To her surprise, he laughed. “Is that how you measure things, then? Whether or not it shows up in one of your sick, sad little magazines?”
“I believe in a free press. Was that the question?”
Orion looked entirely too satisfied, and she hated that something deep in her belly quivered. “I’ll take that to mean you haven’t the slightest idea what you’re getting into with me, Lady Calista. How delightful to find we have something in common.”
She felt breathless again, and had to remind herself that no matter what happened here in the battle for control over their dreary arranged marriage, it didn’t change reality. And the reality was that he could talk a big game, but he had no power here. He could go on all he liked about his reserved, competent, sane rule, but he had no control over her or what she did or if she was any of those things.
She would go along with this betrothal because it served her ends, not his. And because it did, she would go to these balls, announce their engagement in front of the whole world, and if necessary, even marry him on Christmas Eve in accordance with tradition. Who cared?
Because as soon as she made her move and took over her father’s company, it didn’t matter whether she was a queen or not. She would be the owner of Skyros Media and she would finally be in the power position over her father, and able to make sure that no matter what happened, Melody would be safe.
She’d worked her whole life to get to this place.
What did she care where King Orion was in all of that?
“Since we’re speaking so frankly,” he said, and she got the strangest sensation, then. It was almost as if he could read her every last thought. But that was impossible. He was a stranger and she’d been told a thousand times that she was unreadable. “I should tell you that I will insist on fidelity.”
“Of course you will.” She rolled her eyes and got the distinct impression that no one else had dared do such a thing in his exalted presence. So she did it again. “That must be one of those king things.”
“It’s one of those funny little king things, yes. The royal bloodline determines the line of succession and the throne of Idylla, which has been in my family for centuries.” His stern mouth almost curved. Calista almost shivered. “You will find, I think, that most people in my position feel strongly about such things.”
“Let me tell you how I see my role as queen,” Calista replied, in a brighter tone than strictly necessary. “I can dress the part. But if you expect me to look adoring or fold my hands awkwardly while standing obediently behind you, that’s not going to work.”
“You are of noble blood, Lady Calista. Surely you are aware that there are certain rules of etiquette. One of them, I am very much afraid, is that you cannot precede your king.”
She sighed. “I understand etiquette, thank you. But you need to know, right now, that I have no intention of pretending I’m subservient to any man. King or otherwise.”
“Of course not.” His voice was soothing. Too soothing, she realized. “That is why you have agreed to marry a total stranger. Because you are in no way subject to your father’s demands.”
“For all you know I agitated for this job.”
She should not have said that. It had been a reaction, not strategic at all, and she regretted it at once. And then regretted it even more when those eyes of his glowed gold, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was somehow aware he’d scored points.
“I am delighted that you understand that it is, in fact, a job.” He nodded toward the windows, somehow incorporating the whole of the island with a single peremptory gesture. “Idylla is an ancient kingdom. Small but independent. An independence that historically came with a price.”
“Are you...telling me the history of my own country?”
“The history of this country is the history of my family, Lady Calista. Yours, I believe, was elevated to nobility a great many centuries after the first in my line took the throne.”
“Oh, I see,” she said after a moment. After that sunk in. “You don’t have the power in this interaction that you think you should, so you need to turn it into a measure of your manhood. In this case, a purer blood than thou contest. Too bad blood isn’t actually blue. Or we could each open up a vein and see whose better matches the sky.”
“You missed my meaning entirely,” Orion said calmly. She decided she hated that tone he took. Its very calmness was offensive. “The fact is, with a few notable exceptions like my own father, my line has held the throne throughout the ages because members of my family have always been aware that a king can only be as effective as he is loved.”
“Loved by whom?” she asked, with a laugh.
And she ignored the fact that the laugh felt a great deal more brittle than it should have.
“I do not require your love, never fear,” Orion said coolly. And, once again, he made her imagine for a terrible moment that she might actually flush beet red. Like some silly girl, when she was anything but. “I require you to do your job. And no, that does not involve making cow’s eyes at me before the cameras, though I would prefer it if you did not scowl. That is not good optics, as I believe someone in your profession should know. But all of that is window dressing.”
“Window dressing? I would have assumed you had staff for such things.”
“Your actual job is really very simple, Lady Calista,” he told her in the same cool, intense way. “All you need to do is provide me with an heir.”
Something fairly sizzled between them at that. Much as Calista wanted to deny it.
She felt her breath punch out of her lungs. She felt her body change, growing hot and heavy.
Though she would die before she let him know that he had that effect on her.
She would die before she admitted that the idea of making heirs with him suddenly seemed a lot more interesting to her than wresting control of her father’s company—because it was a betrayal of everything she’d worked for.
It was a betrayal of her sister, herself, and the things they’d held dear their whole lives.
It was a betrayal, plain and simple, and she loathed herself for even a moment’s lapse from her primary goal, even if only in her own head.
