Bride by Royal Decree

by Caitlin Crews

  “I beg your pardon?”

  That particular tone of his usually ended conversations and led straight to abject apologies and groveling. Maggy didn’t appear to hear it—much less heed it. She looked at him with challenge all over her face and not a single trace of anything like respect.

  “You don’t care what kind of princess I am. You care what kind of queen I might make you, in the unlikely event I actually ever marry you.”

  Reza paid no attention to that roaring thing in him that was eating him alive. He focused on her, making no attempt to hide the full force of his intent. His need. His royal will that had so far gone uncontested in every way that mattered.

  She might be something different than what he was used to. He might find her far more fascinating than was wise or good. She might seem to speak to a part of him he hadn’t known was there and didn’t like at all—as it seemed a bit too close to the sort of nonsense that had made his father a weak, sentimental, and ultimately dangerous man behind the mask of the decent enough king he’d been before the end. But that didn’t change the fact that he would get what he wanted.

  He always did.

  “You are Princess Magdalena of Santa Domini,” he told her. “It is not your choice whether or not to marry me, I’m afraid. It is your destiny.”

  * * *

  Maggy didn’t feel like a princess. She felt turned inside out. It stood to reason she didn’t feel like anybody’s destiny, either.

  Especially not his. No matter what that blood test had said.

  “In my experience,” she said in a low voice, somehow keeping that raw, scraped hollow thing inside of her at bay a little longer, “destiny is a word people use when they don’t have a good reason for doing the thing they want to do, but they want permission to go ahead and do it anyway.”

  Reza pushed back from the table then, getting to his feet. Maggy didn’t know why it surprised her—or maybe that wasn’t the right word. It was more that when he moved, she felt it. It seemed to wrap tight around her and tug. There was a certain powerful smoothness to him. A different sort of danger. It made her belly fold in on itself and feel something like precarious.

  She didn’t want to keep sitting there like a target while he was moving around the room, so she got to her feet, too, hardly sparing a glance for the perfectly prepared roast that she hadn’t so much as touched.

  The king who’d told her she was a princess and, more than that, his moved from the seating area near the fire to the windows and stood there. She knew he couldn’t really be gazing out at the mountains. It was too dark and she could see her own reflection from farther back in the room. He clasped his hands behind him in a way she found deeply royal even if she’d never given a moment’s thought to what that might mean before.

  Whatever a king was supposed to be, Reza looked the part. It only called more attention to the fact that she was about as far away from a princess as it was possible to get. She didn’t need to consult her phone to understand that a stretchy dress from a low-market chain store was not what most European royals wore. Not even that endlessly trendy royal from England who was always on the front page of everything.

  What she didn’t understand was the way her stomach twisted at the thought she’d somehow...let Reza down.

  You are pathological, she snapped at herself.

  “You were promised to me at your birth,” he said after a long moment. Maggy had the distinct impression he’d been watching her through the glass. And she was surprised at the gruffness in his voice. That and how it washed over her, like a caress. Like his hand against her face once more. She tried to blink that away. “Our fathers were, if not friends precisely, fond of each other and, more than that, committed to peace and prosperity in both our kingdoms. Combining our countries in marriage pleased them both—and made a great deal of sense in other ways, as well.” Beyond him, the dark valley spread out toward the next set of hills, twinkling with village lights like grounded stars. But somehow, Maggy couldn’t quite find them soothing. “I always knew I was to marry you. This meant that any youthful, adolescent shenanigans would affect you directly. I therefore kept such things to a minimum, so as to cause neither your father nor mine any embarrassment. Whatever life I wanted to lead, I always knew that there had to be room in it for you.”

  Maggy thought of her own adolescence. Empty and often painful. She’d thought of no one but herself because she’d had no one but herself. It wasn’t selfishness if it was pure survival, surely. Because no one else had cared if she lived or died.

  She had no idea how to reconcile those barren years with what he was telling her. The idea that anyone had ever cared about her, even in the most abstract way, simply didn’t make sense.

  “You must have hated me.” Her voice was low. “I would have hated it if I had to live my life based on some stranger.”

  Even as she said that, she knew it was a lie. That was true now. But there was a time Maggy would have given anything to think something—anything—she did or said or was mattered to another living soul.

  Reza shook his head. In the glass, Maggy could see herself and his outline, as if the harsh beauty of his face was too much for mere glass to handle.

  “You were mine,” he said gruffly, and she told herself she didn’t notice the way that seared into her. Like electricity. Like some kind of truth. “And I was under no illusions about the life I was expected to lead. I was bred to rule a country, not cater to my own self-interest. I assumed I would be lucky enough to rule it with a queen raised in a similar fashion, who would want the same things I did.”

  “What is that, exactly?” she asked, and there was some of that electricity in her voice, making it tighter than it should have been. “Because I wanted a roof over my head. A safe place to sleep. What does a king want from life that he doesn’t already have every time he snaps his fingers?”

