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“On your nuptials,” he told her.
“My...what?”
“Oh, happy day,” Zeus said, letting his voice carry and rebound back from the pristine walls like so much dizzy heat. “We are to be married, little hen. You lucky thing. Women have been jostling for that position since before I was born.”
“Not me!” She looked almost insultingly horrified. “I don’t want to marryyou!”
Which, he could admit, was another reason she was perfect. Zeus could not have tolerated any of the women who did actually want to marry him, and quite desperately. They longed for either the man they thought he was or the throne he would take, and either way, it wasn’t him.
Only this woman, only Nina, would do.
“I am afraid that what you want does not signify,” he said, only the pulse he could feel hammering away in his neck indicating that he was perhaps not as calm as he was pretending. “You should have done more research. If you had, you might have found that here on Theosian soil, the heir to the kingdom belongs to the crown.”
Her eyes widened. Almost comically. “That can’t possibly mean what I think it does.”
Zeus rocked back on his heels, all the strange emotions and memories of this encounter washing over him. But he concentrated on her dismay instead.
“I am the Crown Prince. If you are carrying my heir, I have every right to do with you what I will.” He allowed himself a smile then, one that in no way hid the truth of him, and enjoyed it when her eyes widened farther still. “Welcome to Theosia. I hope you like our little island. You will one day reign as Queen.”
Nina cemented her place here by looking ill at the very idea. Not triumphant. Not thrilled.Ill.“That will never, ever happen. Never.”
“Oh, but it will, my little hen,” Zeus replied, something perilously close to happy, for once. He told himself it was because the pieces of this last part of his plan were coming together so beautifully. And for no other reason. Because there could not possibly be another reason. Zeus would not allow there to be. “You can depend on it.”
