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CHAPTER ONE
MARITPRESSEDAhand against the white corset of the wedding dress in an attempt to calm the unease sweeping across her stomach. Her heart fluttered in her chest, not with the nerves of an eager bride but with the fear that she was about to make a terrible mistake. Until she remembered exactly why she was doing this. The hand at her stomach formed into a fist. She had made her decision. It might be the last reckless act of the youngest Svardian Princess, but it was important. She knew what she was doing.
Liar.
The voice sounded very much like Freya’s. Marit’s heart thudded guiltily in her chest at the thought of the older sister who had been more like a mother to her than their own. No, Princess Freya most definitely wouldnotapprove of what Marit was about to do.
She looked at her reflection in the hotel room’s mirror and clenched her jaw when she saw her lip trembling. Shouldn’t a mother be present on her daughter’s wedding day? Shouldn’t family be gathered? Friends?
Inhaling slow and deep, Marit turned a critical eye on the off-the-shelf wedding dress she and André had bought in the Parisian boutique yesterday afternoon. The sweetheart neckline gaped a little and the dress looked too big for her. The skirt, made of layers and layers and layers of tulle, swamped her and there was something about the colour...the startling white made her look pallid.
It’s not the dress, Marit.
When Aleksander, her older brother and King of Svardia, had called her to his office in Rilderdal Palace two weeks ago, she thought he’d found out about her secret project. That perhaps one of his palace spies had told him about her plans to create an inner city youth orchestra. Marit might not have been allowed to study music at university, but she could never have walked away from it. She’d kept the venture a secret because her family—herparents—would have expected her to fail. Just like they had ever since she’d been an awkward young princess tripping over her own feet, or spilling chocolate sauce on her gown just minutes before the yearly Christmas family photograph, or later, nearly causing an international incident because she had forgotten the correct etiquette with the Taiwanese delegation.
So, two weeks ago, Marit had sat in the King of Svardia’s office—a jarring clash of the latest technology and original baroque interior design—mentally mounting a defence of the youth project she’d been working on for eight months since leaving university.
And when her brother had said, ‘Freya will be stepping down. She has no choice. And neither do you. You will now be second in line to the throne,’ she’d not heard him at first. But her heart had.
It understood, far more quickly than her brain, the precarious position she was now in and, caught between fight or flight, the organ had stopped. Her body’s need for survival had been the only thing that forced a powerful, loud, crashing thud of a beat through her heart to restart it. Her brother’s dominant gaze had needled into her awareness, forcing understanding through her shocked mind. There had been no choice. No discussion. It simply was.
She had met her sister outside her brother’s office, tears gathering in Freya’s beautiful amber eyes, and they had crashed together in an embrace that conveyed the depth and desperation of their love and their fears. Freya was the most loving and generous person Marit had ever known and that she would never be able to carry a child to term was devastating. But that Freya felt she could not remain second in line to the throne because she was not able to produce the spare heirs required to protect the future of the Svardian monarchy felt unbearably cruel. Freya loved what she did with a passion Marit could only ever compare to her own love of music. And Marit feared the loss of that role on top of the children Freya had wanted so much might just be too much for her sister to bear.
Marit’s grief for Freya’s loss was a seething dark, aching thing. But her greatest shame was the twist of selfishness within it that ached for her own loss:herfreedom. Through the years it had been made painfully clear that Marit was surplus to requirements. She might have received the required royal training but no one had ever expected, or wanted, her to be involved in royal duties. And the role that Freya was leaving was frankly intimidating to the Princess who had been proclaimed The Rebellious Royal by every single international broadsheet. There had never been any question of her refusing her King’s command. Marit wouldneverabandon her brother or sister in such a way. But there was one last act of rebellion she had left to do. As second in line to the throne, she would have to marry a man with a title, a man of her brother’s choosing.
But she just couldn’t.
The thought of marrying a stranger, of being intimate with a man she’d never met... Her heart quivered in her chest as her breath stuttered around what she was about to do. Because she wasn’t second in line to the throneyet. And if she was already married by the time she took her sister’s place, then the legislation that had tied the hands of Svardian princesses for generations wouldn’t apply to her.
Which was why Marit was standing in front of a mirror in the best suite inLe Jardin Exquisin an off-the-shelf wedding dress, about to marry André Du Sault. Her best friend from university, and the only reason she’d scraped a pass on the business degree her parents had insisted she took, understood why she was doing this. He had his own reasons and the rest, they’d decided in the short time they’d had to pull this entire thing together, they would figure out as they went. But now? Now it was time to get married.
The sound of a commotion outside the suite drew her attention to the door, ruffling the layers of the tulle skirt.
‘Monsieur, arrêtez!Wait,monsieur! You cannot go in there.Monsieur!’
The panicked cries of the hotel’s staff were all the warning Marit had before the door was flung open to reveal a figure in the doorway with silvery eyes and a determined jaw, staring at her as if he knew her.
Contrary to popular belief, Lykos Livas was not in the habit of kidnapping women on their wedding days. Not that he hadn’t, on occasion, enjoyed the company of a runaway bride or two. But tracking down and retrieving a runaway princess in the heart of Paris on the morning of what she intended to be her wedding day at the behest of said Princess’s brother was hardly a normal start to the day for Lykos. He checked the address in the message on his phone and returned the mobile to his ear, leaning back against his silver Aston Martin Vantage.
‘Are you sure she’s here?’ he demanded.
‘I’m sure that herphoneis there, Lykos. As I’m currently in Norfolk patching drywall—’
‘You’re what?’ Lykos frowned in confusion, unable to imagine Theron Thiakos, CEO of an internationally renowned security company, doing DIY of all things.
‘Finally fixing the hole that Summer put in the wall.’
‘Adelfe, if you and Summer are in the middle of—’
‘Ela, Lykos, that’s the mother of my child,’ Theron groused.
‘And she’s perfect for you,’ Lykos soothed in the most patronising tone he could manage.
‘Nai, she is,’ Theron replied smugly, ignoring Lykos’s tease. Lykos was happy for the man he had all but grown up with on the streets of Greece. Straining at the constraints of the orphanage in Piraeus, the two had raised merry hell throughout Athens until they had been discovered by Kyros Agyros. That his success was even partly down to the man who had both mentored Lykos and betrayed his trust still stung. But it had been an important lesson to learn and one he’d never forget; the only person in this life that he could trust was himself.
‘So, are you going to tell me why you needed me to track the phone of the youngest Svardian Princess?’
‘It’s a palace phone and the King of Svardia gave his permission,’ Lykos replied without betraying the direction of his thoughts.
