Then stuck on her.
He came closer and closer, every step loud against the marble floor, and then he stopped.
Dead.
Queen Brittany murmured something, but Maggy didn’t hear it. It was only when Reza replied that she realized it must have been some kind of greeting. But Cairo was silent, too busy staring at her, and Maggy found she could do nothing but stare back.
Her heart was catapulting against her chest. Her ribs ached at the assault, or maybe because she kept holding her breath.
Because he had the same eyes. The same eyes she saw in the mirror every day. Caramel colored and shaped the same. The same eyes.
He muttered something in what she thought was Italian.
“There was a blood test,” Maggy said, bracing herself to be thrown away the way she always was. “I’ll do another one if you don’t believe it.”
She felt Reza’s hand tighten at her back, as if he wasn’t throwing her away after all. Or as if he didn’t want to. Her nails dug deeper into her palms.
“You look like a ghost,” Cairo said, his voice rough and reverent at once. “You look just like our mother.”
Maggy’s breath left her in a rush. “I’m not a ghost.”
“No,” Cairo agreed. He dropped his queen’s hand and he moved closer, then stopped again. His gaze moved all over her as if he couldn’t believe she was real. As if he wanted her to be real and was afraid she wasn’t, after all. Or maybe that was her and her pounding heart. “You are Magdalena. You could not possibly be anyone else.”
“Call me Maggy,” she whispered.
And Cairo Santa Domini smiled, so bright it seemed to haul the sun inside, lighting up the foyer and Maggy’s heart besides.
“Ah, sorrelina,” he murmured. “I always did.”
And then he closed the space between them and hauled her into his arms, lifting her off the ground and holding her close. Maggy was startled. He spun her around and she caught Reza’s gaze over Cairo’s shoulder. Silver and gray. It punched into her.
She sneaked her arms around Cairo’s shoulders, her gaze locked to Reza’s, to hug her brother back.
And she told herself she didn’t care when the man she loved inclined his head again, then turned away.
She concentrated on the good things. The man who set her down on her feet and returned to studying her face, his gaze as over-bright as hers felt.
Just like a brother. Her brother. Just like a dream.
Except this time, it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a fairy tale.
This man was her family. Which meant, at last and for good, she belonged.
And that left room for that little flicker of hope inside of her to burn bright, then glow.
CHAPTER TEN
THE THRONE ROOM in Constantine Castle was used only for special occasions these days. Coronations, of course. Special ceremonies and addresses. Mostly, it was cordoned off and used as part of the tours that the public could take through some of the less private parts of the castle.
There was absolutely no reason that Reza should have found himself there, standing before the throne like some petitioner of old.
It had been weeks since Maggy had left the villa. Weeks since the world had learned that the Santa Domini princess had lived through that car accident twenty years ago.
She was now the foremost obsession of the international tabloids, just as Reza had predicted.
And it did not help that he knew exactly what it had taken for her to smile so graciously at the cameras. How hard she had worked to appear so elegant and so beautiful, every inch of her as beautiful as her mother before her and so startlingly, obviously a Santa Domini that the fact it had taken twenty years to find her seemed like an outrage.
He told himself he only read these articles and watched the news reports to see how and when he was mentioned. But he wasn’t. And Reza did not care to speculate as to why the Santa Dominian palace did not share the fact that he had been the one to find her.
The palace said very little, in fact. It had released a statement upon her return, announcing that she was recovered after all this time and enjoying getting to know her brother and the life she’d forgotten. Cairo had given an address that had expressed his joy at having some part of his murdered family returned to him. And the world had been forced to content itself with the very few pictures the palace released over those first few days. Maggy and Cairo together, laughing at something that made their identical eyes shine. Maggy holding the Crown Prince Rafael, her young nephew, while Queen Brittany looked on.
All very heartwarming.
Yet Reza remained cold straight through.
Here in this throne room, all the ghosts of his bloodline seemed to congregate. He could feel their disapproval press against him, like the weight of the formal crown he wore only on specific occasions these days.
He stared at the throne itself.
It was only a chair, though it dated back to the fifteen hundreds. It was made of finely polished wood and it gleamed in the sunlight that poured in through the stained-glass windows and made the room into a kind of chapel. A place of power and resolve, or so Reza had been taught.
He didn’t understand the part of him that wanted to burn it. Rip it apart with his hands. Make it into so much kindling—
But there was no point in this kind of maudlin self-indulgence. He had let her go, the way he should have done from the start. From the moment he’d understood that he couldn’t keep his distance with her. That she made him as bad as his father.
He had made his choice. dpg
Reza made himself turn away. He pushed his way out of the great doors, nodding at the guards who waited there. He heard them muttering into their earpieces as they followed him down the grand hall. Alerting the rest of the palace to his movements. All hail his very public life that he’d lived blamelessly all this time. Forever apologizing for his father’s failures. Forever making up for his father’s sins.
