by Maisey Yates
“Why does that charity matter to you?”
“I was very lucky. No matter who I might have been born, or how, I would have been able to get an education. My safety net has always been...well, you. A king. When I left this country, when I began talking to people about their different experiences, people from all over the world who I met at school, I realized that that wasn’t true for most of them. That if they were there, it was often through great financial expense of their parents, or an immense amount of effort. More than a normal person could ever give. If a person has learning disabilities, or special needs, the fight that they’re engaged in to get the kind of education that will work for them is intense. And it’s education that enables them to take their place in the world. We want people to work. We want them to be productive members of society, but we don’t care to give them the building blocks in order to make that happen. I do care. For people who are not as fortunate as I’ve been.”
“I hope that’s the speech that you give at events for your charity.”
“More or less.”
“It’s very affecting.”
“Thank you. I’ve discovered that I care quite a bit about it as a topic. Accidents of birth shouldn’t be the deciding factor in your potential.”
“Neither should accidents of death. But my life has certainly been changed by them.” Normally, he would not have made such a comment, but he was struck by the strange realization that he and Tinley shared commonalities he would never have imagined.
Though, she had not earned her mother’s disdain.
She looked at him, those green eyes full of a deep, round emotion he couldn’t put a name to. A suspicious sort of question that stopped short of accusation, but held no small amount of censure.
She looked down, her neat white teeth closing over her lip. “Why didn’t you stop him from going into the woods?”
She could have been speaking of either of his brothers. Either of his historic failures.
“Should I? That is a common take, Tinley, and you’re not the first to express it. Though most don’t express it directly to me. I should have stopped both of my brothers from going in the woods, shouldn’t I? And yet, I did go in after them. And I seem to have emerged unscathed.”
“So, you believe that you’re the Lion of the Dark Wood? The born leader of this nation? Fated to rule and any potential competition removed?”
“I believe nothing of the kind. I believe that if you’re drunk and a fool and you go running into the woods where your older brother previously disappeared, and where you know there are packs of hungry wolves, you are perhaps taking your chances.”
“That’s a disrespectful way to speak of the dead.”
“The dead got themselves eaten by wolves. The dead must be strong enough to cope with the fact that unflattering things will be said about them.”
She frowned deeply. “The dead is not here to defend himself.”
“If he were, do you think he would defend himself? No. He would smile, and he would take another drink. For all that I find him frustrating, I cannot hate him. For he is entirely who he is. At least, he was.”
“It’s what I liked about him,” she said softly. “There was a freedom to him that I admired. And I tried to carry it forward in my life. I did. I tried to be... I tried to be someone he would have liked.”
“He was young. And I do not believe he knew quite what he liked, or what he would have liked had he been able to grow more. I think eventually, he would have liked you quite a lot.” Those last few words were rough in his throat. Painful.
Their food arrived at that moment, wheeled in on carts by members of his staff. And as her plate was set out before her, he continued. “In any case, I’ve taken you on.”
“Wonderful,” she snapped. “So, I’ve gone from prospective Princess to charity case. Unless of course you want to make my mother’s hopes and dreams come true and make me your Queen?”
She was being provocative on purpose. And she didn’t think he’d rise to meet her.
“And if I did?”
His words were like a gauntlet thrown down between them and their eyes clashed for a moment and something...electric passed through the air.
Down his spine.
He resented it. The tightness in his chest, his gut. That she should have the power to change the air around him. That the air would change without his permission.
“No thank you,” she said.
He was nearly disappointed that she backed down.
She looked down at her plate.
Then she looked back up at him, delight suddenly shining from those green eyes.
He felt that delight pour through him like melted gold. Hot and precious and dangerous. Something strange that went off low in his stomach. Like a bomb bursting.
The food. The food had made her light up like a switch had been turned on and there was something inescapably compelling about her simple joy.
No.
She was in love with his dead brother.
He was the King.
She would never be his Queen.
“Dinner looks amazing,” she said. “Is that puff pastry?”
She poked at the top of the meat pie sitting on her plate. Poked at it.
He said nothing.
“It’s lovely,” she said, cutting through the top of it, and closing her eyes when the crust made a sound. “Amazing.” She hummed as she took a bite.
There was something to the excitement in her. The warmth. This castle was ancient, a stack of stones that had come from a cold earth. And she infused them with...her. He could feel her. Surrounding him. How long had it been since he’d seen someone take pleasure in such a simple thing?
There was a purity in her that ran through his veins and twisted. Turned from that bright innocence of a woman enjoying the flavor of her dinner, into something dark and tortured in him.
