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She told herself it was less about the light that shone from it—and the man who personified this place to her—and more about the unchangeable traditions and centuries of autocratic rule that it represented. Traditions she was now swept up in, like it or not.
Madelyn let out a short little laugh at that and figured she might as well head back inside, if she’d managed to amuse herself.
That was certainly better than the frazzled burnt-to-a-crisp way she’d felt when she staggered out of Paris Apollo’s rooms. She pressed her fingers to her lips as she walked, telling herself they felt completely normal now.
Just as she told herself she couldn’t taste him on her tongue.
She took a long, lazy loop through the garden, keeping to the hedges and edges that kept her in the overgrown parts with very little light. There was even a bench set in the darkest stretch, shielded from the palace’s light by a copse of pines. Madelyn wondered who had placed itjust so, almost certainly to allow whoever sat here to look out over the ocean and up at the stars without any interference. On another night, when she didn’t need to walk and didn’t have that clamoring inside her that told her she needed to get back to Troy, she thought she might sit awhile. Breathe it all in, deep. Then let herself feel as if she was tumbling out into the stars herself.
Not that you intend to spend any amount of time here, she reminded herself sternly.Because there’s no possible way you’re going to become his queen, no matter what he might think.
It was funny, though, that there was some kind of quivering, deep inside her, that suggested otherwise.
And later, she was tucked back up in the apartment she been given. She was lying in a bed that was bigger than the entirety of her bedroom at home, with Troy cuddled up against her side, his thumb in his mouth as if he was still a baby. And she found herself staring up at the colorful ceiling and wondering about the other thing she’d seen out there.
Not the stars. Not the great black expanse of the sea.
But the shadows that had seemed to move in her peripheral vision.
Shadows that she could have sworn took the shape of Paris Apollo, but dressed as he’d been in the Hermitage yesterday. In those black assassin-type clothes that clung close to his body and made him look like some kind of action hero instead of a pampered, spoiled king.
“You need to sleep,” she whispered to herself, there in the dark. She closed her eyes. She held her son’s body—hot and faintly flushed because Troy slept as hard as he played—close to hers the way she often did when he crawled into her bed to cuddle up with her.
But there was no relief to be found.
Only fire.
The palace wedding machine lurched into gear, starting early the next morning. Squadrons of smartly dressed and impeccably cheerful staff members descended upon her in shifts, all of them insisting thateveryone—by which, they meant Madelyn—needed to pitch in to get her ready for the role they’d decided she must take.
But Madelyn refused to play along.
No matter how brightly her attendants told her that she needed to turn up at this time or in this place, she didn’t. Instead, she and her aunt took Troy for long walks when it was sunny, out on the rambling palace grounds, which she was sure had to be bigger than her favorite park in San Francisco. When the weather was less cooperative, they raced up and down the grand marble halls, as if the palace was no more than a playground.
And in many ways, it was better than any playground they had ever been to before. Because the palace not only had hallways stuffed full of antiquities, but many of them also featured suits of armor and sharp weapons that five-year-old Troy found fascinating. It also had its own labyrinth, on the lowest level, where there must have once been dungeons.
Troy was particularly interested in the possibility of dungeons. He’d turned five and become bloodthirsty. Something Madelyn imagined she would have to deal with if it continued a decade from now.
But right now he was five. And when he wasn’t being the little monster that could come out sometimes, she found him perfect and angelic and adorable, particularly when he shrieked a little, giggled, and pronounced some tale of ancient torturecool.
Instead of attending the many meetings that were presented to her on carefully filled out daily agendas she didn’t read, Madelyn spent time with her kid. Something she never got to do as much as she wanted at home. And when he napped or wanted to play with his great-aunt Corrine instead, she read the papers. There were no physical papers in the palace, she quickly found, but despite all indications to the contrary, they were not actually living in the dark ages. Palace or no palace.
She had a phone. And there were a number of libraries in this sprawling place, so it was easy enough to find herself a cozy nook and catch up on the papers she was pretty sure were probably being deliberately withheld from her.
And with good reason because her face was everywhere.
Madelyn studied them all and couldn’t understand how anyone could look at these photographs of her and not realize that she’d been anything but a blushing, delighted fiancée up on that dais. Paris Apollo looked powerful and certain, as a king should. Especially when he’d lifted her hand to his mouth, then kissed her as if he was branding her.
Property of the Kingdom of Ilonia. As surely as if he’d stamped it on her forehead.
Madelyn thought it was obvious that she was stunned. Out of her depth. If not actively opposed.
Yet most of the papers claimed that it was all swooningly romantic.
As if that wasn’t enough, a great many of them spent the days since the announcement doing deep dives on Madelyn’s life, trying to make sense of what the palace had called theperiod of contemplationshe had undergone, suggesting that she’d been debating if she wanted to live her life in the public eye—and had possibly also wanted to keep Troy hidden from the vultures. They were just vague enough. They made it all seem honorable. They even suggested that the worst of the King’s excesses had been him attempting to handle her laudable step back from the notion of royal life, the better to protect their son.
The implication was that she had been willing to sacrifice true love to protect her child, whilehehad been willing to give up both his child and his beloved to keep them safe, if that was what she wished.
They both sounded like idiots, in Madelyn’s opinion, but the world seemed to eat it all up.
