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And sealing her fate, which felt a lot like drowning.
For a long while, possibly an intertwined string of forevers, there was nothing but the endless noise. Bright lights, popping flashbulbs, disorienting and overwhelming.
But Orion never let go of her. And Calista held on to her smile and his strong hand as if her life depended on it.
She rather thought it did.
And by the time they made it up the red-carpeted aisle to the ornate front doors of the Royal Opera House, where the inaugural holiday ball was always held, Calista felt as if she’d run back-to-back marathons. She, who had never deliberately run more than a few feet in her life.
If this was what it felt like, panicked and distraught down to her very bones, she had no plans to start.
Inside the first vestibule of the opera house, it was shockingly quiet. So quiet that it almost hurt.
Except, of course, for the ragged sound of her breathing.
“Try not to hyperventilate,” Orion advised her, in that same mild way of his that was simultaneously enraging and comforting. “This is the opera, I grant you. But even so, best to avoid the fainting couch. It will only raise unfortunate questions.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she managed to say, though she wasn’t. She really, really wasn’t. But as she didn’t plan to collapse on the floor and cry, what was the point of saying so?
“I’m delighted to hear it.”
Orion nodded past her. That was when it occurred to Calista to look around, too. Beneath the dramatic gargoyles up high and statuary littered about the marble foyer, there were liveried servants standing at the ready.
And she realized what she should already have known. Most people did not get a moment to collect themselves before entering the ball proper. This was an indulgence granted the king, no doubt so he could make an appropriately pageant-like entrance.
So thattheycould make an entrance, she corrected herself. Together.
Because this was what she’d signed up for. Or her father had signed her up for, which amounted to the same thing. And it was no one’s fault but hers that she’d failed to think it through.
Calista blew out a breath, found her smile again, and took the arm he offered her.
And then, like it or not, she allowed the King of Idylla to walk her into the first holiday ball of the season.
Worse still, she allowed him to claim her as his with a perfect, romantic kiss from the balcony that would have swept her off her feet entirely. That would have made her forget the crowd, and the astonishment from all quarters, and the cruel satisfaction on her father’s face.
It would have broken her heart and sewed it back together, she was sure, if only she hadn’t been faking.
And if she had to remind herself, repeatedly, that she was faking, that Orion was performing under duress, that none of this was real nor ever could be—
Well.
Calista had learned a long time ago how to keep a smile on her face and pretend like her life depended on it. Like Melody’s life depended on it, too.
Because it always had.
CHAPTER FIVE
“THESTAFFISin disarray,” Griffin declared, letting himself into Orion’s study.
“Do come in, Griffin,” Orion murmured sardonically as his brother prowled over to fling himself in his favorite chair, without even pretending to wait for an invitation. “Make yourself right at home. No need to worry I might be tending to delicate matters of state.”
He wasn’t, just at the moment. But he certainly could have been.
Griffin looked notably unbothered at the possibility. “It’s an uproar out there. The palace halls are alive with speculation now that everything has been made official and all the rumors are at an end. You may have kicked off a revolution after all.”
Orion sighed and stopped attempting to make sense of the latest lengthy, meandering tome that his least favorite minister had presented him, expecting Orion would have it read and annotated with cogent commentary already. He rubbed at his temples, suddenly aware that he’d been at his desk reading stacks upon stacks of documents since early that morning. Because like it or not, he was playing catch-up on the past twenty years. The whole of his father’s reign.
“What is it I’ve done to provoke the revolutionary forces today?” He eyed his younger brother with the usual mix of baffled affection, no little hint of jealousy at the antics Griffin as spare rather than heir was permitted to get up to, and a rush of gratitude that all the same, they were who they were.
