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But as he slowly descended those stairs, she found, to her dismay, that she understood the former version of herself entirely.
Even though he wasn’t smiling today. Even though his approach seemed far more measured, far less breathless and bright. Even though it was different, he still managed to make her forget that they were stuck together in a heap of stone thousands of feet above the ground. On this island in the middle of nowhere, closer to Iceland than the coast of Portugal. He made her forget everything except him, as if he was still as inevitable as he’d seemed then.
It was the way he walked, as if the entire universe had been created to celebrate every step he took and to arrange itself around him as he moved.
It was the way he focused on her, intent and decisive enough that she had the same stray panic she’d had years ago, wondering if he could read every single thought she had inside her head.
It didn’t matter that this version of him seemed grim and changed.
It was still him. Paris Apollo of Ilonia. The man who had altered the entire course of her life.
She stood straighter. She lifted her chin as he stopped before her, there in the half-protected stone yard of this ancient place.
“I will admit that I am intrigued,” he said, and it was still his voice. She still recognized it, much as she’d like to deny that, because that recognition wasphysical. It rolled through her like fire, leaving the same scorch marks it always had. “To discover why, having failed to compel me with all of the previous emissaries they’ve sent to beg and beseech me, they settled on a slip of a woman in cheap shoes.”
Madelyn took that in. And did not indulge the spark of outrage deep inside her that wanted to inform him that these were the most expensive shoes she owned. Because there was scrimping and there was saving, and then there was appropriate footwear for life beside Lake Tahoe, where it was always necessary to be ready for any and all weather at any given time.
Because she was certain he knew perfectly well that he was being rude.
“Nothing to say?” His voice was quiet and somehow more...commanding than she recalled. But then, she needed to catch up to current events. Paris Apollo was a king now. He’d been elevated from the Prince she’d known two years ago, when his parents had been killed. “They cannot possibly have sent me a woman for pleasure. If they had, I feel certain they would not have chosen you. Some nameless creature, wan and faintly disapproving. These things do not stir the body or the blood, I think you’ll find.”
That was even more astonishing, as she assumed it was meant to be. And Madelyn could not say that she cared much for his choice of descriptors, but she couldn’t really argue with his assessment, either. “I flew halfway around the world to climb an inhospitable mountain and be insulted by you for the effort. You’re lucky I’m not significantly more disheveled.”
“I think someone has made yet another error in judgment.” He prowled closer and peered down at her, as if looking for evidence of that error. On her face. “It’s not that there isn’t something pleasing about your appearance, you understand. A whiff of innocence to go along with the American accent. They should have told you that I have always preferred my lovers to be rather more sophisticated.”
And he was already stepping back again, flipping the back of his hand in her direction to dismiss her before she’d processed what he’d said.
Not the fact that he seemed to think she’d been sent in like a royal harlot.
But the other, more critical part.
She tilted her head to one side. And considered a possibility she would have assumed was inconceivable. “You don’t know who I am?”
He paused. Considered her. His eyes seemed to gleam. “Should I?”
A thousand possible responses to that flooded her. There was outrage and insult aplenty. She couldn’t deny that. And maybe, buried way down beneath it, some kind of hurt, too.
Because she certainly remembered him. Every single day, whether she liked it or not.
But in all of this, it had never occurred to her that he would fail to remember her in turn.
She wasn’t sure she believed him. Even so, she wanted to remind him exactly who she was and who she’d been to him, if briefly. So much that sheachedwith all the things she didn’t say. She wanted to give him dates and times and even produce the one photograph she had of the two of them together, but she didn’t.
Because if he didn’t remember her, Madelyn couldn’t influence him one way or the other, and that was her entire reason for being here.
And if she couldn’t influence him, if she didn’t have the leverage on him that Angelique Silvestri had imagined she would, Madelyn might as well turn right around and leave.
There was a different kind of sensation drumming in her then, electric and intense. She told herself it was relief. And that she would do her due diligence, nothing more. “Is this all a lot of smoke and mirrors to cover up a case of royal amnesia?”
Those pale green eyes of his looked even more unworldly set against his darker, shorter hair. She noticed things she didn’t remember, like how sooty his lashes were. And he was still as beautiful as ever, but it was all changed now. As if he’d spent all these years since she’d last seen him ridding himself of anything that was soft or accessible or languid until there was nothing left but this...tempered steel.
As if he was more a weapon than a king.
“Is that the prevailing propaganda?” he asked softly. “Is it my incapacity they whisper of in the palace? Are you here to bear witness to it? It’s an inspired choice, I grant you. You somehow manage to look both as if butter wouldn’t melt and yet practical. I can already see you giving reluctant interviews to anyone who asks. Poor Paris Apollo, so diminished. So unequal to his role, as everyone expected after his misspent youth. You have my blessing to tell them whatever you wish.”
“So that’s a no, then, on the head injury? You’re not suffering from any kind of condition—you legitimately don’t remember me. You have absolutely no idea who I am.”
She tried not to sound as pleased by that as she told herself she felt.
