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“Kings do not change their minds, but, of course, you wouldn’t know that. You are from a country entirely comprised of upstart peasants.”
“Thank you for the history lesson.” And while the look in her eyes bordered on insolent, she managed to keep her tone perfectly smooth. Unobjectionable. He should not have found it enraging. “Sadly, it looks like the rain and hail is only going to get worse. I expect that the path downhill will be slippery. So I’d better get to it.”
“But it doesn’t make sense.”
He closed the distance between them again and this time walked around her in a circle, studying her. Taking in all the various puzzle pieces that were his life, his dark reign, and everything he knew about his court and his ministers and all the other things that made up the crown he’d never wanted. He turned it this way and that.
“It’s impossible that Angelique Silvestri would do anything at random. She’s a woman of brutal efficiency.”
This blonde American who had once comethis closeto turning his life upside down and inside out...sniffed. “I would have said malice and self-possession.”
“That, too, certainly, but you have to consider her end game.”
Paris Apollo was beginning to think that Madelyn had truly slept on that hair and hadn’t bothered to fix it. And she certainly hadn’t fussed with her appearance since she’d arrived. It was as if she wanted him to believe she didn’t care one way or another.
He was not sure he could believe shetrulydidn’t care.
Or maybe he couldn’t bear to think she didn’t. That notion twisted in him oddly, so he pushed on. “Angelique wants me off this mountain and back in the palace so she can demonstrate to the whole kingdom that she has the new King’s ear, just as she always had my father’s. She would not send you here to tempt me or play games. She would send you only if she thought you could convince me to move at her pace rather than mine. But why would she thinkyoucapable of such a thing?”
Madelyn’s eyes narrowed. “I have no earthly idea.”
And the thing Paris Apollo still couldn’t get past was that he’d believed he would have more time. His parents had been in excellent health. They should have ruled for decades more. He had quite expected to find himself edging out the record holder for longest reign as a crown prince in Europe since his father had taken the throne three days after his nineteenth birthday and had announced his intention to hold it until he was ninety-nine.
King Aether had been known far and wide as a man of his word.
Paris Apollo had thought he’d had time, and so he’d wasted it. He had not tied himself down to the usual concerns of heirs to thrones. He had consoled himself—or, rather, he had attempted to console his father—by shrugging it all off. Especially in the wake of his brief affair with the one woman he’d taken seriously. He’d reminded Aether that Ilonia was, when all was said and done, a tiny island. With a population smaller than any other kingdom in Europe, and the bulk of them staunch supporters of the monarchy.
You worry too much, he had teased the old man.There are only so many lives I can ruin with my profligate ways, after all.
You are less amusing than you think, his father had replied.
But he had laughed.
Because Paris Apollo had been the apple of his parents’ eyes. Their pride and joy, for he had come to them late in life and long after it had been widely accepted that his mother would bear no issue.
We were a love match, Queen Neme used to tell him.And we were content with each other. We had accepted that this particular branch of the bloodline would end with us. But then you proved us wrong, darling boy, as you always do.
He had assumed his people would forgive him for his behavior, too. Because they always had. Because he was the kingdom’s favorite son.
Because they—and he—had been so certain that he would have ample time to have a second act. To grow up. To become the sort of king they deserved, just as his father had before him.
He had not imagined he would ever find a love match. He had not believed he had such emotion within him, though he knew saying so would break his parents’ hearts, for they had wanted him to find what they had above all things.
For a few bright weeks—barely two months—six years ago, he had almost thought...
But Madelyn had shown him how foolish he had been to surrender to such fantasies. Love was a lightning strike from on high and he was not likely to get hit. One day, far in the future, he would do his duty as required. As he had always planned he would, without concerning himself withlightof any sort.
In the meanwhile, he had wasted his time. Aggressively. He understood that too well.
Yet while he’d been out there scandalizing the tutting tabloids, he’d gotten good at reading people in a way he doubted others in his position ever did. Most royals were surrounded by palace aides and courtiers trained to tell them what they wished to hear. Paris Apollo had committed a great many sins. He could not pretend otherwise. But at least he had not lived in an echo chamber.
That was a thin comfort these days, but he knew Madelyn was telling him the truth. That she didn’t really know what she was doing here...
Though the more he studied her expression, the more he thought that perhaps that was notallof the truth. “You might not believe you need to be here, but I suspect you know why Angelique thinks you ought to be. Is that not so?”
Once again, her gray eyes were impossible to read, and he resented it. He remembered a time when he had known every stray thought that crossed her face.
When he had shared them.
