Calista knew her sister well enough to see that description didn’t sit well with her, even as she...fluttered. But if she wanted to play this game of hers, pretending she was a helpless creature at every opportunity when she wasn’t, Calista was more than happy to go along with it. Particularly if it also slapped at Prince Griffin and his warnings.
“Hush now,” she murmured soothingly. “This is part of why I’m marrying, Melody. To give you these wonderful new brothers.”
And it was worth it when Melody forgot herself for a moment, focusing her whole body in Calista’s direction with what seemed like obvious fury to her.
But Griffin was none the wiser. That was what mattered.
He was far too busy looking from Melody to Calista as if the word brother was a vile curse.
“I cannot wait,” he murmured, all silk and seduction.
But Calista thought there was something else in his gaze as he took himself out of the room.
And for a moment, the sisters stayed where they were.
“It really is like a fairy tale,” Calista said merrily. “Your very own Prince Charming cannot wait to welcome you to the family, Melody, despite your simpering.”
“I really ought to kill you. You know I can, right?” Melody was no longer assuming her Little Match Girl persona. She looked like herself again, capable and intent. “With my own two hands.”
“Yes, yes,” Calista said and sighed. “But then what would become of either one of us?”
Melody laughed, settling back against her chair. As if it was all a joke.
But Calista knew better.
Her father was calling her bluff in this game she’d never wanted to play. She had six days left before she could make her move and she had no doubt that if she didn’t throw him a bone, he would cart Melody off to some horrible prison of an institution somewhere. He’d call it a wedding present.
How could she live with that? Calista knew she couldn’t. She had to make a decision, soon. And it shouldn’t have been a hard one.
Of course she would protect her sister. The way she always had.
And she would do it at the expense of the man she’d never wanted to marry and shouldn’t have let herself care for.
Even if it killed her.
CHAPTER TEN
TWO WEEKS LATER, Orion still could not explain why it was he’d chosen to tell Calista that she was his first.
His only.
Or better yet, why she was the only thing on this planet that could make him break a vow he’d kept even when he was half-mad with adolescent hormones.
He’d rationalized it away, of course. He had always said he wouldn’t touch a woman unless he married her, and he was going to marry her. He would be making new and better vows in a week’s time, come Christmas Eve. But he was entirely too aware that he was excusing himself in a way he would not excuse anyone else had they been in the same position.
The trouble was, hypocrisy was entirely too delicious.
A notion that forced him to reassess the judgments he’d so happily levied on every other human alive. Like his father.
It was a particularly shattering thing indeed, to find himself feeling even vaguely compassionate about King Max. He hardly knew what to do with it.
Maybe it was easier to concentrate on his own sins, in the form of the woman he should not have touched—but he had.
Every morning for the past two weeks, he had woken with Calista. Tangled up in her bed, eyes gritty from lack of sleep, because after holding himself back from the pleasures of the flesh for so long, he was insatiable.
And she was nothing short of a feast. An endless banquet.
He could not get enough.
And because of her, Orion understood things he hadn’t before. The magic of touch. The madness of wanting anyone that much, of thinking it might cause actual, physical pain to go without. The things he longed for now could all be wrapped up with a bow and called more.
He wanted to be closer. He wanted to ignore every last responsibility in his life and focus only on the things they could do to each other in that bed.
Perhaps the word he was searching for when he thought about Calista was humbled.
She made him all too aware that the only reason he had ever been able to wrap himself in his upright, moralistic cloak of self-righteousness was because he hadn’t met her yet.
“You’re staring at me again,” she said, archly, from beside him. They were packed into yet another royal vehicle, en route to the last Christmas ball they would attend as an engaged couple.
Because next week’s ball on the night before Christmas would be their wedding reception.
He wasn’t sure he could name the way that beat in him, these days. He felt...possessive. Impatient. Because it was one more way to have her, and he intended to make sure he collected them all. Every last possible way there was to make her his, he intended to do it.
There was just this last week to get through.
“Can I not behold the woman who will be my wife?” he asked idly.
He held her hand in his, as had become his habit. He could not seem to keep himself from toying with the ring he’d put there, that great and glorious symbol of the queens of his people. And Calista was the last, best queen, by his reckoning. “In a mere week, Calista. Seven short days.”
She glanced at him, and as ever, he saw that tension in her. A kind of wariness in her expression, but warmth in her gaze.
He chose to concentrate on the warmth.
And if he felt a kind of drumming intensity, as if they were hurtling toward an end he couldn’t foresee—well. He chose to concentrate on the fact she would be his wife. Above all else.
“I can’t decide if you’re counting down to the day of our wedding with joy or if it’s all become a bit dire,” she said then, sounding almost muted. “Remember, Orion. You are being blackmailed into doing this.”
