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But no, she wasn’t going to lose herself this time.
This time she had a purpose.
‘Come and catch me, Your Majesty,’ she whispered to him, even though he wouldn’t be able to hear. ‘Catch me if you can.’
Then she tore her gaze from his and made her way off the dance floor and deeper into the club.
‘That looks like trouble,’ Khalil observed coolly from his place on the catwalk beside Galen.
‘Pretty trouble,’ Augustine agreed.
Galen barely heard them. The woman in the silver dress had disappeared into the crowd, but he was still staring after her, conscious that he was gripping the rail very tightly, every muscle in his body tense.
He’d noticed her immediately. It had been impossible not to. Everyone else in the club was wearing dark shades or black, but not her. She’d stood out in the crowd like the only star in a night sky, glittering and bright in a dress that seemed to be made out of liquid mercury. Her long, straight pale hair had swirled like a veil around her as she’d danced, graceful and sensual. She looked as if she’d been dipped in silver, moonlight in the shape of a woman.
His wasn’t the only attention she’d drawn, others had obviously been as taken with her as he was, moving to dance closer to her, and he’d been filled with a wave of possessiveness that had nearly made him stride from the catwalk and down the stairs to join her on the dance floor. Make it clear to every man in the club that she was his.
A ridiculous notion. He’d never been a possessive man and he wasn’t about to start being one over a pretty stranger in a club. He wasn’t here to find a woman anyway. He was here to meet his friends and that was all.
Except he didn’t stop scanning the crowds below him, searching for a flash of silver.
‘I take it you’re going to go after her?’ Augustine murmured.
‘No,’ Galen said.
‘Are you sure? Because if you’re not going to then I might—’
‘No,’ Galen repeated and found he’d pushed himself away from the rail and was now standing on the catwalk eye to eye with one of his closest friends. ‘You will not.’
But the expression on Augustine’s fallen-angel face was only amused. ‘Does that sound like a claim to you, Khal?’ he said, not looking away from Galen.
‘It does,’ Khalil agreed. He didn’t sound amused. He sounded cool and unruffled, the way he always did.
Laughter glittered in Augustine’s blue-green eyes and probably at Galen’s expense, but Galen ignored it. He was long used to his friend’s tendency to poke at people to get a reaction. It was useful, or so Augustine claimed. You could tell a lot about a person by how long they held onto their temper.
Galen never lost his, never even let it slip. A loose temper was a sign of a weak mind, his father had often said, which Galen had always thought the worst kind of hypocrisy. Because while Alexandros Kouros had never screamed or shouted, his cold fury had consumed not only his court, but also Galen’s childhood into the bargain.
Galen himself tried to be a different sort of king, a less rigid king, but there was only so much he could do given the bitter truth that lay at the heart of his throne. A secret only he knew, that no one else could ever find out.
It was guarding that secret that made him act in ways that made him rather too much like Alexandros for comfort.
Not that he had a choice.
‘Not now, August,’ Galen said flatly. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Augustine gave him an assessing look. ‘Forgive me, my friend, but when are you in the mood?’
‘That’s none of your—’
‘You’re in danger of becoming as boring as your reputation, Galen, I told you this.’ A light thread of amusement coloured his voice, but there was a hint of steel beneath it too. Augustine was very fond of the iron fist in the velvet glove approach.
Galen was conscious of a flick of irritation. It was his friends’ last night in Therisos—they’d both come for a brief, unofficial visit to catch up, which the three of them did every three months or when their schedules allowed—and Augustine had wanted to mark the occasion by visiting the club. It was a chain he’d set up himself, mainly for his own amusement, or so he’d said, but also because he was sick of being photographed everywhere he went and preferred a more...discreet environment.
There were no reporters here and everyone who entered signed an NDA. The perfect place to let your hair down, or so Augustine had said. ‘Remember your youth,’ he’d also said. ‘You could afford to be a little more wicked, Galen.’
But his youth was something Galen had no wish to revisit and being a little more wicked was the one thing he couldnotafford, especially not after the mistake he’d made the previous year. The mistake that had ended with a son Galen had never known he’d had until after he was born.
Galen would fight to the death for Leo, but that mistake? He would not make it again. Hecouldnot make it again.