She made herself laugh instead. As insultingly as possible.
“You don’t have to dress it up, Your Majesty,” she drawled, and smirked at him. Edgy and tight. “You could have just said you want to have sex with me. You don’t have to pretend it’s for the greater good.”
CHAPTER THREE
TWO DAYS LATER, like it or not, Orion found himself getting ready for the first of the traditional Idylla Christmas balls he would share with his betrothed—soon to be his fiancée.
And if he wasn’t mistaken, he was actually...filled with a kind of anticipation.
Though he told himself it was not as simple as that.
He’d assumed that their initial meeting would sort things out between them and make their respective roles clear. He’d expected Lady Calista would be like any of the typical Idyllian nobility he’d contended with in his time. She’d been meant to fawn all over him and tremble and agree with his every utterance, pretending she was a vestal virgin instead of the usual party girl. His staff had assured him that while, yes, she had a place in her father’s company, it was only for show.
But she hadn’t done any of the things he’d expected she would.
To say that their first meeting had not gone according to plan was vastly understating things.
She’d underscored that by continuing to do nothing but laugh, at him, clearly and boldly—and then leaving. Without waiting to be dismissed from his presence.
And more to the point, without agreeing to a single one of his terms. Or even pretending to consider them.
He had no idea what to expect from her now.
Orion had spent entirely too much time since then trying to
reconcile who he’d imagined she was based on the depth of her curtsy and the demure outfit she’d worn with who she’d proved herself to be thereafter.
He was appalled at himself, actually.
If he thought about it, he should have assumed that a man like Aristotle Skyros could, naturally, bring into the world only creatures of selfish greed and astonishingly bad behavior just like himself. There was nothing surprising about it.
What Orion couldn’t countenance was his reaction to her.
Everything she’d said and done had horrified him on every level, obviously. But his body had taken a different tack despite that. His body—which he had long treated with a monastic fervor Griffin liked to tell him took zealotry to a new level—did not seem to care that Lady Calista was nothing at all like the queen he’d imagined would rule at his side. His body had not been overly concerned with her disrespect, her flippant responses, her outright rudeness to both her king and her future husband.
His body had gone rogue.
Orion had woken in the night, hard and aching. And no amount of exercise, cold showers, or sheer fury at his own flesh had helped. The only thing that had was a detailed fantasy about what it would be like to feel that sharp tongue of hers on that place where he was hardest of all.
Damn her.
Orion prided himself on being in control. Of himself, his body and his mind, in every regard. It was another decision he had made a long, long time ago, faced with the knowledge that one of the great many ways his father was weak was King Max’s inability to deny his appetites. Particularly those of the flesh.
Orion had decided that he would be master of his own body in the same way that he had learned to master his emotions. He stayed in control, always, no matter the provocation.
Calista Skyros tested him. She tested his control.
And he hated it.
But he hadn’t lost a test yet.
Grimly, Orion allowed his fussy, demanding valet to finish dressing him in the exquisite black-tie ensemble appropriate for the occasion of the first ball of the Idyllian holiday season. The ball that happened to also be the place where the newly crowned king would announce his engagement, God help him. Once he was suitably regal, he walked through the palace to meet the woman he would never have chosen to be his bride, especially now that he’d met her. There in the same private salon where he’d faced the unpleasant fact that he was not as immune to a blackmailer’s daughter as he should have been.
Perhaps the truth was that he was still trying to face that fact.
This time, when he opened the door and stepped inside, the room was not empty.
It was, in fact, rather more full than he had been anticipating. He was displeased to note that Calista had come with her father and mother in tow. Something he was sure he ought to have been horrified by.
But for the moment, a very long moment that seemed to drag out for an eternity, all he could see was her.
Just her, as if there was a separate sun that was all hers and it shined on only her, even at night.
He dismissed the strange, almost poetic notion and focused on this woman he was bound to marry, but that was no better. Because she was even prettier than the last time he’d seen her, which should not have been possible. And even though he knew now that the something about her he’d been unable to name on the balcony two days ago was the same sort of malice her father wore visibly on his skin, his body didn’t know the difference. Tonight she wore a dramatic gown, a dress that sparkled and made her look exactly like a girl with a princess fantasy only he could make come true, when he now knew she was nothing of the kind.
Did he want that kind of woman? Wrapped up in some kind of a fairy tale when the reality of royal life was far less shiny and sweet? Before meeting Calista, Orion would have sworn he did not. But that was before she had haunted him, simply by looking at him as if she was in control of things.
She smirked at him again now, which he already both detested and found sent a heat spiraling deep into him.
Making him ache anew.
“I take it that when you’re a king, you don’t have to observe typical first-date protocols. Like picking a girl up at her own house, rather than forcing her to traipse all the way to the palace to act overawed and under-royal.”
