Adriana went utterly still.
She should have anticipated this. She should have known. It had been the same when she was seventeen. She could still remember with perfect clarity the faces of all her schoolmates who’d gathered around to point and stare and laugh as she’d walked out of that party alone. Used and humiliated. She could still remember the name they’d called her snaking along with her like a shadow, following her, connected to her, the truth of her as far as they’d been concerned. Inevitable.
The Righetti whore.
Pato was only one person, not a crowd of cruel teenagers, and yet she recognized that this was worse. Much, much worse. She could feel it deep inside, in parts of her that pack of kids had never touched.
But she’d be damned if he’d see her cry again, Adriana thought then with a sharp flash of defiance. She’d rather he executed her alongside Almado Righetti’s ghost in the old castle keep than show him one more tear.
“Is this the part where you call me a whore?” she asked, her stomach in a hard knot but her voice crisp. Her head high. “You’re not doing it right. It works much better when mixed with public humiliation, so you can get the satisfaction of watching me walk a little gauntlet of shame. Would you like me to assemble a crowd? We can start over when they arrive.”
Pato didn’t move, but his eyes went completely black. Frigid and furious at once. Adriana crossed her arms over her chest and refused to cower or cringe. That deep defiance felt like strength, sweeping through her, making her stand tall. She would never bow her head in shame again. Never. Not even for a prince.
“If you want to call me names, feel free to do it to my face,” she told him. “But I should warn you, I won’t fall to pieces. I’ve survived far worse than you.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for his eyes to flash even darker, but they did, and she could feel the pulse of his temper rolling off him in waves. She told herself it didn’t bother her in the least, because it shouldn’t. It couldn’t.
“You think you’re ready to go to war with me, Adriana?” he asked, that mild tone sounding alarms inside her, sending a little chill racing down her back. “I told you what would happen if you used that word again.”
“Here’s a news flash, Your Royal Highness,” she snapped, ignoring the alarms, the chill, that look on his face. “I’ve been at war since the day I was born. I’m hardly afraid of one more battle, especially with a man best known for the revealing cut of his swimming costume and his ability to consume so much alcohol it ought to put him in a coma.” She eyed him while a muscle she’d never seen before flared in his jaw. “Is that what today’s little display of temper is all about? You’re drunk?”
Pato straightened from the door, and her heart kicked at her in a sudden panic, not quite as tough as she was trying to appear. Adriana almost took an instinctive step back, but forced herself to stop. To stand still. He looked nothing less than predatory and the last thing she wanted to do was encourage him to give chase. Because he would, she knew on some primal level. In this mood he might do anything.
“No,” he growled in a voice like gravel, when she’d almost forgotten she’d asked him a question. “I’m not drunk. Not even a little.”
She didn’t like the way he watched her then. Panic and awareness twisted inside her, sending out a shower of sparks, but Adriana didn’t let herself back down. She wasn’t going to break. Not this time. Not here.
“Perhaps you should consider getting drunk, then,” she suggested icily. “It might improve your disposition.”
She didn’t see him move, and then he was right there in front of her, his hand on her jaw and his eyes so tortured, so dark, as he gazed down at her. Adriana didn’t understand what was happening. The things he was saying, that dangerous tone of voice, his dark demeanor—but then she looked in his eyes and she wanted to cry. And not for herself.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
Something she didn’t understand flashed through those eyes. Then he bent his head and brushed his lips across hers. It was soft and light, hardly a kiss at all, and even so, Adriana felt it as if he’d wrapped both hands around her heart and squeezed tight. Her eyes closed of their own accord, and she felt the sweetness of it work through her, warming her, making her feel as if she glowed.
And then he let go of her, though he didn’t step back, and when she looked at him he was that dark, edgy stranger again. His mouth was severe as he gazed at her, a grim line without the faintest possibility of any curve. Much less anything sweet.
“For the first time since you walked through the door and started ordering me around,” he said quietly, “I feel like myself.”
Adriana stared at him for a long moment. He looked back at her, that wicked mouth unrecognizable, those beautiful eyes so terribly dark and filled with things she didn’t understand—but she understood this. He didn’t need to call her names. He didn’t need to stoop to the level of seventeen-year-olds. He was a royal prince. He could do it with a glance, a single sentence.
She had to stop imagining that anything would ever be different.
“If you want to be rid of me, Pato,” she said, fighting to keep her voice cool and her head high, “you don’t have to play these cruel little games. All you have to do is dismiss me, and you could have done that with a text. No unpleasant scene required.”
He reached over and ran the back of one hand along her cheek, his knuckles slightly swollen, and Adriana fought to keep from jerking her head away. His touch was confusingly tender. It slid through her like honey. And it was at complete odds with everything he was saying.
“That’s the first time you’ve used my name,” he said, as if it shook him. And Adriana wanted to lean into him, to turn her head and kiss his hand, as if this was about affection.
But she knew better. This was another game. It couldn’t be anything else—and she was finished playing. No matter what she thought she saw in his eyes then, as if using his name had been some kind of invocation. As if it had changed something.
