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His hands tangled in her hair as he chased his release and she relished in the wild, uncontrolled beauty in it. In him. Her Lysias.
Finally. Finally.This was all she wanted. To be one with him. To ride this wave together. To forget all the world except him.
Except them.
And when he roared out his release, she didn’t weep no matter how the tears built. She simply held on to him and did not let go.
She slept with her hand fisted at his heart, the ring on her finger sometimes catching the moonlight that slithered in through the curtains.
Lysias didn’t sleep because a dark pain gripped him in its iron clutches. He knew if he slept, he would dream.
And he would dream of the monsters that even now he was trying to slay.
So he did not sleep. He lay in this foreign bed and felt the easy rise and fall of Alexandra’s breathing.
Alexandra,Al, was a problem. She was perfection. The way she matched his passion for her. The way she had stood upforhim. The whole of who she was...
She was a distraction he couldn’t afford, and yet neither could he afford to set her aside. Her acting as his fiancée was an integral part of Lysias getting everything he wanted, of causing Diamandis the most amount of pain. He needed the princess she would play in order to take Diamandis out at the knees.
So something had to be done. He would need to be more careful. More guarded. He did not think resisting her was necessary per se. After all, that was simply...physical. Chemistry. A natural consequence to sharing so much time and space, and the beauty that she was.
He had simply not factored in that there would be an emotional response to returning to Kalyva. That seeing Diamandis would remind him of the timebefore. And while he had predicted many of Diamandis’s moves, the king trying to put Lysias in his parents’ old living quarters had been a cruelty he had not seen coming.
So he had learned his lesson. Expect pain and suffering and cruelty. Really, it was his life motto. It was ridiculous he’d been caught so off guard.
No matter. Diamandis would pay for it all.
Lysias couldn’t forget himself just because his fake princess was...whatever she was. In the end, it did not matter. All that mattered was maintaining a certain wall of distance, of control.
It would be simple enough. There was much to do.
The king would demand a DNA test, and Lysias had to ensure all his men were in place to falsify the results. Something he had been working on for years, but even he could not have predicted the perfection that was Al. Without a past, there would be nothing to cast doubts on the falsified results.
But this was only a part of his plan. This was only a distraction. Perhaps it was even petty—much like Diamandis’s attempt to put him in his parents’ quarters. The main part of his plan was taking Diamandis’s kingdom away from him.
For ten years, he had been finding not just people in the palace to betray Diamandis but people in the council, in Kalyva. It had taken time, subtlety, patience.
He finally had enough support to get a no-confidence vote. And Al—Alexandra—was the twist of the knife. While Diamandis was reeling over finding out his sister was alive, Lysias would tip the domino to ruin Diamandis’s life.
He hadmuchto do, and none of it included watching his fake fiancée begin to thrash in her sleep.
“The door,” she muttered. “The door, the door.” Then she began to cry quietly, and Lysias could feel her hot tears on his chest. “Am I safe here?”
Pain ripped through him, shadows creeping through the corners of his mind.The door. Someone else’s voice. The cries and echoes of death. Of murder.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but that was worse. Images he’d long banished assaulted him. He opened his eyes again even as she thrashed more, cried harder.
He simply could notbearit. He gathered her close. Kissed her forehead. “Shh,asteri mou. You are always safe with me.”
She let out a ragged breath, and the crying stopped. Slowly, she began to still. To breathe evenly once more. Without ever waking up.
Once she was calm, Lysias slid out of bed, surprised to find his hands were shaking. He curled them into fists and crossed to the window. He looked out into the night, where the stars and moon shone and rippled on the sea below. He took a deep breath, forced himself to settle.
All the ghosts and pain of his past existed on this little island, but once he took Diamandis’s kingdom away from him, all would be well. All would besoothed.
He watched the sea as morning began its slow stretch toward dawn. Before the sun was fully up, he was dressed. He gave Alexandra one look. She was curled into a tight little ball, even as the sun made her skin glow gold.
No doubt she’d slept like that on the streets, and somehow she had survived. She was a marvel.
