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CHAPTER TWO
THELITTLEBROWNhen clucking at him was...unexpected.
Yet unexpected was not boring.
And His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Zeus of Theosia, had been bored beyond all reason for entirely too long. Since the last time he’d seen her, not that he cared to think too closely about his curious reactions to that night. He’d put them aside and had quickly returned to his usual state of tedium. That was the trouble with declaring oneself rebellious at a young age and then pursuing each and every potential rebellion that arose thereafter with intensity and commitment.
It turned out that a man could not live on sin alone.
Zeus had certainly tried.
“A legion or two, perhaps,” he agreed, moving toward the bizarre apparition in the vague shape of a woman who had somehow braved the palace gates and found her way here. A task many had tried, but most had failed. Resoundingly. He received weekly reports on the women who attempted to skirt security and chase him down. That she had succeeded was...not boring at all. “A gentleman does not count such things.”
“No need when the tabloids count for you.”
He stopped before her, taking in this strange little creature who had scurried around in the wake of Princess Isabeau for all these years. She looked much as she had during the years of his irksome arranged engagement. Dressed to accentuate every possible flaw on her body. Her hair an obvious afterthought. Isabeau had always cultivated glamour, and yet in the background of too many of her photos had lurked her little pet.
Impervious to criticism. Unmoved by commentary.
Zeus had come to see Miss Nina Graine as a kind of symbol. Perhaps, particularly last summer, he had ascribed to her a great many motivations and inner thoughts she did not possess. He had spent more time than he liked to admit conjuring her into an unlikely heroine, the better to suit his schemes.
Then he’d discovered the truth. Beneath all the stories he’d told himself and more, beneath each and every one of the masks she’d ever worn. And the truth had nearly burned him alive.
He didn’t like to think about that too much.
Or the fact that her disappearance after their night together had...bothered him.
Zeus allowed himself a smile now as he gazed down at her, returned to all her frumpy splendor. “Most women who claw their way past the palace guard for an audience with me are of a certain stripe. They are not you, however. They do notactuallyconvince poor Thaddeus to bring them before me.”
Isabeau’s hen did not smile. She did not flutter, as women so often did in his presence, like so many small and hapless birds in need of a strong hand to perch upon. She only gripped her enormous, pregnant belly—a development Zeus doubted very much was unrelated to her appearance in his rooms, yet did not wish to consider too closely just yet—and glared at him.
Glared,when he was used to obliging sighs and simpering calf’s eyes.
How novel.
“Is that meant to be flattering?”Nina demanded.
When, as a rule, no one dared make demands of him. Unless they were his perpetually unamused father, who never did anything but. And was eternally disappointed at Zeus’s refusal to meet them.
His fondest rebellion yet.
“Your memory losses are your own business,” Nina was saying in that same distinctly unsimpering manner. “But you must have me confused for one of those women you can’t remember if you think I’d find your inability to recall the faces of the women you’ve slept with to be anything but sad. For you.”
Zeus was unrepentant. “I always remembersomepart of the women gracious enough to share themselves with me. It is not always their faces, I grant you. Shall I tell you what I recall of you?”
“I think not. My memory is not clouded with excess.Iknow what happened that night.”
She did not exactlythrusther belly at him, but Zeus eyed it like it was a weapon all the same. Still, he wasn’t ready to go there. He was intrigued for the first time in as long as he could remember—six months, perhaps,a voice in him suggested slyly—and besides, he was perfectly capable of plotting his next move while appearing to be nothing more than the sybaritic fool he’d been playing too well for too long.
He lived in that space. Owned it, even.
Zeus shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and endeavored to look as if, given the faintest push, he might actually lounge about in midair.
“If you mean you did me a great service, I certainly remember that,” he said lazily.“Have you gone to all this trouble so that I might thank you? Perhaps an investiture of some kind? I do wish I’d known to dig out the ceremonial swords.”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised that you’ve rewritten what happened to suit yourself.” She rolled her eyes—another gesture that Zeus did not usually see before him. Who would dare? No matter how little he seemed to stand upon ceremony, he was still the Crown Prince of Theosia. “I think we both know that you used me.”
“I?” Zeus laughed then. He had wanted something novel, something more than this morbid waiting game he had no choice but to be mired in. He hadn’t thought to specify what it was he wanted, and lo, she had appeared. “Iusedyou?I was under the impression it was the other way around. I have long felt that my primary function is to provide scandals on command, the better for a certain kind of woman to be forced to leave a life she secretly never liked in the first place.”
