by Trish Morey
“It becomes easier,” he murmured, close to the perfect shell of her ear, the tempting, elegant line of her neck.
“How do you stand it?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the city outside the windows, as if one of the most beautiful views in the kingdom disturbed her. “All that…expectation?”
She sounded torn. Terrified. And he wanted to soothe her. He wanted to kiss the panic from her body, make her forget herself and the demands of her station. But he could not afford that kind of misstep. Not now, when the King was buried and gone. When so much remained at stake.
“We will marry at the end of the week,” he said gruffly. “There is no time to waste.”
He felt the shock move through her body, like an electrical current.
“What is the hurry?” she asked, turning so she faced him, not seeming to notice that his hands remained on her, sliding down to hold her upper arms in his palms. “Surely what matters is that I am here. Must we force all of these changes into only a handful of days?”
Her voice caught slightly on the word changes. He hated himself for pushing her, but he had no choice. He had been bound over to his country so long ago now he no longer remembered any other way. There were far greater things than the hurt feelings of one woman to worry about, even if it was this one, and far more important things to consider than his abiding desire to comfort her. There was much more at stake than these quiet moments that he knew, somehow, he would never get back.
But he had never had any choice.
“The ceremony will be in the cathedral, as tradition demands,” he said as if he had not heard her. She frowned up at him. He found himself frowning back at her, a surge of sudden, unreasonable anger moving through him, though he knew it was not her he was angry with. “Will you fight this, too, Princess? Will we see who wins this latest battle? I should let you know that I am unlikely to be as easy on you as I have been. My patience for these games of yours wears thin.”
For a moment she looked as if he’d slapped her. Her face whitened, then blazed into color. She pressed her lips together for a moment, and then her silvery eyes seemed to look straight into him. Through him.
“What is this?” she asked, in a calm voice that sounded eerily like his own. As if she’d learned it from him. “What are you not telling me?”
He did not know, in that moment, whether he wanted to strangle her or tumble her to the floor. He was appalled at the riot of emotion inside of him. He stepped back, forcing himself to let go of her. Making himself breathe and regain his own control.
He had always known he would marry this woman, that she was his. And he would make that happen, one way or another. The fact that he loved her, that he burned for her—that was incidental. It had to be.
“Many things,” he answered finally. “Did you imagine it would be otherwise? Have you shared all your secrets with me?”
Her wide eyes searched his, then dropped. He saw her pull in a steadying breath, and wanted to touch her—but did not.
“It occurs to me that I am already the Queen,” she said after a long moment, looking every inch of her heritage, her head held proudly, her inky black hair in that elegant twist. “While, if I am not mistaken, you must marry me to become king.”
“You are correct,” he said silkily, watching her closely, the warrior instinct stirring to life within his blood. Was that pride he felt? That she was a worthy opponent even today of all days? “Your ancestors have held the throne of Alakkul since the tenth century.”
Her head tilted slightly to one side as she considered him. “And what is to prevent me choosing a different king?” she asked in that soft voice that he did not mistake for anything but a weapon. “One I prefer to you?”
He felt himself smile, not nicely. Far stronger men had quailed before that smile, but Lara only watched him, her eyes blazing with a passion he did not entirely understand. But oh, how he longed to bathe in it.
Soon, he told himself. Soon enough.
“Theoretically,” he said, “you can choose any king you wish.”
She blinked, and then seized on the important part of what he’d just said. “But not in practice?” she asked.
“There is the matter of your vows and our betrothal,” he said. “Honor matters more here, to those people who loved you enough to cheer you in the streets, than in your other world. Breaking your word and defying your late father’s wishes would cause a deep and lasting scandal.” He shrugged. “But you are American now, are you not? Perhaps you will not mind a scandal.”
“I think I’ll announce to the world at large that the new Queen of Alakkul is in need of a king,” she said, her eyes bright, daring him. “Surely any number of suitors will present themselves. It can be like my own, personal reality show.”
She expected him to react badly, he could tell. But he saw the way her pulse pounded in the tender crook of her neck, and smiled.
“By all means, Princess,” he said. “Invite whoever you like to court you.”
“You don’t mind?” Her voice was ripe with disbelief. “You don’t think you’re the better choice?”
He laughed, enjoying the way the sound made her frown.
“There is no doubt at all that I am the better choice,” he said. “But more than that, I am the only choice.”
“According to you,” she said, defiant and beautiful.
“No,” he said softly. He reached across and traced a simple line along the elegant length of her neck, smiling in satisfaction when she hissed in a breath and goose bumps rose. “According to you,” he said, his own body reacting to her arousal. “You have loved me since you were but a girl. You will again. Your body is already there.” He did not smile now—he met her gaze with his own, steady and sure. “You will not pick another king.”
That bald statement seemed to hang between them, making the air hard to breathe. Lara’s stomach hurt, and her hands balled into fists.