  “My people safe, first and foremost,” he told her, with another one of those shrugs that made her long for things she couldn’t quite name. It was something about the width of his shoulders, the bold, masculine line of his back. “But beyond that, I want what any man wants, if for different reasons. Peace, prosperity, and heirs.”

  All this time, the conversation had been abstract. To Maggy, anyway. A princess who was to marry and become a queen to a man who was so indisputably a king. All part and parcel of the silly fairy tale this man kept spinning. He might as well have been talking about dancing candelabras or singing crabs for all the impact royalty was likely have on Maggy’s life. Even after the aide had come back with the blood test results, she hadn’t actually absorbed it.

  Yet somehow, heirs was the word that smacked into her. It made her realize that whatever else was happening, Reza wasn’t kidding around. About any of this. And that this wasn’t a fairy tale. This was happening. To her. Right now.

  Heirs.

  His heirs.

  Her heart was beating much too fast and much too hard. She crossed her arms over her chest and tried to hold herself together. And no matter that the empty place deep inside of her was...changing. Growing. Shifting. An earthquake from the inside out, and it seemed to throb, low and insistent, in her core.

  “I’ve watched a lot of television shows where people carry on about heirs,” Maggy managed to say. “I never thought it was a real thing anyone actually did. Meaning, I’ve literally never heard anyone use that word to describe their kids.”

  He turned to look at her then, and that was...not better. His gray gaze was dark. It seemed to punch straight through her.

  “I will not be leaving my heirs a few pieces of chipped china and furniture of unknown provenance,” Reza said softly, and yet there was somehow even more power in his voice than before. “And one does not generally refer to the princes and princesses of the Constantines as kids. Moreover, the Constantines are what I will leave them. The House of Argos has held the throne for centuries.”

  She swallowed and was sure he could hear it. That was how dry her thro
at was just then. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “I suspect you are following me perfectly well,” he countered, and there was something different in his gaze then. Something almost lazy.

  Maggy ignored the flush that moved over her. In her.

  “You came to claim me because you thought I was this princess.”

  “And behold my prescience. You are.”

  She frowned at him—or more precisely, at the way that gleam in his gaze made her feel a different kind of itchy. Inside and out.

  “You found me,” she said quietly. “But now what? You want to whisk me off to some palace and make a queen out of me?”

  He inclined his head. “I do.”

  “And where you come from, it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about the heirs you need when you talk about things like marriage. To total strangers.”

  “Mine is a hereditary monarchy, Princess,” Reza said in that same low, stirring way. “As such, I only have two jobs. One is to preserve the kingdom. The second is to pass it down to a child of my blood, as my ancestors have done since time immemorial.”

  “Why haven’t you already married?” She studied him as he stood there, straight and tall and arrogant, making it clear he was subjecting himself to her questions because he chose to do so. Not because he had to. Maggy had no idea how he managed to make that so clear. She only knew that something in her thrilled to it. To him. “You’ve had twenty years to produce heirs with some other appropriate person.”

  “None of them were quite so perfect for me as you.”

  What amazed her, Maggy could admit, was how very much she wanted to believe that was a personal comment. A compliment of some kind. Was that how low she’d sunk? That she’d take anything—even this sheer madness—as evidence she didn’t have to be quite as alone as she’d always been?

  “And by perfect, you mean the blood in my veins.”

  He inclined his head again, though this time, there was something about his hard, stern mouth that got to her. Her heart kicked at her again. Harder this time.

  “The blood in your veins is a factor, yes. As is the fact a marriage with a Santa Domini links our kingdoms in precisely the way our fathers envisioned. They were right about the benefits then. I am no less right about those same benefits now. Had all gone as planned, we would have married the moment you came of age.”

  There was no reason at all that should wind through her the way it did, more of that electricity and something sweet and melting besides. It shouldn’t steal her breath, imagining that other life that had been stolen from her. Absurd wealth, yes, but also—and more important, to her mind—family. And perhaps in that alternate reality Maggy might have married this man the way he seemed to think she would have. Which would likely mean she’d already have his children, something she found both impossible to imagine and all too easy to conjure up.

  That Maggy would have so much family she would never have to be alone again, unless she chose it.

  But that Maggy had been killed in a car accident twenty years ago. The fact Maggy had actually survived the crash didn’t change that. She felt herself shiver slightly. Very, very slightly, and she instantly tried to hide it. Still, she thought he saw it.

  “So the only difference between me in this scenario and any other trophy wife is that you live in an actual castle, not just a big, tacky house,” she managed to say through that same too-tight throat, but she knew she wasn’t fighting him any longer.

  When exactly were you fighting him? a cynical little voice asked, deep inside. When you raced to get to this hotel? At his beck and call?

  “I think you will find Constantine Castle to be something of an upgrade from your present circumstances,” Reza said quietly, his gaze intent on her. “And that there will be trophies to go around.”

  And Maggy wasn’t a fool. She’d never had the opportunity to be a fool. She’d grown up too fast and much too hard. Like any woman, especially one with limited means, she’d had no choice but to make a study of men. She knew rich men. She knew they did as they liked and expected those they trampled over to thank them for the privilege.

