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He spent a long while circulating through the crowd, doing his best to mimic the sort of man who was filled with Christmas cheer.
Still, when the first waltz started, he knew his duty as king and therefore, always, the guest of honor. He wanted to touch Calista just then about as much as he wanted to punch himself in the face, but he swept her into his arms anyway, because it was expected.
And for a few moments, they danced in pointed silence.
But only for a few moments.
“This is really taking your martyr act a step too far,” she said when she could clearly take the quiet no longer, though she smiled joyfully up at him while she said it.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do.” Her smile widened. “It really is so boring, Orion. It’s one thing to crucify yourself on every stray piece of wood that crosses your path in the palace. But it’s something else again, I think, to fling yourself upon the altar of your own self-importancein public.”
He took his time looking down at her, and if he held her a shade too close, well. The crowds would have to deal with it. He was the bloody king.
“I will repeat. I don’t know what you mean.”
The spark of challenge lit up those eyes of hers, and suddenly, he could think of nothing but her fists at her side in that private parlor. And how surprised he’d been that she didn’t swing then.
He should have known that, of course, she’d waited.
“Don’t you?” she asked, still looking—to someone not quite as close to her as he was—happy and filled with appropriate seasonal delight. “I thought you prided yourself on being such a rational man. Such a reasonable king after all our dark years with your father.” She made a tutting sound. “How tragic not to know yourself at all.”
“Perhaps a better conversation would be to investigate what it is you know about yourself, Calista,” he replied, and it was like a song inside him, almost as good as his mouth on hers. “As far as I can tell, you’ve made yourself your father’s handmaid. You prance around in your corporate costume. You shout at anyone who will listen about your importance. But at the end of the day, the first moment he could sell you, he did. Even pawns are treated better than that, surely.”
“You are the reigning expert on pawns, of course,” she replied coolly.
“Whose pawn am I?”
“My father’s, for one thing.” She smirked at him. “Look at that. We have something in common after all.”
He thought it wise, then, to finish off the dance with less talking. Because for the first time in his life, in as long as he could remember, he wasn’t entirely certain that he remained as in control of himself as he ought to have been.
And he wasn’t even kissing her.
That notion was so astounding—so hideous, really—that when the waltz ended he executed a stark, stiff sort of bow, and stalked away from her.
Better to leave his fiancée on the dance floor abruptly than to descend into...whatever it was that moved in him, dark and dangerous, that had everything to do with the taste of her, still there on his tongue.
Far more potent than wine or spirits.
The night wore on. Nobility and dignitaries danced attendance on him, as ever. He posed for a thousand pictures, trying to exude calm. Quiet certainty. As if his very presence was a happy ending. One the whole country had been waiting for, all this time.
Not that he knew much about such things. Still, he tried.
Toward the end of the night, conscious that it was impolite for anyone to leave until he did, Orion once again sought out Calista. The gardens looked mysterious at night. All the sparkling lights and the glow from the heaters gave the winding paths an almost unearthly glow. Orion walked with no apparent haste, as if he was out for a stroll, enjoying that even he could find a measure of anonymity in the shadows. And when he was seen, he gave no indication that he was looking for a woman who, had she been anyone else, would have been stuck to his side all night to advance her position.
There was a part of him that liked her more than he should because she was nothing like the sort of socialite heiress he’d always assumed he would marry, all soft smiles to the face and a dulcet-toned knife to the back. Calista, he knew, would come at him from the front.
Something about that was deeply cheering.
He rounded a corner festooned with exultant shrubberies, then, and saw her. At last.
The soft light surrounded her, making her glow as if she was her own candle, and Orion felt...poleaxed. Frozen solid, there where he stood, though the Mediterranean night was nowhere near freezing.
As if he’d never seen a woman before.
His heart exploded inside his chest, so dramatic a sensation that he was half-afraid he’d suffered the kind of cardiac arrest that had claimed his father. But no, he realized after a breath, he was still standing.
