here in this palace on the edge of a forest that had consumed so much. But it would be different. He would be different. “We will have nannies. Guards.”
“And you won’t do any parenting?”
“It won’t be necessary. I am King, and I will protect.”
She reached out, and her fingertips made contact with his suit jacket sleeve.
He shrugged her off. “Do not test me, Tinley.”
“What would I be testing?” She took a step toward him, and the expression on her face reminded him so much of when he had caught her out in the corridor four years ago.
Hours before his brother’s death.
“If you don’t know,” he growled. “Then you should truly think before you put a hand on me.”
“Why have you always hated me? I know you never thought I was worthy of him.”
“I don’t hate you. It would be simpler to hate you. And as for worthiness? It is not as simple as that.”
“What is it then?”
“You stand out. That is not in the job description for a princess.”
“That will always be the issue, won’t it? My standing out. I’m sorry that I was born objectionable. But your brother did not seem to find me objectionable at all.”
Rage poured through him. At him, at her. At Dionysus. At everything. He hated it. For it was grandly out of control, because it made him like her. And he was different. He had to be different. For the weight of the crown rested on his shoulders.
And the minute he took his focus away from what mattered, everything could be so easily destroyed.
But his focus was off everything but her. Everything but those glimmering green eyes, and everything that seemed to shimmer beneath the surface of her skin. Everything he wondered about, but had taken steps not to.
She haunted him.
And he mourned his brother, but he saw him for who he was. She still defended him. Above Alex.
As everyone did.
“My brother found every woman who would warm his bed acceptable. And believe me when I tell you he had counted on a life where he could have you and whoever else he fancied. Do not think my brother was going to promise you fidelity. Do not think that you were some great love of his. It is a shame that you build your life as a monument to him when he would never have done the same for you.”
“You don’t know,” she said, color rising in her face. “He was my friend.”
“Friendship does not keep a spark alive in the marriage bed.”
“And you speak with such great authority on marriage? On relationships? You’re brokering a business deal for your own.”
He scoffed. “What makes you think yours was any different? Business between our fathers. A reward for time spent serving in my father’s court. Your mother might have found you unsuitable, but your father found you an easy pawn.”
“He didn’t,” she said. “He loved me.” Her voice faltered there.
“There is no question he did, Tinley, but he was a man. Flesh and blood mortal. And we all of us are subject to the weakness inherent in that state. And perhaps in part for all that he could gain from having a daughter. Most men would want a son, but not a man with the ear of the King. For his daughter could marry into our family.”
“Even if that played a role in my relationship with my father,” she said, her tone dripping with disdain as she took a step toward him. “It is no different than you. Your father had three sons. An heir and two spares. How lucky for him. Except your family is cursed. Strife between brothers or death. You’re no less an accident of birth than I am.”
“An accident of death spared you.” He reached out and grabbed hold of her chin. Her skin was impossibly soft beneath his own, and it reminded him of yesterday’s dance. Yesterday’s failure. “For you would have wasted away here. Bored. Your bed empty while your husband went and amused himself elsewhere. You could have become a jaded courtier. Entertaining extra lovers as you saw fit while the staff raised your children.”
He had let himself think, for years, she might have been happy with Dionysus. But he’d been lying to himself. Not Tinley. Tinley would never have sat back and been contented with that life, not forever.
He’d thought because of how she’d been during their engagement she might be.
But she’d been young. That was all.
And now...now less so.
“Why are you like this?” Her eyes glittered,