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I don’t believe he asked you to trustthat, came a voice from inside her.He only asked you to trusthim.
Nina curled herself up in a ball and tried to sleep, but when she did, her head was filled with images of Zeus on his knees, playing Cinderella games.
The headlines started pouring in the next morning.
And Nina quickly realized that Zeus did not intend to give any supposedly soul-baring interviews to carefully vetted, sympathetic journalists. That was one way of rehabilitating a reputation, though one rarely used to good effect by royalty. Instead, he made certain that he and Nina were seen out every night, taking in Paris like lovers.
To drive the point home, he doted on her. He held her hand as they walked. He was always leaning close when she spoke. He helped her into cars. He gazed into her eyes over dinner tables, smiled fondly when she spoke, and looked—in every photograph Nina saw of them—like a man besotted.
This strategy, he informed her with glee, allowed the tabloids and their readership to compare and contrast for themselves the difference between the arranged engagement to his Princess that he had clearly never wanted anything to do with, and the pregnant woman everyone now suggested he’d left Isabeau for. And would convince anyone who looked that the two of them were mad for each other.
He didn’t need to announce any engagement, because the papers took care of that with their zoom lenses. The speculation about the ring she wore went on and on, and the more people carried on about it, the more Nina was described as not only the mercenary gold digger of yore, but something of a femme fatale besides. She was called a dangerous beauty, having hidden in plain sight for years before she’d taken her shot. Most agreed this was evidence that she was nothing but an evil whore. Still, others countered, her mix of innocence and beauty and a handy sob story made her the only one in all the world who could turn Prince Zeus’s head.
Nina found it was less upsetting to read these stories about herself than she’d anticipated. Because it was still nothing more than a character she was playing to match the character Zeus was playing, wasn’t it? It was no different than wearing her odd clothes and haphazard hair in a royal court.
Though every night she went to her bed alone and wondered just how much each one of them was playing.
By the middle of the second week, the stories were already changing. Who was this woman who had claimed the unclaimable Prince? Was she truly the disgrace of Haught Montagne, as advertised, or had the wicked Prince simply fallen in love with the lonely orphan girl? For how else was she able to succeed with Zeus?
She had to admit that the paparazzi were thorough in their research. There was a round of pictures she hadn’t known anyone had taken, from a hostel she’d stayed at in Spain. But rather than creating a scandal out of the photographs of her at a party, the pictures made her into a different kind of heroine on the ravenous internet.
“Apparently I’m the introvert’s mascot,” Nina said from her favorite sofa, where she was enjoying another phenomenal tea. “It makes a change, as mascoting goes.”
Zeus came over from whatever he was doing on his tablet and plucked the paper from her grasp, peering at the grainy pictures. “You look like a librarian shushing the obstreperous children.”
“That’s more or less what I was doing, if memory serves.” Nina shrugged. “Apparently I’m relatable.”
“So my team tells me daily.” He handed back the paper, his gaze as warm on hers as if they were out in public where photographers were always lurking. But they were in private. “You’re making quite a splash. And not a hen in sight.”
But the real test, Nina knew, was the upcoming ball.
At the end of their third week in Paris, they left France and headed to the tiny kingdom of Graciela, tucked away between France and Spain, where the country’s newly crowned Queen was having a birthday ball. The expectation was that the guest list would be a who’s who of European royalty.
“You look nervous,” Zeus said with that lazy drawl that made it clear he was not.
Outside, Graciela was shrouded in clouds as Zeus’s pilot circled the small airport, waiting for their turn to land.
“Not at all.” Nina tried out a laugh that came out tinny. “Who doesn’t love a bit of a swim, surrounded by so many sharks?”
“The trick is to pretend the sharks are minnows,” Zeus told her, that green gaze of his a simmering fire even as he gave her that half smile. “And treat them like minnows. Most find it so confusing they spend the rest of the evening trailing about after you, begging for more.”
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “your cynicism about the human race is heartbreaking.”
It was Zeus, so all he did was shrug. No matter how many times she thought she saw something else in those green eyes of his. She told herself it was the hormones They were making her see things that weren’t there. And would never be there.
She had to stop looking at pictures of them in the tabloids and imagining what she saw was real, because she knew better.
Nina had to keep reminding herself that she knew better.
There was no what-if here.
“Whatever you do,” Zeus told her, something darker in his gaze, “never show the sharks your heart, Nina.”
She hoped she wasn’t that hormonal.
Nina braced herself once they’d landed and were whisked to the royal castle, but she was surprised to find that the stuffy manners that she’d always found so tedious—mostly because it had been her job to use them in the wake of Isabeau, who did as she liked—were an excellent stand-in for the sorts of masks she used to wear. At first she wondered why it was that royal personages she’d met many times before were suddenly capable of being kind to her as they all lined up to be introduced into the ball.
“What a pleasure to meet you,” said a queen here, a sheikh there, and excellencies everywhere. “Many congratulations on your most happy news.”