She looked up at him. “What?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he said.
He looked away. Perhaps it had been too long since he’d had a woman. He had been focused on the practicalities of striking a deal with Nadia. The two of them had no connection, physical or otherwise, and she had been out of the country for the entirety of the negotiations. Given that he was in the process of negotiating a marriage agreement, he had not thought it prudent to take a lover. But perhaps in this case a discreet lover would be the better part of valor.
He could not endure this. This proximity to her.
It was a sickness that should have died the night his brother did.
But here it endured.
“Next week. Next week we will have a ball, and we will invite all of the eligible men in the higher echelons of society, from all nations friendly to Liri. And there, we will find you a husband.”
“That makes me a bit like Prince Charming, doesn’t it?”
“If any of the men arrive in a pumpkin I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“You know, I would quite like that. Because not only would he come with a pumpkin, he would come with a couple of fat rats. And I assume his suit would be tailored by birds.”
“That’s absurd.”
“It’s been said, on more than one occasion, that I myself am slightly absurd. So, that bothers me less than you think it might.”
“Your cat would eat them,” he pointed out.
“We can’t have that. Though, he has not eaten the hedgehogs or the ferret yet.”
“A relief to all involved.”
“You know,” she said, and impish expression taking over her face. “If it happens now, I’m going to blame the change of venue.”
“The death of your rodents will weigh heavily upon my conscience.”
And he realized that perhaps it was a poor choice of words, considering there were two deaths that did weigh upon his conscience.
Deaths that the passage of time would never ease the wounds of. Deaths that had caused deep and abiding division in his country. Between the people who supported him still, and the people who thought him a murderer.
Division that he was having to work now to ease.
“End of the week,” he said. “There will be a ball. You will behave. You will comply.”
“What if I didn’t?”
The question was asked so simply, the expression on her face not angry or inflammatory in any way. Rather it simply was. A sort of innocent wonderment that he had only ever witnessed in Tinley.
“I would throw you in the dungeon.”
“You could just marry me and save us the trouble.”
“In the end,” he said, his stomach going tight. “Dungeon or marriage to me. Is there a difference?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. There isn’t.”
After that, there was no more conversation.
And by the time she left the dinner table, a knot had begun to form in his chest that only expanded with each passing moment. And when she left the room, it did not ease.
The sooner he had Tinley Markham married off the better.
He got up from his seat and went over to the bar that was at the far end of the massive dining room. He took out a bottle of scotch and poured himself a measure of it. He downed it in one gulp.
The sooner she was dealt with, the sooner he could get on with the business of ruling Liri.
And the sooner he would have fat cats and hedgehogs removed from his castle.
That would be a blessing indeed.
CHAPTER FOUR
COMPORTMENT LESSONS BEGAN the next day. Tinley was horrified. Why was he so hell-bent on changing her? Yes, there had been a presumption that if she was going to be Princess she would have to conform in some way. But she had assumed that her basic raw material was decent, considering she had been chosen to be the Princess of Liri at a very early age.
And anyway, that future was gone. She wasn’t supposed to be a princess. She was simply looking for a...for a husband.
She looked around the ballroom, empty except for the older woman that Alex had assigned to be her mentor.
She had been walking with a book on her head for half an hour.
But for some reason, every time she got midway through the room she would imagine Alex’s dark, disapproving gaze boring a hole through her, and she would stumble.
She really didn’t like him.
Their conversation last night had been strange. It had affected her in unexpected ways.
It had been easy to cast him as the villain in Dionysus’s death. Though the ferocity of her anger had waned over the years.
She had gotten older, and as she had borne witness to rowdy, drunken behavior in college, she had been forced to ask herself many times who needed to bear responsibility for that behavior.
And every time, she could only ever bestow the responsibility to the people engaging in the behavior.
Which meant Dionysus bore the weight of his own rash act.
He had been twenty-two years old when he’d died. He had seemed such a man to her. Now that she was the same age as he’d been when he passed it seemed...strange. Because they were on equal footing now.
And she... Well, she would not have done the things he did. She wouldn’t have drunk to excess and put herself in danger like that.
She would never have cheated.
The thought of that was like a knife twisting her chest. Not because she loved him so much. Not now. It was just...she’d excused it. A great many times, because it hadn’t suited the vision she’d had of him, of her feelings for him, to be angry about the other women.
But it had been wrong.
She couldn’t imagine Alex behaving in such a way. Never.
Alex had been in his own stratosphere to her when Dionysus had died. In his thirties already and so remote and responsible. She’d been certain then it was all age, and now she knew better.