For the first time in his life, Reza felt as if he was drowning. As if his role here was holding his head beneath the water. As if he had no choice but to open up his mouth, suck in the sea, and sink.
Impatient with himself, he shook it off as he rounded a corner and headed for his offices. Or he tried to shake it off.
Either way, he was as controlled and expressionless as always when he walked into his office to find three of his aides and his personal secretary waiting for him.
“Sire,” his secretary said, and the man’s deferential tone set his teeth on edge, when it was no different than it had ever been before. “There has been a development.”
“You will have to be more specific,” Reza clipped out as he rounded his desk, all of the historic city laid out before him on the other side of the windows. The far-off snowcapped mountains. The gleaming alpine lakes in the distance.
But all he saw was her face.
He gritted his teeth, then focused on his staff.
“The princess, sire,” his secretary continued. Carefully. “She’s given her first interview.”
He did not play games and ask which princess his secretary meant, though there was a part of him—the cowardly part he would excise with his own fingers if he could—that wanted to hide from whatever this was a while longer. Even inside his own head.
“I imagine it will be the first of many,” he replied. Reza felt more than saw the glances his staff exchanged, and braced himself. “I assume you are bringing this particular interview to my attention for a reason?”
His secretary stood straighter. “She discusses her wedding plans, sire. In some detail.”
And it took every bit of Reza’s training in diplomacy to simply stand there as if nothing was the matter. As if this news did not affect him in the slightest.
If only that were true.
“Have my felicitations sent with the appropriate gift,” he murmured, as if he’d already forgotten what they were talking about. Then he treated them all to the full force of his stare. “S
urely such things are usually done automatically, without my input?”
“I fear I cannot do the interview justice, sire,” his secretary murmured. The man thrust a tablet onto the desktop and hit the play arrow on its screen.
Reza did not want to watch this. He wanted to hurl the tablet through the window behind him. He wanted to institute beheadings and reopen the old dungeons, and he wanted to start with the staff standing before him.
He wanted anything but Maggy in front of him, laughing with one of those American television journalists with alarmingly bright white teeth.
She was too beautiful. It was worse on-screen, where her marvelous cheekbones seemed more pronounced and her lively eyes seemed warmer and more kind than he remembered. Her voice was the same, soft and faintly rough, and all he could think about was Maggy on her knees before him, sucking him deep into her mouth.
Damn her.
He’d known she would be the ruin of him. What he hadn’t realized was that even when he’d removed the temptation of her from his life, he would remain ruined.
“And I’m told you plan to honor the Santa Domini royal family’s traditions, despite all these years away?” the interviewer asked.
“Oh, yes,” Maggy answered, sounding as if the interviewer were her best friend in the world. Reza made a mental note to give his public relations team bonuses, given the magic they’d worked with her. She looked nothing like the mouthy shopgirl he’d met. She looked like who she was—who she had always been. Magdalena Santa Domini. “I have been betrothed to the king of the Constantines since I was born. And I am happy to honor my commitments. After all, not every girl gets to wake up one morning to find she’s actually a princess and, even better, she’s meant for a king.”
The interviewer laughed but made one of those fake noises of concern that would have annoyed Reza had he been able to do anything but stand there, frozen, that aching thing in his chest threatening to break free at last.
“But you only just found out who you are,” the interviewer said. “How can you rush into something like this?”
“The king is the one who found me,” Maggy said, almost shyly, and Reza knew exactly why they’d held it back before now. For this moment. For maximum impact. He almost admired it—the Santa Dominis were nothing if not in complete control of their images. Why should Maggy be any different? “He knew who I was before I did. And we spent some time together as I adjusted to my new role.” She smiled down at her lap, looking for all the world as if she was overcome with emotion. It set Reza’s teeth on edge. Especially when she looked up again, now looking flushed. Like a woman in love, a voice inside him murmured. “I’m more than happy with my fate.”
His hand shot out before he could control it, stopping the video. His heart kicked at him, making his ribs ache.
“If you continue, sire,” his secretary said, even more carefully than before, “the princess claims the wedding will be in June.”
“In June,” Reza said. His voice sounded as if it was someone else’s.
“Yes, sire.”
“This June.”
His secretary nodded.
Reza stared down at the tablet before him, frozen on Maggy.
He hardly knew himself any longer and it was her fault. He had spent his whole life keeping himself free of emotional entanglements, just as he’d been taught by both his mother’s cold demands and his father’s bad example. He was trying to rule a kingdom and Maggy was telling lies to the whole world, boxing him into corners he wouldn’t be able to get out of without causing an international incident and destroying the relationship between the two kingdoms—
Reza paused then. He took a deep breath in, then let it go.
She had thrown down a gauntlet. He would pick it up.
Maggy might think she wanted the man. Reza knew better. It was high time he showed her what happened when she taunted both man and king.
“Have the helicopter ready in fifteen minutes.” His voice was smooth. Even. As if there was none of that fire beneath it. As if he wasn’t burning alive where he stood. “I believe it’s time I called upon my lovely bride.”