“I’ll take that as a yes, I’m dismissed,” she said somehow, and moved to step around him. The need to escape, to flee this place and him and never look back, was like a drumbeat inside her skin. “I’ll leave my formal resignation letter on the desk in your office.”
But he reached out and took her arm as he had once before in London, holding her against his side though they faced different directions.
“Adriana,” he whispered, as if her name hurt him.
It hurt her.
But all this would pass. It would, it always did. All she had to do was walk out the door, and she’d never be allowed in his presence again. It wasn’t as if she could work for Lenz again, not now. Her access to the palace would be revoked, and she’d never have to worry about her outsize reactions to Pato, her insatiable hunger for him. All that would fade away as if it had never happened, as if he’d never been anything more than a face on a glossy magazine. And she would move far away from Kitzinia, to a place where no one would recognize her name or her ancestors’ faces in hers, and someday, she thought—prayed—she might even forget that she’d fallen in love with him without ever meaning to.
Everything inside her went still then. Quiet. The truth she’d been avoiding for much too long was like a hush, stealing through her, changing everything, making sure she would leave here, leave him, in tatters.
But then she supposed that, too, had always been inevitable. History had repeated itself, and he was right, it might kill her. But not where he could watch, she told herself fiercely. Not where he could see how far she’d fallen.
“Thank you, Your Royal Highness,” she said, jerking her arm from his grasp, amazed that she sounded so calm. So controlled, as if her whole world hadn’t shuddered to a halt and then altered forever. “This has been an educational experience. I particularly enjoyed your need to des
troy the entire royal family, living and dead, in my esteem.” She aimed a hard smile at him. “Rest assured, I now think as little of your family as you do of mine.”
He met her gaze then, and what she saw on his face sliced into her, making her feel as if she might shake apart where she stood. Making her think she already had.
“Don’t,” he said, as he had in the car that day. That was all, and yet she felt it everywhere.
But his pain wasn’t her problem, she told herself harshly. She couldn’t let it matter.
“I didn’t need to know any of that,” she whispered fiercely. His secrets, that tempting glimpse of his inner self. As if any of it was real, or hers. She’d known it would lead nowhere good, and she was right. “And why would you risk telling me? I could walk out of here today and sell that story to the tabloids.”
The way he looked at her didn’t make any sense. It made her heart thud hard against her ribs. It made her eyes go blurry.
“You won’t.”
“You have no reason to think that. You don’t know me. You don’t even like me.”
His smile was faint, like a ghost. “I trust you, Adriana.”
It was sad how much she wished he did, despite everything. She was such a terrible, gullible fool. Such a deep and abiding disappointment to herself. Because he was still playing her. She knew it. She was one instrument among many, and he didn’t know how to do anything else.
“Or,” she said slowly, as the ugly truth of it penetrated even her thick skull, the misery crashing over her, into her, making her voice too thick, “you know perfectly well that the last person in the world anyone would believe when it came to accusations of promiscuity is me.”
“Don’t,” he said again, his voice harsher.
And this time when he pulled her to him, he turned her so she came up hard against his chest, and then he held her face in his hands and kissed her. Ravenous and raw. Uncontrolled.
Dangerous.
And Adriana couldn’t help herself. She kissed him back.
He slanted his head and she met him, kissing him with all the passion he’d showed her, all the love she hadn’t wanted to admit she felt for him. The pain, the misery. Her foolish hopes. She held back nothing. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him bend her backward, as if this was the happy ending to some kind of fairy tale instead of a sad goodbye at the close of a story even Adriana had known would end like this. Exactly like this, in dismissal and disgrace.
Pato kissed her again and again, as if he was as desperate, as torn, as she was. As if he felt what she did when she knew very well he didn’t. He couldn’t. He kissed her so thoroughly that she knew she would pretend he did, that it would be the fire she warmed herself near in all the lonely days to follow, and she kissed him back with the same ferocity so she could remember that, too.
But too soon he pulled away, still holding her face in his hands. He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes gleaming that darker gold that made her shiver deep inside, and then he stroked her cheeks with his thumbs, as if memorizing her.
Adriana didn’t say a word. She couldn’t. But she knew it was time to go, before she found she couldn’t.
She pulled in a shuddering breath, and when she stepped back, Pato’s gaze went stormy and his jaw flexed—but he dropped his hands and let her.
It was the hardest thing Adriana had ever had to do. It made her bones ache as if she was breaking them, but she did it. She wrenched herself away from him and turned toward the door.
And then stopped dead.
Because Lenz stood there, staring at them both in appalled disbelief.
* * *
Adriana made a small sound of distress, almost too low to hear, and Pato wanted nothing more than to put himself bodily between her and whatever attacked her—even if it was his brother. Even worse, if it was him.
But he couldn’t. He certainly hadn’t today. He didn’t now, and he thought he loathed himself.
For a moment, they all stood there, frozen in place.
“Excuse me, Your Royal—” Adriana began, but Lenz interrupted her.