She didn’t know why she was comparing the two of them. Dionysus had been fun. Dynamic. He’d had plans for the country in his role as Prince, and when he had spoken, it had been electric. He had been a firm favorite of the people for a variety of reasons. He had established festivals and parades. He had brought a much-needed levity to the culture.
She loved her country. She always had.
Her mother was American, and she had spent a great deal of time in the States as a girl, and had also been privileged enough to travel around the world. She felt that gave her the context to truly appreciate Liri and what was unique about it. But she could also appreciate the fact that it had an old-fashioned feel to it, that there was a sense of seriousness derived from years spent with the people in poverty, and with uncertainty surrounding them while war had raged.
There had been generations of that sort of unrest, all resolved when King Darius had been in power. But the psyche of the people was rooted in that, and those things did not change overnight.
Dionysus had seemed like the medicine the country needed.
It had seemed as if he had been born not feeling the weight of the potential crown. And it had been a good thing.
Alex himself seemed to bear the weight of a mountain on his shoulders. And he walked straight and tall all the same. But there was...a gravity to him that seemed to affect the rotation of her when she was around him.
It was disconcerting at best. But then, this entire situation was disconcerting. Because she had spent a few years feeling like she might be a normal girl. Not one who had been set on the rarest and strangest of paths as a child, only to be completely derailed from it, then spat out into the real world alone and aimless.
But she’d had a chance to rebuild herself from the ground up. In Boston, there had been no expectations, no decisions about her future made anymore.
And in the back of her mind she’d known about the stipulations in her father’s will but it had seemed so distant.
She hadn’t imagined they would be enforced.
But now she was back. A reminder that she was part of a relatively old-fashioned system, and that she was the daughter of a king’s advisor.
But what if you did walk away?
She would walk away with nothing. And she had no idea what she would do with that. What would she be able to offer...anyone? How would she take care of herself? The job that she had at a charity was fulfilling, but it didn’t make a large amount. And she had always known that she would have an arranged marriage. It was just that...
It was just that she had wanted the marriage that was arranged.
“I can see it’s going well.”
She whirled around, and the book flew off of her head. And there he was. Standing in the door, the object of her consternation.
“Very well,” she said dryly.
“Concentrating hard in your lessons?”
“Thinking about running away.”
He began to move closer to her, and her heart beat faster in response. She didn’t know why she found him so... So.
“There will be none of that,” he said.
“Why?”
“You know what happens when people run into the woods.”
But he was not teasing her. His voice was heavy.
“I’m not going to run into the woods.”
“A relief. Good to know that you do have some sense in your head.”
“I was actually beginning to wonder if I do. I could go back to America.”
“You could,” he said. “With nothing.”
“I don’t need a lot of money.”
“But your charity...”
“Yes. It’s an astronomical waste of privilege, isn’t it.”
“Interesting that you think that way. When it isn’t as if you have a whole lot of choice.”
�
�I don’t. But I do have... I have benefited very much from all the money that has surrounded me my entire life. To completely disregard it seems shortsighted.”
And she realized that she stood there, staring up at him, that she also had no idea what her life looked like if she cut ties with Liri. With her homeland.
With this palace, and with this man.
No, she had never been close to Alex. But he had always been there. He had been there during her years at University, however distant.
It hadn’t been her mother who had supported her then. But the palace.
Her mother had gone off to find a way to keep herself in the lifestyle she was accustomed to, at least from Tinley’s point of view. She’d found lovers who aided in that pursuit.
She’d told Tinley she couldn’t understand why she didn’t find a rich husband.
Why she needed school.
Why she needed to make her own life.
Even being responsible and independent, Tinley was wrong.
The palace was the reason she had the cottage. She doubted Alex had overseen any of it personally, but her connections to the royal family had been a safety net for her.
And even now, this palace—though she had avoided it for many years now—was a particular sort of safety net. And she supposed that in some ways going along with all this was a bit of cowardice. But she couldn’t... Couldn’t fathom simply deciding to cut herself off from this. Her final connection to her father. Her final connection to the life she’d been meant to have.
She had a chance here, to have a say in her future. And no, not in the way other women did, it was true. But she could choose her husband. She could find someone who did suit her.
It was archaic in some ways, she knew. Or it would seem so to other people. But she’d had a husband chosen for her as a girl. To have an actual selection now seemed nearly decadent.
And marriage... This was the key to her succeeding, she knew it was.
She’d given up pleasing her mother.
But she could show her.
With the right husband she would have the assets she needed to make a difference in the world. The right husband would like her as she was. And she could show her mother that she could make a success of herself.