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Lysias could not say what bothered him about the realization she’d been an innocent. Perhaps that it had never occurred to him she might be. That she likelyhadto be, as she’d been hiding who she truly was for most of her life.
He did not, as a rule, dally with virgins who were likely to get...ideas about such things. Mountains out of molehills and such. No matter how mountainous this had felt.
And she had the audacity to lay there on his bed, naked and sheer perfection, smiling at him as if she were the queen of his world.
Perhaps what bothered him was that she surprised him. That he could not predict her. Read her or understand her.
Except in the fact that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Even now, when they should be sated and exhausted.
So he did not send her away. He kept her in his bed. Another rule broken, but theywerepretending to be engaged.They would share a bed in Kalyva, and Kalyva had to be what he focused on. They would leave in the morning. To begin all the plans for his revenge.
But the strangest thing happened in the middle of the night. He woke, as he often did, torn from a nightmare that was mostly memory, though sometimes twisted with monsters and figments of his childhood imagination.
He expected that he might have wakened her, cursing himself for the weakness of allowing her to share his bed.
When he looked over at her, ready to lecture or tell her to leave, she was indeed awake. But she was sitting up in almost a mirror of the same position he found himself in. Hands pressed to the mattress, sheet twisted about her body, her hair plastered in sweat and sharp breaths coming in terrified pants.
Their gazes met and held as their breathing evened out. He realized, somewhere in his sleep addled mind, that she had been having her own nightmare.
It speared through him, this realization. That they might have things in common. That they might understand each other, when he did not wish to be understood. He only wished to find vindication.
He should pay her for her services at the gala and then tell her to go. He would find a different Princess Zandra. One who did not threateneverything.
But they were too far gone in the plan. She was his Alexandra, the tool he would use for his revenge.
And revenge was the only thing that mattered. Perhaps she might come to understand pieces of him because she knew the hard truths of life. But this would not becomemore, even if he was her first. She had said it herself, she only wanted to enjoy her wants.
She would not weave fairy tales.
He was determined, even as they headed for the island kingdom of Kalyva the next morning.
Where kings and dead princesses and the haunted history of his past waited for them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEBOATRIDEwas uneventful. The boat, of course, a luxurious vessel that sped through the beautiful Aegean Sea with ease and grace.
That did nothing to ease Al’s queasy stomach. She was coming to find she much preferred land.
“Don’t tell me you’re seasick, Alexandra,” Lysias said, taking a seat next to her on the deck—the only place she could seem to handle the movement, with the cool air slapping against her face.
“I am definitely not seawell,” she replied, pressing her cheek to the cool railing. “Mark me down as not a fan of boats.”
“It is ayacht.”
She shrugged. “It is all the same to me.”
“Well, never fear. Land is near.” He pointed out across the blinding blue. She saw it then. The island in the distance. The gray craggy offering of stone, the colorful parade of boxes that must be buildings, against the contrasting white of the beach and what could only be the palace at the very top of the slope of land in the middle of the sea.
Al watched it as it got closer and closer, but it did nothing to soothe the unease in her stomach. So she looked at Lysias.
They had said nothing to each other last night when she’d woken to find him also awake. She was certain he must have had a nightmare just like she had. Instead, once their breathing had evened, they’d found a silent solace in each other’s bodies. And then gone back to sleep.
She hadn’t wanted to face the darkness of her dreams in that bed, where she’d felt safer than she’d ever felt. But here on this boat... “What do you dream of, Lysias?” she asked him. Already knowing he would turn the question around on her.
“Many things, naturally. What do you dream of, Alexandra?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. It is always in shadow. Screams and pain and confusion. A hand reaching out to save me, and then variations of a theme of losing that savior from there.” She shrugged. She’d often been embarrassed by having nightmares at her age, and it was hard to shake that feeling, but Lysias had them too. Maybe that meant she was not so very different.
