His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,7

no point opposing him here and now. Maybe she would be able to regroup at the palace, or perhaps they could come to an understanding after she met with some of his suggestions. But arguing now would get her nowhere.

She was too familiar with the brick wall that was Alexius to bother trying.

“Fine. But find me...the most bookish aristocrat you can. A man with a library. A man who likes to stay home in the evenings. A man who likes cats.”

“I’m afraid our criteria are different, Tinley.”

“My criteria have to matter,” she said.

“I could easily find you a noble who doesn’t care what you do.”

“True.”

The idea of that kind of marriage filled her with a great unease. Her parents had been a bit like that. Tinley was absolutely wild about her father. Her mother had always been untouchable. A beautiful doll in a glass case. There had been a distance between the two of them that could be felt when you were standing with them.

She had never wanted that. And she had been convinced that she and Dionysus wouldn’t. Because he had looked at her and her insides had lit up.

Given the way he’d died... She knew that there were other women. She hadn’t thought about it, not until then. Not until that poor traumatized girl in the woods, who had watched him die while she’d hidden.

But before then she simply hadn’t thought about that. She’d considered the chasteness in their relationship a sign of his respect for her. Their engagement had felt like something enchanted, just like the forest.

But the forest had swallowed him whole.

The magic had not been with them after all.

She had been so sure that things between them would be different. And then she had been ready to spend the rest of her life... Well, not alone. She had friends. She had a calling, more than a job. She had found a niche. She had found some happiness.

Alexius had come in and upended it.

It’s your father’s will...

She couldn’t even take that on board.

Alex was also sadly right. Of course there were any number of aristocratic men who would be happy to have a distant relationship with their wife. Who would expect to continue having affairs in the way that they saw fit. Who would maintain cordial politeness, and allow her to use their money and her money.

“I fail to see how that’s me being taken care of. And I feel certain that if my father were alive...”

“I cannot negotiate with a dead man, Tinley. This document is written as law.”

The car stopped, but it wasn’t the driver who ended up opening the door for Tinley, but Alexius himself. She moved slowly out of the vehicle, staring up at him. He was more than a head taller than his brother had been, and much, much broader. Dionysus had been a manageable fantasy with an easy smile.

Alexius was not a fantasy. He was a mountain.

One she had no desire to be standing at the base of.

She moved quickly, clutching Algernon’s carrier to her chest.

“Wait,” he said, his voice weighted with authority. And she had no choice but to stop.

There was something about that voice. It traveled down her spine like lightning and immobilized her.

“I will accompany you.”

He held his arm out to her, and she, out of force of a long forgotten habit, looped her arm around his, and allowed him to lead her toward the front doors of the palace. She felt ridiculous. She was wearing trainers, leggings and a sweatshirt, next to a man in a bespoke suit. She was holding a cat carrier.

And this had once been her life. This place. There was a time when she had been the presumptive Princess and...

She could hardly reconcile it with who she was now.

The palace loomed before them as they walked up the brick path, and the wind picked up, wrapping her in a breeze that seemed to be full of memory, grief and a strange longing that seemed to well up from deep inside of her.

She wanted to hide. She wanted to jump in the cat carrier with Algernon.

But she didn’t. She kept her gaze steady, and she kept walking. Like she didn’t look a ridiculous mess. Like she wasn’t a frizzy-haired woman walking with a polished king.

She felt like she was living in an alternate moment. And when the grand doors opened wide, and they entered the great antechamber that she knew led to the throne room, her heart squeezed so tight she thought she