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There would be no more of that, obviously. That was the promise he’d made.
That was the promise he would keep.
Griffin might have felt a faint pang at that, but he ignored it. He gazed out toward the sea instead. His residence sat up on the same hill with the rest of the palace complex and, on clear days, offered him sweeping views of whitewashed buildings with the Aegean forever beckoning in the distance. Tonight there were only the bright lights of the island’s only real city and the brooding dark of the sea beyond.
A match for the brooding dark within him—but he was ridding himself of that, too. Griffin had been so many versions of himself in this life already. A doting son to a fragile mother. A rebellious son to a despised father. An avid student, a clever soldier, a playboy prince. What was one more role?
A protector, this time.
This time Griffin intended to get it right.
He heard a sound behind him as the door was opened and his bride was led inside.His bride.Hiswife.
Griffin still wasn’t used to those terms, but when he turned to face her, he forgot whatever pangs he might have had for careless nights with reckless people. Because Melody seemed to blot out any memories he might have had. Simply by entering the room.
He imagined that if it was daylight, she might block out the sun.
“I hope I’m not dressed inappropriately,” she said in that breathy voice that made him want to conquer dragons and raze cities on her behalf. With his own two hands.
Melody looked frail and uncertain as she clung to the arm of her aide. The other woman was dressed all in black and held herself still in a manner that poked at him.Too still,something in him warned, as if he was still in the military. The aide was of indeterminate age and bowed slightly at the sight of him. Very slightly. And she did not smile.
But he dismissed that odd, poking feeling, because he was far more consumed with Melody.
“The staff who dressed me claimed that you’d said it was casual, but I don’t know what casual means in a royal palace—”
“You look beautiful, Melody,” Griffin assured her.
It was a throwaway remark. He would have said it to anyone so jittery and overwhelmed in his presence.
But in her case, he found he meant it.
Profoundly.
Gone was the pretty dress she’d worn earlier and the careful hair, fixedjust soto look splendidly effortless in photos. Tonight, she wore what passed for casual in his circles. What looked like a whisper soft cashmere sweater over elegant trousers in a lustrous black. Her hair was down, but not in the wild way he’d seen it once before. It looked silky and smooth, and he had the near ungovernable urge to get his hands in it. To hold all that sunshine and gold in his palms and watch it slip through his fingers.
He tried to shove that unhelpful urge away.
“Do you require your aide’s assistance to eat?” he asked.
Courteously, he thought. And yet he could have sworn that both of the women’s expressions...changed. Tightened, almost.
“She can manage,” the older woman said.
A bit forbiddingly, to Griffin’s mind. Then, not waiting to be dismissed as she technically should have, she bowed her way out of his presence. And the room.
When the door closed behind her aide, Melody took a step—
And Griffin cursed himself for not moving sooner as he sprang across the room to take hold of her arm.
“We don’t want you to trip, Melody,” he said, as gently as he could.
“You are too kind,” she replied.
Sweetly.
Too sweetly, something in him muttered, but he ignored that, too. How could his frail and breakable bride betoosweet when she could barely function without assistance?
He steered her, not to the table waiting for them, but out to the balcony where torches flickered against the December darkness.
