AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
“YOURBETROTHEDISwaiting for you, sire,” came the diffident voice of King Orion’s personal steward from behind him. “In your private salon, as requested.”
Orion murmured his thanks, but didn’t turn around. He kept his brooding gaze on his beloved country, laid out before him in the November sun. This view from the heights of the palace took in the largest town on the main island that made up the kingdom of Idylla, a sweep of stark-white buildings with the blue Aegean beyond. He had always loved this view. In the long, dark days of his father’s tumultuous, dissolute reign—meaning, the whole of Orion’s life until a few months ago—he had often stood here. He had gazed out on the splendor of the tiny kingdom that had endured so many wars, regime changes, and horrors in its time, yet still stood.
He had told himself that Idylla would survive his father, too.
And he had spent long hours imagining what he would do differently when it was his turn to rule. How best he could honor and serve his people, who deserved so much better than what they’d had in King Max.
Orion had vowed he would do whatever it took to erase his people’s memories of his father’s excesses and scandals. Whatever it took to restore peace and serenity to the island kingdom.
But now the time had come to do just that.
And he did not want any part of it.
“‘Your betrothed,’” echoed his brother, Prince Griffin, in the lazily sardonic tone that matched the way he lounged in his preferred armchair, there before the fireplace that took up the better part of one wall. “You do know that you’re the king now, Orion—don’t you? I was there when they put the crown on your head.”
“Do you mean when you swore an oath of fealty to me?” Orion asked mildly, without turning around. “Feel free to enact it.”
“Yes, yes, my entire life is an act of homage to my liege,” Griffin murmured in the same tone. He paused a moment. “You could also choosenotto be betrothed. Then make it law. Again—you are the king. You can do as you like. I would have thought that was the main benefit of the whole thing.”
Orion could do just that. Of course he could. But there were factors at play that Griffin didn’t know about and, more important, Orion had given his word. Their father had gone back on his word habitually. Constantly. King Max’s word had been meaningless.
Orion had no intention of being anything like his father.
“If I did such a thing I would be no better than him,” he said quietly, to the only other person alive who knew how seriously he took these things.
“You were born better than him,” Griffin retorted, a familiar harshness in his voice that always accompanied any discussion of their late, unlamented father.
Because King Max had not simply been a bad monarch, though he was that. In spades. He had been a far worse father than he’d been a king, and a terrible husband to their mother to boot.
But this was not the time to compare scars.
The future Orion had promised his people was here. He was that future. And he had no intention of breaking his promises. His earliest memories were of the vows his father had broken, one after the next, as if it was a game to him. He had betrayed his family and his country with the same carelessness. Orion would do neither.
No matter how little he liked what he needed to do next.
When he’d been sixteen, he had made a vow to the pack of reporters who had followed him about, clamoring for the crown prince’s take on his father’s every scandal. He had told them with all the ringing intensity of youth thathewould live a blameless, honorable, scandal-free life.
Orion had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep that promise.
He saw no reason to stop now.
“Then I will leave you to your martyrdom,” his younger brother said. “I know how you love it.”
Orion turned, then. Griffin grinned at him, then rose—as wholly unrepentant as ever. He stretched like a cat instead of a prince, because he had always taken great pleasure in flaunting his physicality at every turn.
The spare could do as he liked. The heir, on the other hand, had always to think first of the kingdom.
Their father had apparently missed that lesson, but Orion had stamped it deep into his bones.
“Duty comes for us all, brother,” he said lightly.
Or lightly for him, in any case.
“I haven’t forgotten what I promised you,” Griffin replied. “Even though, obviously, you could wave your autocratic pinkie and save us both from our fates.” He let out a long, delighted laugh when Orion only frowned at him. “Please spare me another lecture on what we owe our subjects. Or your subjects, more like. I’ve heard it all before. I, too, will commit myself to blamelessness. Soon.”
“It becomes no less true in the retelling,” Orion said with what he hoped was quiet dignity. Instead of what he actually felt. That being the lowering realization that if he could, he would shirk this betrothal in a heartbeat, no matter what destruction that might cause. He would wave the royal pinkie—
