do. I hurt people who genuinely don’t deserve it.” He looked back at her. “I guess that’s your warning. You can back out now if you want.”
Something in his eyes sent a shock through her. It was a window into his pain. It hadn’t been there fifteen years ago, but it was there now, as obvious as if he’d spoken about it out loud. In that brief moment she had the sense that she was standing on the edge of a chasm, looking down into an abyss that had no end.
It frightened her. And it made him impossible to turn away from.
“You couldn’t possibly hurt me any more than I’ve already been hurt.” Even as she said it, she had a feeling it was a lie. She hadn’t kissed him yet, much less gone to bed with him. She hadn’t heard about the wounds he carried deep inside of himself.
He knew it was a lie, too. She could tell by the way his lips curved up, could tell now, that the expression was false. That there was no real humor in it. No real warmth. “Well then, we had better make a formal announcement.”
“I suppose we’d better.”
“You will need a dress, for the engagement party. I trust you won’t mind if I use a professional shopper to select one for you?”
She blinked. “No.”
“Then I shall have your measurements done and that will be taken care of as quickly as possible.”
“What about your father?” she asked.
“I should go and visit him alone.”
Except she had a feeling that he shouldn’t. She wasn’t sure why. And moreover, she wasn’t sure why she should care. Why his pain should interest her or concern her in any way, and yet over the course of the past few seconds she found that it did.
“I’ll go with you. It will help solidify your plans. When you announce your engagement... I think your father felt very bad about what happened to me,” she said.
“He did?”
“He was consumed by his own grief.”
“Yes,” Xander said, “I know.”
“But he came to see me once. I...I didn’t want to talk to him so I pretended to be asleep, but I knew he came.”
“Why didn’t you want to talk to him?”
“I was just starting to realize, really realize, that nothing in my life was ever going to be the same. That my face wasn’t going back to normal. That...that I had maybe twenty surgeries ahead of me.”
“Twenty?” he asked.
“It ended up being twenty-one. Skin grafts and reconstruction. Some of the grafts didn
’t take and...anyway. I knew that I had all kinds of hell ahead and that everything I knew was behind me. I didn’t...it was hard to face people. That way you looked at me at the convent, when you realized it was me...it was ten times worse than that every time someone saw me right after the attack happened. I looked like something from a bad zombie movie. And the press said that. More than once. I hardly looked real at all. And it made my mother cry. It made my father sick. I got tired of seeing the expressions so I would close my eyes when visitors would come. And then it was just easier to keep them that way.”
“Then of course you can come,” he said, his tone light, as though he was content to skip over the graveness of the subject matter. And that suited her just fine. Being with him had forced her to relive her past more than she was comfortable with. “I’m sure my father will be happy to see you.”
“I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to see you.”
That smile again. That fake smile. “I wouldn’t bet on it. But it will be nice to have you there to take some of the focus off of me.”
* * *
Xander kept finding reasons to put off visiting his father, although, Layna was hardly going to judge him for avoidance since she was a pro at it.
Not that she could blame him. She imagined he was hardly going to have the fatted calf slaughtered in his oldest son’s honor when he learned of Xander’s return.
The engagement had been announced. On that he hadn’t procrastinated. And the date of the ball had been set.
In spite of the fact that he was being hammered by the press, he was soldiering forward.
Prince Stavros and his wife, Jessica, and Princess Eva and her husband, Mak, were set to attend. Which would make for an interesting evening, Layna was sure. She imagined that things wouldn’t be easy between Xander and his brother.
She tried to breathe around the terror that started constricting her throat when she thought about exposing herself to all of those people. All of that scrutiny. And Xander had said a selection of dresses would be here soon.
As if cued by her thoughts, there was a knock at the door. But rather than the woman who had come in to take her measurements earlier in the day, she was greeted by Xander, who had a black garment bag in his hand.