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Because he was not his brother, who could produce a smile from the ether on command, then wield it like a weapon. Orion had not spent years perfecting asmile, thank you, when he’d had a kingdom to run and a rogue monarch to manage. His face did what it would.
He opened the door to his private salon briskly, prepared to lay out his plans and his expectations—
But the room was empty.
Orion blinked. He prided himself on being approachable, and no particular stickler for courtly etiquette, but he was still the king. Even as the crown prince, there was only one person who had ever dared keep him waiting—and his father was dead.
This was not an auspicious beginning to matrimonial life.
A moment later he realized the French doors that opened out onto one of the balconies was ajar. He frowned, because this was not part of his plan. Moreover, he would have laid odds—not that he ever gambled the way his father had—that his betrothed would have been eager for this meeting he’d been putting off for the better part of two years. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d stood just inside the door, waving one of her father’s tabloids in his face while crowing about her victory and his capitulation.
He’d expected as much, in fact.
And perhaps that wasn’t fair, he thought, because he prided himself on fairness, too. Or tried. The truth was, he knew very little about Lady Calista Skyros, the woman he was meant to marry. Because no matter what he liked to thunder at his brother, he too had been holding out hope that he wouldn’t have to do this.
Lady Calista was the eldest daughter of perhaps the single most vile citizen of the kingdom of Idylla, now the old king was dead. Aristotle Skyros had been born into Idyllian nobility, had ponced about in between various universities—getting sent down from each in turn—and had blown through his own fortune by the age of twenty-three. Luckily for him, his appalled father had died shortly thereafter, with no choice but to leave his considerable estate in his disappointing son’s hands. According to the many interviews he gave on his favorite topic—himself—Aristotle had disliked the seven months of so-called destitution he’d experienced and had thus vowed to do better with his second fortune.
Annoyingly, he had. He now owned a sprawling media empire, almost entirely made up of the kind of tabloid filth that made anyone who looked at it dirty. And those who were featured against their will in his snide, insinuating columns and slickly produced shows could never make themselves clean again.
As Orion knew personally.
When his father had announced, three years ago, that he had arranged Orion’s eventual marriage, Orion had not bothered to argue about it. There was no point fighting his father, especially not when the old king was deep in his cups, which was where he’d preferred to live. Orion had assumed that if he waited it out, his father would reverse himself. Possibly within the hour—another thing that happened with alarming regularity.
But instead, his father had died. In the squalid circumstances the country and the world had come to expect from him, naturally, with unfortunate women and mood-altering substances all around. Because why change in death what he had so exulted in during his life?
Aristotle Skyros had slithered out of his hellhole and into the palace almost before“The king is dead, long live the king”finished echoing through the halls. And he had made it known that as far as he was concerned, the betrothal the old king had made between the new King of Idylla and his daughter was set in stone.
“Surely I decide what is stone and what is nothing more than a bad dream we have now happily woken up from,” Orion had said.
With perhaps more menace than was wise.
Aristotle, an unpleasantly dissipated-looking man whose bald head gleamed with the same malevolence that was apparent in his gaze, had smiled. Oily and insincere.
“You can do anything you please, Your Majesty,” he had replied unctuously. He’d bowed his head as if in deference. “As will I, if necessary.”
Orion had been tempted to pretend he didn’t recognize the threat in the other man’s words. He had been king for a matter of hours at that point, and had been naive enough to imagine there might be some kind of grace period. Some allowance while he found his feet—but no. Of course not.
But he had tamped down on his temper and had not, sadly, strangled the other man where he sat. “If you wish to threaten me, Skyros, I suggest you do it. I detest pretense.”
Aristotle had not bothered with another show of false obeisance. “You will marry my daughter, Majesty. Because if you do not, I will have no choice but to release a selection of photographs I have in my possession that were in a private collection for years. Photographs so shocking and potentially explosive that your father offered you as collateral to keep them hidden.”
Orion had scoffed at that. “My father would have cheerfully offered me as collateral in a game of checkers. And likely did.” He’d shaken his head. “What could possibly be worse than the things he already felt comfortable foisting upon the entire world?”
“I thought you might ask that,” the other man had said, with entirely too much satisfaction in his voice.
That had been Orion’s first inkling that this was all worse than he’d thought.
Aristotle pulled out a file and placed it on the table between them. A low coffee table where he could, with what seemed to Orion to be great relish, flip through the photographs he’d brought with him.
It took three pictures.
Orion sat back, feeling faintly sick.
And with those images in his head that he knew he would never be able to wash clean.
The man across from him hadn’t laughed, though there was a look about him that suggested he would, later.
“Tempting, isn’t it, to imagine that with the old man dead and buried, all his scandalous acts are swept away. But I think you see, now, that there are some things that can never go away. And more important, that you too will find yourself tainted if they are exposed.” Aristotle had smiled again. “Your Majesty.”