“Why must I marry anyone?” she asked, her voice low and intent, growing hoarse with the emotion she fought to conceal, even as her body rioted, proving his words to be true no matter how she longed to deny them. “Why can’t I simply be queen on my own?”
But Adel only shook his head, in that infuriating manner of his that made her itch to explode into some kind of decisive action. But then again, perhaps touching him was not a good idea.
“Why should I trust anything you say?” she threw at him, angry beyond reason, dizzy with all she wanted and would not allow herself. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me from the start!”
“I will do whatever it takes to secure the throne and protect this country,” he threw back at her. Did she imagine the hint of darker emotion in his voice? Flashing in his gray eyes? Or did she only want it to be there?
“You are exactly like him,” she said, her voice a low, intense throb of all the pain she had not been able to admit she felt today. All the loss and the bewilderment, and her inability to understand why she should even care that King Azat was dead. Why should it matter to her? Why should she be questioning her mother’s motives? And why should she feel so betrayed that Adel was the same kind of man, when he had never pretended to be anything else? When he had as good as told her that he would do just what he had done? When he—like her father before him—cared only and entirely about the damned throne to this godforsaken place?
Hadn’t her mother told her this would happen, years before? “He picked another snake for you, Lara—just like himself!” she’d hissed.
“If you mean your father,” Adel said evenly, the suggestion of ice in his voice, “I will accept the compliment.”
“He forced me into this years ago, on my sixteenth birthday,” she said dully, wondering why her heart felt broken—why it should even be involved. “Didn’t you know? That was when my mother knew we had to escape. She refused to let me—”
“Please spare me these fantasies.” His voice was a hard whip of dismissal. Startled, she noticed his eyes had turned to flint. “Your mother le
ft because her extramarital dalliances were discovered. She took you with her as insurance, because she knew that if she stayed here she would have been turned away from the palace in shame. Never deceive yourself on this point. She knew that as long as you were with her, your father would never cut off her funds. Just as she knew he was too concerned with a daughter’s feelings for her mother to separate you.”
“What?” She couldn’t make sense of that. She literally could not process his words. “What are you—? We lived on the run for years! We had to hide from his goons!”
“There was never one moment of your life that the palace did not know where you were,” Adel said coolly, every word like a blow. “And I assure you, if your father wanted his ‘goons’ to secure you, I would have done so personally years ago. If it was up to me, I would have reclaimed you before your seventeenth birthday.”
She couldn’t accept what he was saying. Her mind was reeling, and she shook her head once, hard. Then again, to get rid of the part of her that seemed to bloom in pleasure, at the notion that he’d wanted her so badly.
“You would say anything…” she began, but she was barely speaking aloud.
He took her shoulders in his hands again, tipping her head back, making her look at him. Face to face, hiding nothing. Baring far too much.
“I will lie, cheat, steal,” he said. His tone was deceptively soft—with that uncompromising edge beneath. “Whatever it takes. But you will marry me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that!” she hissed, but it was all bravado. Inside she was awash in confusion. Full of the possibility that he, unlike her father and even unlike her mother, had wanted her after all. But unable to let herself really accept that possibility—unable to believe it.
She knew what he meant to do even as his hands tightened on her shoulders, even as his hard mouth dropped toward hers. She knew, and yet she did nothing to evade it.
In truth, she did not want to evade him.
And so he kissed her. That same fire. That same punch and roll. Even now, even here, she burned.
She did not know what that meant. She did not want to think anymore. She did not want to feel. She wanted to lock herself away somewhere—to escape.
But he raised his head, and his eyes were dark gray and too capable of reading too much, his mouth in that grim line that called to her despite everything.
“That proves nothing,” she said, because she had to say something—she had to pretend.
“Keep telling yourself that, Princess,” he said in that dark, quiet voice that made her alive and bright with need. “If it helps.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE day of her wedding dawned wet and cold.
Was it childish that she wanted the weather to be an omen?
A summer storm had swept in from the mountains, shrouding the ancient city in a chilly fog that perfectly suited Lara’s mood. She was up before the gray dawn, staring broodingly out her windows, feeling like a princess in one of those old fairy-tales her mother had given her to read when she was a child.
It did not do much to brighten her outlook when she reflected that she was, in fact, a princess locked away in a castle and about to be married off to a suitor not of her choosing. That in her case, those old stories were real.
No matter how little it all felt real. No matter how much she still wanted to jolt awake and find herself back in her safe, small life in Denver. The little apartment she’d barely tolerated, and now missed. The job and the friends and the life that she had treasured, because it was hers. Because she had not had to run from anything anymore. She had been so proud of that. Of what she’d built when Marlena had let them stop running.
Marlena…who might not be at all who she’d claimed to be for so long. Who Lara had had no choice but to believe.
