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Stunned.
With no one to blame but himself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“SOMETHINGMUSTBEthe matter,” Calista said, when a solid half hour had passed in brooding silence. The drive from the far southern tip of the island to the royal city, and the palace, took almost two hours.
And she had never known Orion to be so quiet, when he was not tending to his many messages. Or more accurately, to go without speaking.
Because he might not be using words, but he was not particularlyquietat all. On the contrary, he seemed to be burning up as he sat there beside her seemingly staring out the window at nothing. White hot and loud.
“A great many things are the matter,” he replied then, surprising her. “But none of them require conversation.”
And the tone he used made her chest...hurt.
“What did my father say?” she asked, because she’d seen them, off to the side in a little alcove, where no one else could hear. And she knew full well how her father liked to take advantage of things when no one else could hear him.
She felt a clock ticking inside her, so loud that her head ached.
Time is running out, something within her whispered.
Because somehow, she’d forgotten that the point of all of this was Melody. Taking her father’s power so that he couldn’t hurt Melody. It was Orion’s fault. He had made her feel things she would have said she didn’t believe in—
But none of that mattered. It couldn’t matter, not until the board meeting was done. On December 23, she would take on her father, and win. At last.
Even if, inside, it felt as if she’d already lost.
It doesn’t matter how it feels, she snapped at herself.It matters that you get it done so Melody is never at risk again.
“What do you imagine your father had to say to me?” Orion asked, and for the first time in this interminable car ride, he actually angled his head to look at her.
The breath left her in a harsh exhalation she could do nothing to prevent.
Because for the first time, possibly ever—and certainly in as long as she’d known him—King Orion looked...
Furious.
“I’ve no idea,” she gritted out, though that was a lie, and her heart was galloping.
“I blame myself,” he said in a gritty sort of voice that didn’t make anything better. “After all, you did warn me. Repeatedly. But somehow, I thought your loathing of your father would win the day.”
She tried to make her heart stop racing. “Everybody loathes my father. He inspires it in everyone. I’m not sure that’s newsworthy.”
“Understand this,” Orion told her then, his voice a hard thing and his dark gold gaze pinning her to her seat. “I am not embarrassed by my inexperience. If it were splashed across every paper in the land, I would not care at all. I kept my vows of celibacy because I wanted to keep them, and I broke them because I wanted to break them. You and your father cannot shame me with the truth.”
His name was on her lips, but she bit it back. She didn’t dare.
Orion held that terrible gaze on hers. “What shames me, Calista, is that I imagined you were better than him.”
Calista felt sick.
She hated herself, deeply and wildly, and she hated most of all that she’d felt she had no choice but to throw her father a bone. Because she had to keep him happy and distracted or she knew she would never see her sister again. He would ship her off somewhere, never tell her where, and if Calista was lucky, she might get upsetting reports about how Melody was faring from time to time.
It was more likely that he would act as if Melody had never existed, just to torture Calista.
She could see it all unfold before her as if it had already happened.
The decision should have been an easy one. She hated that it hadn’t been. That telling her father something so private had made her feel as dirty and disgusting as he was.
