His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,25

it. Though I would prefer you did it as an occasional houseguest, and not as the future wife of my brother.

Do you not wish to be my brother-in-law, Alex? Is our relationship quite so damaged?

She remembered how his irritation had flared up.

But something deeper. Something more.

And now she wondered.

She wondered now if the feeling inside of her whenever she had been alone with him had not been fear. Had not been irritation at his disapproval, but a desire to...

As he’d said. To test herself against him.

Because he wanted her.

And if he wanted her, in this state that he disapproved of so...

Didn’t that make it powerful?

It was like the sun had risen on a personal darkness inside of her, and lit it all up.

She could not be controlled. Any more than her hair could be. She wasn’t tamed.

And that was what her mother hated. It was what bothered Alex.

She was chaotic, it was true. And she could be messy. And most of all, she simply wasn’t that which all the people around her seemed hell-bent on making her into.

And they couldn’t force her to, not with the whole weight of their disapproval.

And Alex wanted her anyway.

He wanted to marry her off, he wanted to get rid of her.

He wanted to do his duty and not have to face this big, bright thing between them that was wrong in every single way.

Wrong.

Yes, it was wrong. That Alex had the power to ignite this thing in her blood that no other man had. Not even Dionysus, who she had been certain she loved.

Perhaps it was just age. Perhaps she was coming into herself a little later than some.

Maybe now any man would have the power to invoke this kind of response in her.

But she didn’t think so.

Her body felt overly sensitive the entire day following the incident. And it was the eve of the ball, and a team of servants were sent to her room.

“You must be prepared,” Charis said.

She was led to a place in the palace that she had never been before. Down a winding staircase, all the way down to the bottom of the palace, where she would have assumed that a dungeon might exist. But there was no dungeon here.

Instead, it was nothing but marble tiles, intricate mosaic inlaid into the floors. Jewels.

A spectacle unlike anything she had ever seen in Liri. The country tended to be more Spartan than this. Everything quite medieval, rather than ornate.

“What is this?” she asked one of the women.

“The baths. The royal family has a long tradition of preparing for either war or celebration in the private baths.”

Tinley had never heard of such a thing. It seemed rather a luxury for the royal family, as she knew them. For with the exception of Dionysus, they had been austere, not given to indulgence.

“There are several rooms,” Charis told her.

“How will I know what to do?”

“I can stay and guide you if you like.”

The thought of being assisted with bathing made Tinley uncomfortable. “No.”

“I thought not. The first is cold. It will bring the blood closer to the surface of your skin. You can move through it quickly. Then there is a tub that’s very hot, you go into that next. And finally, you’ll find the perfumed pool. It has been prepared with essential oils to perfume your skin. There will be sugar scrubs and other products to make your skin glow. It is how the Queen always prepared for parties.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why is this so secret?”

“I think rather it’s...humanizing. And the royal family always does resist being seen as human.”

A very insightful comment, Tinley thought. For it was true. They were a lineage wrapped in legends that had survived centuries, and they seemed to do nothing to try and dispel it. “How long have you worked for them?”

Charis frowned. “Ten years. I remember you. As a girl. Just like I remember Dionysus. And the Queen.” There was something in the way she said the Queen that stuck out to Tinley and she couldn’t quite place it.

“Did you like him? Dionysus. Only, sometimes I don’t think his brother did.”

“Alex loved his brother very much,” the woman said. “I think he doesn’t know how to show it.”

“Oh. That being human again.”

She laughed. “Yes. I think of all of them, he resists it most of all.”

Tinley was bundled into a robe, her clothes taken from her, and then she was sent into a small room with glimmering, clear gemstones on the wall. They reflected in the water, made it