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“Not from where I’m standing. Don’t you have a sister? Where is she in all this?”
Calista surged forward, her aquamarine eyes clouded with some great emotion. And then, to his eternal astonishment, thumped him.
In the chest.
Hard.
“Don’t you mention my sister. Don’t you try to drag her into this. She has her own troubles, and certainly doesn’t need palace drama on top of it.”
“Are you sure?” Orion asked with an idleness he did not feel. “Are you protecting your sister because she needs protection? Or because you like how it feels to be the one forever in demand? The one forever spreading out the mantle of your many sacrifices far and wide, so you can complain about them?”
She thumped him again, and it was clarifying.
Because it was rage inducing. Though, if he thought about it, it wasn’t rage at all that surged in him then.
It was hot, dark and deep, but it wasn’t quiterage.
And the truth was, he felt that hair shirt disintegrating all around him. He could hardly remember the vows he’d made, or why.
Because even though she was thumping him, which would have bordered on a treasonous assault if anyone else had done it, all he could seem to focus on was that she was touching him.
Calista wastouching him,and of her own volition.
That felt far stronger than any vow.
“You haven’t the slightest idea what it’s like,” she threw at him.
“Says a civilian to a king.”
Temper flashed over her face, and there was something almost electric about it. He could feel the same currents from earlier, but they were hotter now. Brighter.
As if the two of them, together, burned like a fever.
And she appeared to be just getting started. “You don’t know the first thing about real life. You don’t know about loss. You don’t know what it’s like to work your whole life for something only to have it snatched away from you at the last second.”
“I am being blackmailed into marrying you, Calista, though I am the bloody king—and not my father. Perhaps it is you who do not understand.”
“I have fought my whole life,” she seethed at him. “Any sacrifices I made were not to martyr myself so I could feel better about my choices, but because they were necessary. Life and death, Orion. You weren’t the only one who grew up under the whims of a terrible father. And not everyone gets to be a crown prince in that scenario. Some of us have to suffer in private. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, because you live in a gilded palace, making laws and issuing commandments. You should try the real world sometime.”
“Lady Calista. Please. You are the daughter of a billionaire. You live in an island kingdom the poets call enchanted. Magical. A real-life fairy tale. Perhaps you are no more acquainted with the real world than I.”
She blew out a breath at that, as if she was deflating there before his eyes. And he had the impression she wasn’t entirely aware of it when instead of thumping him again, her hand flattened out, so that her palm was resting in the hollow between his pectoral muscles.
Calista might not be aware of it, but he could think of nothing else.
And for a moment, their gazes remained tangled together, and they...breathed.
As if they shared that same breath.
“I wish...” she began. “I wish that I could... You and I...”
But she didn’t finish.
Orion reached up and covered her hand with his, trapping her there against his chest.
And he couldn’t tell if that was her heartbeat he felt, or his own. Only that it rang in him like a warning. Like a new song.
“Then do something about it,” he told her.