That was her greeting to her future husband, lord and king.
Orion could not have said why it was he wanted to smile.
“Kings do not go on first dates, Lady Calista,” he said. Forbiddingly. “Nor do they dance attendance at the front doors of their lessers. The nation would revolt at the very idea.”
And he enjoyed that too much, maybe. Because judging by their reactions, neither Skyros nor his daughter considered themselves less than anything—and particularly not less than their king.
But it was Skyros’s wife who surprised Orion the most. She was the one who’d dropped into a spine-crackingly low curtsy at the sight of him. She rose now, long after she’d descended, her carriage painfully erect. And she glared at her husband and daughter in turn.
“We do not treat the King of Idylla with disrespect,” she hissed. “We know our duty.”
“Spare me the royalist rantings, Appollonia,” Aristotle growled. But even so, he performed a perfunctory bow, almost as if he worried someone might be hid behind the paintings, recording the meeting. Then, to Orion’s astonishment, Calista curtsied, too.
But when she rose, she fixed Orion with her own fierce glare. As if she was daring him to comment on the fact that her mother still held sway over her behavior. At least in public.
He tucked that away like a small, handy knife in his boot—the kind Griffin carried about with him ever since his time in the military.
“I hope you’re both prepared for this tonight,” Aristotle said then, puffing himself up with his usual self-importance, his beady eyes all over Orion as if he was not a king, but a piece of meat for the carving. “Everybody loves a royal love story and the two of you need to sell it.”
Orion did not dignify that with a response. Particularly when the response he had in mind involved the Royal Guard.
“Papa.” To his surprise, the smirk on Calista’s lips changed to a far more engaging smile when she aimed it at her father, though Orion found he believed it less. “This isn’t a love story. You know that.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Aristotle retorted, with a laugh that made him seem even oilier than before. “No one cares about what’s real, Calista. What matters is what I can sell.”
And he kept his gaze fixed on Orion on the off chance he was confused as to who was the greater commodity here.
Odious, appalling man.
Soon to be your father-in-law, a dark voice in him intoned.
It was unbearable.
“Thank you,” Orion said. With all the authority in him. “I would now like a few moments alone with Lady Calista, please.”
And he inclined his head in a manner that made it clear he was not making a request.
Aristotle grumbled, but his wife managed to somehow genuflect while removing herself from the room, backward. A feat that would have impressed Orion, but then the door closed behind Aristotle and Appollonia Skyros.
Leaving just the two of them in the room. Orion and Calista.
He should not have let that simple fact work its way beneath his skin, all heat and need.
The way she did, too, doing nothing more than standing there looking like a proper royal princess, save for the smirk on her clever mouth and the challenge in her aquamarine gaze.
He reminded himself that he was meant to be deeply appalled, but she was wearing a sweeping, romantic gown and he wanted to put his hands on her more than he should have wanted anything that in no way benefited his kingdom, and he couldn’t quite make himself believe that he was appalled at all.
“Do you have more demands for me
to refuse?” Calista asked. And Orion really should have found himself sickened by the tone she used. So disrespectful. So patently challenging. So invigorating, if he was honest, after a day crammed full of deadly dull policy advisers and pompous cabinet ministers. “That sounds like fun to me.”
“Not quite,” he said.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the small, velvet pouch he’d slipped in there earlier, despite his valet’s protestations that it murdered the line of his suit. He pretended he did not notice the way she watched him, or the way she stood there before him, stiffly, as if she didn’t know how to anticipate what he might do next.
Orion sensed he had the advantage, and he knew he should seize it, utilize it—
But first he had to do this. It was tradition, no matter the circumstances of their betrothal, and he was nothing if not a slave to tradition.
He upended the pouch and shook out the ring inside it. And he knew he didn’t imagine the quick indrawn breath he heard from Calista when it landed on his palm.
“This is the foremost crown jewel of Idylla,” he told her, though he expected she already knew it. He held the ring there where it had landed, gleaming in the lamplight and seeming to take on a life of its own—as if all the legends that had ever been told about it were there in its stones and shimmer. “It is always worn by the Queen of Idylla whether she is ruler or consort. So it has been for generations.”
“I—” For the first time since he’d met her, Calista Skyros actually looked...rattled. “I can’t wear that.”
“You must,” he said, simply enough. “It is a symbol. It is meaningful to our people. And it matters to me that it grace the left hand of my bride, as custom and tradition requires.”
He watched her swallow, as if her throat hurt. “I think you should save it,” she said in a low voice, after a moment. “For someone more appropriate.”
“We are far past the point of debating what is appropriate.” He held the ring in his hand, admiring, as he always did, the ancient workmanship. The pile of diamonds and sapphires, seemingly haphazard, yet all together a monument to sea and sky that captured the essence of his island kingdom. “I do not plan to have a selection of queens, Calista. Only the one.”
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