She tucked her knees up beneath her on her window seat and took in the luxury that dripped from every inch of the suite all around her—the cascade of window treatments in gold and cream, the tapered bed posts, the ornamentation of every surface, every detail. What terrified her was how, every day, the real world seemed further and further away. She spoke less English. She found her new clothes less uncomfortable. She forgot.
How soon would she forget what was truly important? How soon would she forget herself completely?
But then the door swung open, and she was no longer alone. And it was, after all, her wedding day.
She was bathed, slathered in ointments and perfumes, and dressed in a gown so beautiful, so light and airy, that it should have taken her breath away. It made her look like a dream. Like another fairy-tale princess. Her hair was curled, piled onto her head, and bedecked with fine jewels and a tiara that one of her attendants told her, with a smile, had once belonged to Cleopatra herself. There was a part of her that longed to believe such a story, that wanted to revel in the very idea of it. But when she looked at herself in the mirror, she hardly recognized herself.
If she allowed herself to disappear inside this dream, the dream she’d cherished as a girl and hardly believed could be happening now, how would she ever wake up? Could she ever wake up? Would she want to?
By the time they had finished with all their ministrations, the bright summer sun had burned away the morning fog, and as Lara was driven outside the palace gates it was as if she drove directly into the happily-ever-after portion of all those old fairy-tales she couldn’t seem to put from her mind. The people of Alakkul crowded the streets, cheering and waving. The sun streamed down from the perfect blue sky above. She even thought she heard birds singing sweetly in the trees as she climbed the steps to the great cathedral. Everything was perfect, save for the stone inside her chest where her heart should be, and the fact that she desperately did not want to do this.
Yet…was that true?
She did not break away from her fleet of handlers. She did not pick up her heavy skirts and run. She did not even stop walking, step by measured step, toward her doom. And when she entered the cathedral and saw the figure standing so tall and proud at the altar, she knew why.
He stood at the head of the long aisle, where a few days before her father’s coffin had been laid out for all to see. Where, so many years ago, she had stood with him once before, in the very same spot, and dreamed of exactly this moment. Yearned for it. Was it the echo of those long-ago dreams that kept her moving, as if it was the very blood in her veins? Or was it the way he turned and looked at her, an expression she could not read on his hard face as she drew close?
He held out his hand, his gray eyes serious and steady on hers—just as he had done in that parking lot in Denver. It seemed like a different life to her now, a different person altogether. She could not imagine who she’d been, however many days ago, before he’d reappeared in her life and altered it so profoundly. She could not reconstruct that last moment before he’d spoken, when she had been lost in whatever thoughts had consumed her then, when she had forgotten he even existed and had no idea she would ever see him again.
She could not imagine it, and maybe that was what compelled her to reach across the distance between them, and once again take his hand.
In the end, it was quick. Too quick.
The priests intoned the sacred words. Adel stood quietly beside her, yet she was so aware of him. Of his slow, deep breathing. Of his broad shoulders, his impressive height. Of the fierce, compelling strength that was so much a part of him. He was every inch the warrior, even now. Even here.
She could think of him as a warrior. As a king. It was the word husband that she could not seem to make sense of—it kept getting tangled up in her head.
And in the final moments, when the priest turned to her and asked her if she came to this union of her own free will, if she gave herself willingly, Lara looked into Adel’s silver eyes, and knew she should say no.
She knew it.
But his gaze was so steady, so calm. So serious.
So very silver, and she felt it wrap around that stone where her heart should be, lik
e a caress. Like a promise.
“He will make you nothing more than a puppet,” Marlena had said.
But there were worse things than that, Lara thought. There were worse things than puppetry, and in any case, she could not remember what it had been like before, what it had been like without that calm silver gaze filling her, making her warm from the inside out, making her feel whole when she had not known anything was missing.
She had wanted this man forever.
“Do you come to this moment of your own free will?” the priest asked again.
And she said yes.
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
She said yes.
Adel was not aware he had been so tense, so rigid and prepared for battle, until it eased from him. Her voice rang through the cathedral, and sounded deep within him. Unmistakable. Unquestionable.
It was done.
She was his.
He had fulfilled the old King’s wishes, to the letter. He had staved off disaster. He had been prepared for anything today. That she might not appear. That she might try to bolt. That she might throw her defiance in his face at this crucial moment. Anything.
He had not been prepared for her beauty. For the way the white gown hugged her figure so tenderly, nor for the way the jewels that adorned her made her seem to sparkle and glow.
He had not, he realized, as he took her hands in his and recited the old words that would make them one, forever, thought much beyond this moment.
He had only thought of marrying her. But he had not spent much time thinking about the marriage itself.
They walked down the aisle, husband and wife, king and queen, and out into their kingdom, together.
She looked up at him, her eyes seeming more blue than silver in the sunlight. Her expression was grave, as if she found this marriage a serious business, requiring much thought and worry.