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Madelynwishedit was a rash. That Paris Apollo was no more than a spot of poison oak that she could treat with calamine lotion and time.
Instead, she was all alone here, high on a mountain with a man she barely knew. That she’d imagined she did know him once—that she’d fancied herself deeply in love with him—didn’t change the fact that he was a stranger to her now. Or that he was unknowable by any metric, a king on a royal island who was bound by nothing at all save his own whims.
Meaning she was bound by the same.
The nearest help—assuming the inscrutable Angelique Silvestri could truly be calledhelp—was a long walk down a narrow path, with a steep fall to a gruesome death waiting for the slightest misstep.
King Paris Apollo of Ilonia could do anything he liked with her and there was no one to stop him. Or even argue with him about it.
Something Madelyn really should have thought about before now, she realized. Because he did nothing for long, tense moments but stand there before her, staring at her as if she had betrayed him.
And while he did, she found herself aware of him in a new and newly disconcerting way. It was almost as if she couldsmellhis temper the same as she could smell the damp and cold on the wind. She was far too aware of it, like a taste on her tongue. And the fact it kept rising, until even the green of his eyes—so clear and beguiling in all the memories she had of him—seemed stormy.
She had the urge to defend herself. And oh, how she hated herself for the impulse.
“It’s time to get out of this weather, I think.” But his voice was low as he said it. Dangerous. “Come with me.”
He turned then and strode back across the courtyard without so much as a glance over his shoulder to see if she might follow.
And Madelyn had the same internal battle all over again. She could turn on her heel now that he’d walked off. She could run back out that door and then charge down the side of the mountain. She assumed that Angelique Silvestri still waited there, but whether she did or didn’t, there was no way to know how she might react to anything Madelyn might do. She might not allow Madelyn back in the vehicle. She might order her to turn around and head right back up to the Hermitage until she’d accomplished whatever it was the older woman imagined Madelyncouldaccomplish here.
There was no safe space. Not here on this island, plunked down in the middle of an uncaring ocean. Maybe not anywhere. The only safe space Madelyn had known since she’d run out of that house in Cambridge was back in Tahoe, there in the little house tucked away in the woods that she shared with her aunt and her son.
There was no use pretending Madelyn hadn’t known when she’d left it behind yesterday that she was moving into dangerous, perilous waters. She had. She’d known it with every last cell in her body.
But what choice had she had? The Kingdom of Ilonia had come knocking on her door. There was no more hiding from the reality of Troy’s conception. She hadn’t seen the point of pretending otherwise.
Because she’d only been foolish for a short while at the end of her time in England.
Madelyn had been relentlessly practical ever since, just as she’d been before her semester abroad.
She knew there was no point backing down now. And no clear way to go about backing down anyway. Angelique Silvestri had made it perfectly clear that not only had the palace known about Madelyn and Troy all this while, but also that no one at the palace had the slightest compunction about doing whatever was deemed necessary to protect the throne.
The older woman had repeated that several times to make certain Madelyn got her meaning.
Your son is the only heir of the King of Ilonia, the older woman had said in that elegantly ferocious manner of hers.It has suited us to allow him these formative years here, so far away from the eyes of the world. But surely you must always have known that could change in an instant.
Madelyn had not known any such thing, she thought as she squared her shoulders, shoved her damp hair back from her face, and followed Paris Apollo out of the courtyard, out of the rain, and deep into the jaws of the stone Hermitage. She hadn’t known that anyone but her had the faintest idea who the father of her child was. It hadn’t occurred to her that anyone cared.
In retrospect, that seemed stupid. She should have known that something like this was inevitable. She should have been prepared for this day to come.
But it had truly never so much as crossed her mind.
So maybe you’re not as practical as you like to think,she chided herself.
Inside the actual building, she was struck at once by the cheerful, sunny light that made the old stone walls seem to glow. It spilled out from sconces in the walls and down from the odd chandelier, making her realize that she’d automatically assumed he would be leading her into some kind of dour stone prison.
Instead, the place was far more welcoming than it looked from the outside. It was so unexpected that she made no objection as she followed him down a long stone hall, made far cozier than she would have imagined possible with old tapestries on the walls to take the chill away. Eventually, Paris Apollo turned into a sort of rambling living room, which was arranged so that all the seating areas faced the wall of windows that must have once been intended for defensive purposes. They had that look, tall and narrow, as if archers had been expected to lurk here, picking off any uninvited guests as they straggled up the steep mountainside.
Paris Apollo still didn’t look back at her. Madelyn couldn’t decide if that was evidence of his royal arrogance or if he actually didn’t care if she’d followed him in or not. She was tempted to think he’d forgotten she was there at all, but he strode to the bar at one end of the room, hefted up a decanter, and poured a deep amber liqueur into two glasses. She watched, feeling something like fragile as he belted his back.
Only when he was duly fortified did he turn to face her, lifting his chin in a mute order for her to come and do the same.
“No, thank you,” Madelyn said, with the sort of automatic courtesy that felt like an unwarranted surrender here. Under these circumstances. She cleared her throat and reminded herself that she didn’t owe him that. Or anything. “Drinking with you has never led anywhere good.”
He let out a laugh at that, but it was nothing more than a scrape of pure bitterness through this room made of stone.
“How old is the child?” he asked her, and that was even worse.