“Did you imagine I might have forgotten that?” He never forgot it. Though he was aware that somewhere in his mind, he had separated Calista from her father. Aristotle was the person blackmailing him. Maybe that made Calista innocent. Maybe he only wished it did. “I assure you, it is never far from my thoughts.”
“I can’t say I understand you.”
Tonight she looked particularly beautiful, but then, every time he saw her it was as if she’d transformed before his very eyes. There was a point at which he wasn’t certain he would be able to look at her directly. That was how much she seemed to glow, brighter than the coming Christmas.
“What is there to understand?” he asked.
“You can’t possibly trust me.” She sounded outraged by the notion. “It’s not possible. I’m the daughter of your enemy, and—”
“You are the daughter of my blackmailer, yes,” he said. “But your father is not my enemy, Calista. How can a parasite be an enemy? It can only be what it is. A leech, nothing more.”
She did not look mollified.
“The first day we met, I told you exactly who I was,” she bit out, and Orion was astonished to see her eyes were stormy. “I made it clear that no matter what happened, I would never be on your side. Did you forget that?”
“It’s not that I forgot it. It’s that things changed.”
“Things have changed for you.” She sounded desperate.
And the truth was, Orion deeply enjoyed her desperation in all its forms. The fact that he could make her beg when she was naked. The sounds she made, the pleas and the sobs. He had never heard any music he liked more.
Even if this had a harder edge, it was possible he was enjoying it more than he should have.
“Is this another patronizing discussion about my virginity?” he asked, amused. “A casual observer might note that you seem...obsessed.”
She pulled her hand from his, but not before he felt the trem
or in it. “I’m not obsessed with it. I just think that it’s entirely possible that the experience of losing it has affected you more than you imagine. Sex is just sex, Orion. It doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean that you should trust someone who’s never given you any reason to do anything of the kind.”
“Here’s what I wonder,” he said in a low voice, watching her closely. If he wasn’t mistaken, her eyes were slicked with an emotion he knew she would have denied. “What would happen if you worried less about what you thought might happen, and more attention to what actually has?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Nothing has actually happened.”
“I told you,” he said. “I trust you.”
She winced as if he’d hit her. “Then you’re a fool.”
And the way she said that, as if it was torn from her, haunted him as they pulled up into the line of cars delivering Idyllian nobles and commoners alike into the rest of their evening. Tonight’s ball was held in a sprawling villa on the far end of the island. Held for centuries by one of Idylla’s noble families, it had at different points in history been considered something of a secondary, southern palace.
This was usually Orion’s favorite ball. The villa was a work of art, marrying Idyllian architectural prowess with Italianate and Hellenic accents, as suited their position in the Aegean Sea. On a night that was cool by island standards, all the villa’s many atriums were filled with glowing heaters, strong lights. The imported evergreens were trimmed and bursting with ornaments. Night-blooming jasmine wafted in the air.
He and Calista were announced to the crowd and then led on a bit of a promenade through all the villa’s public rooms, as was tradition, but all Orion could concentrate on was the woman by his side. That odd gleam in her gaze. And the desperation that he knew, deep down perhaps he’d always known, had nothing to do with him.
He pulled her out onto the dance floor in the largest of the ballrooms to lead off the first song.
Was it his imagination, or did she seem more brittle than usual? More fragile?
Even...scared?
She is none of those things, something in him whispered. You should know better.
But this wasn’t about knowing. This was about feeling. And he suspected that if he said as much, she would bite his head off, there and then.
Still, that didn’t change the fact she looked haunted.
“You could always tell me what’s wrong,” he said quietly, holding her so she had no choice but to tip her head back and meet his gaze. “I am the king. If I cannot help you, who can?”
Calista had her usual public smile on her face, but the look in her beautiful sea-colored eyes was pure misery. “There are some things even a king can’t help.”
“Is it so terrible, then?”
“Orion. There’s no point in this.”
“There is.” He held her tighter, and recognized—yet again—that when it came to her he was not as in control as he should have been. Not even close. “Because I have to think that the woman I met in my private salon all those weeks ago would not have been torn. Whatever else she had going for her, chief among them was her sense of purpose. Maybe you should ask yourself, my lovely queen-to-be, what has happened to yours.”
He didn’t expect her eyes to darken the way they did. With a flash of temper and vulnerability that made him want nothing more than to gather her in his arms and carry her from this place, where so many eyes were upon them, and the glare of so much public interest made it hard for him to see her at all.
“I ask myself that question every day,” Calista said, her voice thick and rough.
And then the dance was done, and it was back again to the endless rounds of glad-handing and stilted conversations it was his job to make smooth.
Ever since Orion had found her out there in a distant corner of the Botanical Gardens with her father, she’d stayed close. Tonight was no exception. She stayed right there at his elbow, graceful and obliging, everything his queen should be.