“I didn’t give her to you so you could make her one of your bedmates, Pato.” He threw the accusation into the room, his face a work of thunder. But Pato watched Adriana and the way she simply stood there, her spine achingly straight and her hands in fists at her sides. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Pato said nothing. He saw Adriana tremble slightly, and had to fight the need to pull her back against him, to protect her from this. He hated that she thought he was like those jackals who had hounded her all these years. He hated that she believed he thought so little of what had happened between them. He hated all of this.
And yet he had no choice, he reminded himself bitterly. It didn’t matter that he had the taste of her in his mouth, that he would have held her there forever if she hadn’t pulled away. He had to let her go.
“Enough,” he snapped when Lenz opened his mouth again. Pato met his brother’s eyes. Hard and unyielding. “This is not a conversation Adriana needs to take part in. Why don’t you step aside and let her go?”
It appeared to dawn on Lenz that this was not a request. His eyes narrowed, but he walked stiffly into the room, leaving the exit clear.
Pato willed Adriana to look at him one last time—to let him study that beautiful face of hers once more—but he wasn’t surprised that she didn’t. The moment Lenz stopped moving, she left. She walked out of Pato’s bedroom the way she’d walked into it, her head high and her back straight, and she didn’t look back or break her stride.
And Pato stood there, listening to the sound of her heels against the polished floors until even that disappeared. And that was it. She was gone. He’d done his goddamned duty.
“You didn’t have to sleep with her!” Lenz declared, sounding fierce and protective, which made Pato feel that much more hollow. “She deserves better than that!”
“By all means, brother, let’s talk about what Adriana deserves,” Pato murmured dangerously. “The crown prince installs her in the position usually allocated to his mistresses, and keeps her there for years. And then his dirty playboy brother takes his sordid turn. And we planned it that way, because we knew exactly what would happen if we brought the last Righetti girl into this game. Does she deserve any of that?”
Lenz stared at him. “What is she to you?” he asked after a long moment.
“She is nothing to me,” Pato replied, his voice harsh. “Because nothing is the only thing I am allowed. Nothing is my stock in trade. I am useless, faithless, untrustworthy, and most of all, a great and continuing disgrace to my royal blood.” He held Lenz’s gaze for a taut breath. “Don’t worry, brother. I know who I am.”
Lenz looked pale then.
“Pato,” he said carefully, as if he was afraid of what Pato’s response might be. “We are finally in the endgame. We’ve worked too hard to get here. Didn’t you tell me this yourself only weeks ago?”
Pato scraped his hands over his face as if that could change the growing hollowness inside him. As if anything could.
“I know what I promised.” But he didn’t look at Lenz. He felt unbalanced, half-drunk, and he knew it was Adriana. She’d crippled him, and she thought he didn’t care. It was almost funny. “I have no intention of breaking my vow. I haven’t yet, have I?”
Lenz stared at him, lifting one hand to stroke his mouth, clearly mulling over the right approach to a thorny problem he hadn’t seen coming. Pato almost laughed then. This was why Lenz would make the perfect king. He could detach, step back, consider all outcomes. Pato, by contrast, couldn’t seem to do anything but seethe and rage. Especially today.
“We picked Adriana because of her name, yes,” Lenz said after several moments passed, his voice carefully diplomatic once again. “But she’s special. I kno
w it. I—”
Pato laughed then, a rusty blade of a sound that stopped his brother flat.
“We’re not going to stand about like pimpled schoolboys and compare notes,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “We’ll be the only people in this petty kingdom who do not find it necessary to pick over her body like so many carrion crows.”
For a moment, that simply hung there. Then Lenz blinked.
“Oh,” he said in a curious voice, a new light in his eyes as he looked at Pato. “I didn’t realize.”
“She’s out of this,” Pato said, ignoring that. “She isn’t coming back.”
Lenz studied him. “Is that wise?” he asked quietly. “Can we afford a deviation from the plan at this point? The wedding—”
“Is in a week, I know.” Pato couldn’t hide the bleakness that washed over him then. He didn’t try. “And she’s out of this. She’s free. If she deserves anything, it’s that.”
Lenz’s brows rose, but he only nodded. “Fair enough.”
Pato smiled then, though it was too sharp, and he understood that he was not himself. That he might never be himself again. That Adriana was gone and he was emptier than he’d been before, and he wasn’t sure he could live with it the way he knew he must. But he smiled anyway.
“How is the king’s health?” he asked, because Lenz was right. This was the end of this game, and he’d agreed years ago to play it. There was no changing that now, even if he’d changed the plan.
“The same,” Lenz said. He didn’t smile. He only looked tired. “The ministers are beginning to press him. It might happen sooner than we thought.”
Pato nodded. It was exactly as they’d planned. It turned out they were good at this, this dance of high-stakes deception and royal intrigue.
He sickened himself.
“Then I suppose we play on,” he said wearily.
Lenz’s gaze was sad. “We always do.”
A Royal Without Rules Page 12