  She could only imagine that a king would be even worse.

  There was no such thing as fairy tales. She knew that. She’d lived it.

  But it seemed as if Reza was the closest she’d ever come. Maggy could imagine a thousand ways she’d come to regret what she was about to do, but at least that would all be new. She’d done this. Poor, scared, alone. She was tired of this.

  If he said she was a princess, she’d become a princess. If he wanted a queen, she’d do that, too. Hell, heirs weren’t an issue, either—if she ignored the how and concentrated on what came after that. A baby or two meant that no matter what happened with this man who watched her as if he was another one of the looming mountains outside and he could wait there forever, she could never be discarded again.

  She could have everything she ever wanted. All those dreams she’d learned to despise in herself, thinking them a weakness. All those longings she’d tamped down and hidden away, refusing to give in to their lure in the harsh light of day. She could have all of it and a fairy tale, too.

  All she had to do was dare to claim it.

  “It sounds wonderful,” she said, and she ignored the way her voice cracked. Maggy concentrated on the king before her with the hard rain eyes and the future she wanted, no matter the cost. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WALKING AWAY FROM the only life she’d ever known should have been harder.

  That was the thought that kept poking at Maggy. It lodged inside her, growing strange talons and digging into her with every breath. She’d always known who she was, or anyway, how she was defined in the community. The lost girl. The discarded girl. She’d been told who she was a thousand times, by well-meaning counselors and harried teachers and unimpressed employers alike. She’d always known exactly what her life entailed, whether she liked it or not. Surely learning that she was wrong about that, that everyone she’d ever known was wrong about that—about everything—should have been as much of a blow as a gift.

  But in reality, it couldn’t have been easier.

  “We will leave in the morning,” Reza told her that first night in his sprawling mountain lodge, a certain anticipation making his gray eyes gleam. Or maybe the anticipation was in her, not in him. She couldn’t tell. “Do not worry about your possessions or the details of your life here. My people will handle it.”

  And Maggy had decided to surrender to this, hadn’t she? She wanted the fairy tale, whatever it took. She didn’t argue with him. She went and sat back down at the table. Then she thought, what the hell, and sampled the roast, assuming her appetite would catch up with her. She even took a sip or two of the wine, which was so different from any wine she’d ever tasted before that she couldn’t quite believe both could be called by the same name.

  “I don’t think I can leave the country,” she said at one point, glancing up to find Reza still over by the windows, watching her as if she baffled him. There was something else there, in that endlessly dark and gray gaze of his, but she didn’t want to look too closely at that. Or the fact she could feel it like an echo inside of her all the same.

  “Why not?” he asked, with a mildness she somehow didn’t trust.

  Maggy shrugged. “I never got a passport. International travel wasn’t really on my list of goals these past few years. I’ve been more interested in other things. Like a steady job, a safe place to crash. You know.”

  She knew full well he didn’t know. That was why she’d said it.

  But of course, Reza was unconcerned with such petty things as reality.

  “I took the liberty of having my government issue you a passport marking you as a citizen of the Constantines,” he told her. “I trust you will find it sufficient to cross any and all borders.”

  Maggy had a lot of follow-up questions then. When had he had this passport made? What name was on the p
assport, for that matter? Why was he so certain and simultaneously unconcerned—about everything? But none of those questions mattered, in the long run. They had nothing to do with her goals here, which were fairy tales and her very own family, the end. She needed to keep her focus trained on the prize.

  So she only aimed another smile at him, each one easier and smoother than the last. He returned to the table to join her and she kept right on eating, because the courses his staff kept bringing in were a far cry from the cups of noodles she prepared on her hot plate.

  Maggy stuffed herself so full she thought she might burst. And she didn’t think she’d mind if she did.

  The next morning a fleet of sleek, gleaming black SUVs appeared outside the rickety old house where she’d lived these past few years. Maggy came down to meet them with the very few things she considered necessities in a backpack. In a sweatshirt that said STOWE across the front in a nod to a nearby ski resort, her favorite pair of battered jeans, and the boots that had always made her feel tougher than she really was. Blank-faced guards handed her into the SUV in the center of the little convoy. She climbed in and slid across buttery leather seats so soft she was afraid she’d destroy them somehow simply by touching them with her clumsy commoner denim.

  But then she found herself inside an enclosed space with Reza, and that was far more alarming than any potential damage she might do to soft leather.

  Her heart took up that low, wild beat again. Her blood surged through her in a way that seemed designed to do damage. She was shocked it didn’t. And there was that melting, clenching thing, too, low in her belly, making it hard to sit still.

  Reza sat next to her as if the spacious backseat was a throne. He took up too much of the available room—or maybe it was that he seemed to claim all the air. He was wearing what she guessed was the royal version of casual. A button-down shirt that looked softer than the leather beneath her, crisp and white against his olive skin, and it amazed her on some distant level how that made her mouth water. He set down the papers he was scanning to look at her as she settled in the seat beside him.