He was getting used to having her there, Orion could admit. And he would never have imagined that as a possibility, so used was he to doing everything by himself. But over these past weeks, Calista had bloomed into her role—whether she liked it or not. And the more she did, like the sweet jasmine in the air all around them, the more Orion began to comprehend what it would be like if he and his queen were really, truly some kind of team.
She was nothing like his mother, who had always looked wan and pale, as if the slightest impertinence might send her into a swoon.
Calista was not delicate. She was vibrant. Just amusing enough, without being flippant. Capable of gentle flattery and asking surprisingly incisive questions with that same sweet smile.
“If you’re going to betray me,” Orion said as he escorted her from one set of careful, diplomatic conversations to the next, “I wish you would hurry up and do it. Then we could put it behind us and move on.”
“I had no idea you were such an optimist, Your Majesty,” she said, her voice a mild reproof. Though there was something bitter beneath it. “From a distance, you always appear so stern.”
“There could be no point in dedicating myself to changing this kingdom for the better if I lacked optimism,” he said. “How could there be? The country is bloated with enough cynicism as it is.”
Again, the look she gave him was dark. It made something in him tighten, as if in foreboding.
“Optimism is a privilege,” she said quietly. “A gift.”
Orion did not have time to chase that up as she moved to talk with a group of foreign ambassadors. Nor would he have, in all likelihood, even if they hadn’t been in public—because there was a part of him that didn’t want to know what ate at her.
A part of him that was afraid he did know, more like.
Still, if they were alone, he would have kissed her. He would have reached her that way.
Sometimes he thought it was the only way he could reach her.
Because he was certain, deep in his bones in a way he was not sure made any sense, that if he could simply marry Calista, everything would be all right. Making her his queen would break whatever spell it was that made her eyes go dark, as if this really was a fairy tale, after all.
Complete with its own ogre, he thought darkly when he found himself face-to-face with Aristotle.
Even though he had instructed his handlers at length that was never to happen. He shot a hard look at the aide to his right, who leaned in with his usual deferential smile.
“I beg your pardon, sire,” the man murmured in Orion’s ear. “He claimed he would cause a scene if he did not get an audience with you.”
And no doubt he would, Orion knew. No doubt he would make it into an opera, and happily. It was far better to suffer a conversation with Aristotle than to have to clean up another one of his messes.
But Orion didn’t have to like it.
“Do you really think you can avoid me?” The other man snarled, his flat eyes gleaming in a way Orion really didn’t like. “Surely you must know it doesn’t work that way. I’m marrying my daughter to you for access.”
“And here I thought I was marrying your daughter for damage control. Did we not sign documents to that effect?”
“Either way I will be your father-in-law. Your family, like it or not. And that must mean I will have the king’s ear.”
“No one is preventing you from speaking,” Orion replied evenly. “As to whether or not I plan to take your advice, I think you already know the answer.”
“You’d better watch yourself there, Your Majesty,” the older man growled, in a way that moved in Orion unpleasantly. He felt his stomach clench. “You may have wrapped me up in legal nonsense concerning that portfolio. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
Two months ago, it would not have occurred to Orion to cons
ider how satisfying it would be to punch Aristotle in his round face. Tonight, he had to fight to keep himself from it—and succeeded only because the last thing Idylla needed was their king in a common brawl.
“I am not a cat,” he said icily. “I am your king. And if I were you, Aristotle, I would endeavor to remember that before your mouth gets you into trouble.”
His aide was not close enough to hear his words, but his tone must have carried, because the man winced.
Aristotle snorted. “You are king of an island,” he sneered. “But I am king of a far greater kingdom. I tell people how to think. I tell them what to feel. I make up stories and convince them it’s the truth. All you do is wave from the back seat of a car, or wink invitingly on a few commemorative plates.”
“A person with so little respect for the monarchy should not be quite so desperate to marry into it, I would have thought,” Orion replied, keeping his voice cool—but wholly unable to do much about the edge beneath it.
“I made a meal of your father and the fact he couldn’t keep his pants on,” Aristotle said, looking smug and entirely...satisfied. “What do you think I’ll make out of a grown man as inexperienced as you are?”
For a moment, it was if everything—the villa, the world, all of creation—went blank.
Calista.
Her name was a cry inside him. A curse.
But she had already told him what she’d done, Orion realized, as if from a great distance.
She’d told him and she’d told him again, and he hadn’t listened.
It shouldn’t have surprised him—shocked him, even—that she had told him she would betray him, and then had.
He just hadn’t expected it to take this form.
“If I have a king in my pocket,” Aristotle was crowing at him, “you can bet that I have my own daughter sewed up tight. You need to adjust your attitude, sire.”
And then the vile little man swaggered away from him, leaving Orion to stand there.
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