* * *
Maggy sensed him before she heard a sound.
She waited in one of the palace’s grand salons, set aside for visiting heads of state and various monarchs, sitting like the picture-perfect princess Reza had made her. She’d been informed the moment his helicopter had entered Santa Dominian airspace. She’d been alerted when he’d landed.
But she didn’t need anyone to come and whisper in her ear that Reza was in the palace. That he was being led straight to her. She could feel it deep in her belly. She could feel it in the electric shivers that traced patterns over her limbs and the butterflies that performed calisthenics inside of her.
And then at last he was there, striding into the grand salon as if it was his, and it all got worse.
Or better, depending on how she looked at it.
Reza moved through her brother’s palace the same way he’d strode into that long-ago coffee shop. He looked elemental. Regal stone and royal temper, all the way through.
She made herself stay where she was, and no matter that he bore down upon her like a freight train.
The doors closed behind him, leaving them alone in this overwrought room of antiques with priceless artifacts scattered about on every surface. But all Maggy could see was Reza.
“I knew you’d come,” she said softly when he was in front of her, standing there radiating fury and something else she couldn’t quite decipher in another perfectly pressed suit. “I’m surprised it took you as long as it did.”
“You should have told me you were psychic,” he replied, his voice all edges and threat. Yet it rolled through her like a caress. Like his body moving over her and in her—but she had to focus. “It might have saved me the time and the trouble.”
Back in the villa, that might have killed her. But she’d spent a few weeks here, in the company of her marvelously wicked sister-in-law and her sharp, funny brother, and she wasn’t the same person she’d been then. Or she was more that person than she’d known how to be that awful morning after.
And she’d seen through him, at last.
“You weren’t discarding me, Reza,” she told him softly, not beating around the bush because she’d already lost twenty years of her real life. She didn’t want to lose a moment more. “I know you might have told yourself that you were. But what you were really doing was running scared.”
As she’d known he would, he turned to granite.
“I beg your pardon.”
She smiled at that, and it wasn’t one of her fake, princess smiles. She felt this one down deep. “I love it when you say that, so stuffy and indignant. But it’s true. I think you know it.”
“The king of the Constantines does not run scared, I think you will find.” Reza’s brows arched, but he was still right there in front of her. He hadn’t walked away again. “By definition.”
“Perhaps not.” She raised her own brows, settling back against the sofa as if, this time, she was the one gracing a high throne with her presence. “But what about you, Reza?”
“What about me?” He frowned at her. “I don’t follow.”
Of course he didn’t.
“You have the king thing down, I think we can all agree.” And he was so much the king. Even now, standing in another man’s palace, he radiated that fierce authority. Maggy could feel it deep in her belly. “Are you really going to pretend that you’re not also a flesh and blood man with his own needs?”
“I am not pretending anything. But I do not have to give in to my baser instincts. I do not have to let whatever needs I might have control me.”
She thought he was speaking more to himself than to her.
“But you’re okay with letting your dead parents and their terrible marriage control you instead.” He looked outraged, but she’d expected that. She pushed on. “I did some research into your parents these last weeks. I dug up all th
ose rumors. The speculation that your father was so wrapped up in that woman he nearly brought the country to war. That he disgraced the crown, then took his own life. All those nasty whispers.”
“They are not whispers, they are facts I have kept from the public for years.” He sounded starched through, though she could see that muscle in his cheek, telling her the truth about his feelings. “And now that you know these unsavory truths, there is no need for these theatrics, is there?”
Maggy folded her hands in her lap even tighter, because she wanted to reach for him.
“I didn’t have any parents,” she said softly. “But I’m pretty sure the point of them is that they’re supposed to protect you, Reza. Not make you responsible for their problems.”
“You have no idea what you are talking about.” His voice was dark. Low.
Tortured.
“If you say so,” she replied in a tone that told him she disagreed. Quietly. Then inclined her head the way he liked to do. “Your Majesty. You must know best.”
And she thought for a moment that she could hear his teeth grit.
The truth was, she knew him. That had been the truth she’d returned to again and again in this time away from him, nursing that flame of hope deep inside of her. She knew him because she was him, in all the ways that mattered. He was as alone as she’d always been. He hid it in his palaces and villas, his bespoke suits, and his ranting on about what the king could and could not do—but he was always alone. His life was a throne, nothing more.
It might shine a lot brighter than her little room in Vermont, but it was the same narrow bed and the same cold thing inside that never quite warmed. Maggy knew this better than anyone.
She knew Reza better than anyone, in part because he’d shown her the pain behind his mask that dreadful morning.
He had found her and rescued her from a life that had never been meant to be hers. This was her chance to rescue him in turn.
“Exactly what is it you think you are doing?” Reza asked her with soft menace, fierce danger all over his harsh face, but she couldn’t allow herself to be intimidated. Not when it mattered this much. “Do you truly believe that you can announce a wedding date and I will simply honor it? Because you say so?”
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