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Because like it or not, she always stood. And did the horrible things no one else could—no matter what it cost her.
“I have spent my entire life working hard to get myself into a position where I can change things,” she heard herself say, as if she could possibly explain herself to this man she was terribly afraid she might love.
This man she had already betrayed.
“In a week, you will become capable of simply moving your little finger and changing whatever you like, as queen. Or did you forget that when you marry me, the only person with more power than you in all the world is me?”
“That doesn’t count,” she threw at him, feeling desperate and despairing, all at once. “That’s what he wants. Don’t you understand?”
“Are you concocting some doomed attempt to make your father feel things like a normal human being?” His eyes blazed still, that terrible gold. “From sad experience, Calista, I can tell you it won’t work. I tried to talk to my father once, man-to-man. It only served to entertain him.”
She let out a sound that was not quite a sob. “I don’t want totalkto my father. I want to crush him.”
“And then what?” Orion demanded, his fingers pressing into her skin. “When you rise to take his place, what will become of you?”
She shook her head, but it didn’t occur to her to pull away from him. Not yet. Or maybe she couldn’t.
Maybe, despite everything, she didn’t want to.
How had this happened? How had she lost her focus so completely?
But she knew. It was him. It was Orion.
He had gotten beneath her skin, and worse, into her bones. She couldn’t take a breath without feeling him there, and she knew there’d be no changing that. That no matter what happened here, or next week in her board meeting, or on Christmas Eve, or ever after, straight on into the future, he would stay right there.
Deep in her bones, always.
For good or ill.
The inevitability was almost comforting.
“What are you going to do?” he demanded, his beautiful face close.
She thought of all the years she’d put in. Her father’s handprint on her face. Her sister, so fiercely herself despite her parents’ horror that she had come out of the womb something less than perfect in their eyes.
“I will do what I have to,” she said.
And understood as she did that this thing between them, these last two weeks, was only the latest thing she sacrificed on the altar of this quest of hers.
“Be certain this is what you want,” Orion said, his voice like a bell deep inside her. He dropped his hands. “Because the truth, Calista, is that I am not so optimistic. No son of my father’s could be. And when I stop hoping for better, that is when, I am afraid, you will find me far less accommodating and far more uncompromising than you can possibly imagine.”
“Medieval,” she whispered, remembering their first meeting. She cleared her throat. “You can imprison me on Castle Crag if you must, Orion. But it won’t change anything. It can’t.”
“So be it,” he whispered, and there was a finality in his voice.
And when he turned and headed back to the car, away from the sea, the ring she wore on her hand felt heavy. Like iron.
Like prison bars, close and tight around her.
You have no choice, she told herself, again and again. She had to keep Melody safe.
Maybe Orion was right, and once she became his queen—ifshe became his queen—she would find herself able todecreeher sister safe... But what if her father acted before then?
She would risk herself. But she refused to risk her sister.
“I have no choice,” she whispered, when there was only the December wind to hear.
And it seemed to her the sea itself laughed at her predicament, doused her in salt and recrimination, and then left her to the fate she’d made real with her own two hands.
