CHAPTER ONE
“WELL, I THINK the paperwork speaks for itself. Marriage is the only course of action.”
Alexius de Prospero, Lion of the Dark Wood, Hope of the People, King of Liri, looked across from him at the small, plain woman. He was standing, which made her quite literally beneath him. She was sitting in a floral, overstuffed armchair looking frizzy and distressed.
In fairness, he had never seen Tinley Markham looking anything other than frizzy. It was hoped, on the day when the engagement had first been arranged between her and Alex’s younger brother, that she would have been tamed into something quite a bit sleeker and more fitting for a princess of Liri.
But it was not to be.
For Dionysus had died before they could ever be married. Which had shifted her from the category of future Princess, to unwanted ward.
Dionysus’s death had also hastened the demise of their father, his health failing him shortly after his youngest son died so tragically.
Which had moved Alexius from Prince to King.
Alex’s duties as King had been immediate and pressing. The matter of Tinley not so. Her father was dead, and as she was the daughter of his father’s most trusted advisor, her welfare had mattered a great deal. But it was nothing that he had to see to in the day today. However, now he was butting up against the reality of the will her father had left behind.
Alexius loved his father. And he had been very fond of Tinley’s father as well. But it could not be said that either man was deeply entrenched in the modern era. No. In fact, it might be said—affectionately—that both men were a bit medieval. Again, not a problem for Alex. Until recently. But now that Tinley was approaching her twenty-third birthday, and about to go over the prescribed deadline for marriage, it was a problem. For he was tasked with finding a husband for Tinley.
The consequences of failing were unacceptable.
And he had vowed that he would take care of her. He had sworn it. His father had been on his deathbed when Dionysus had passed. And though he had not made accusations, the ferocity in his father’s leonine gaze had sharpened as he looked at him.
For King Darius had been blessed with three sons. And only one had survived to the end of his life. Only one stood a chance at inheriting the throne. For Dionysus was dead, and Lazarus long before him. And the weight of the deaths of both rested on Alexius’s shoulders.
The firstborn son in Liri was named successor to the throne at birth, as it was with most other monarchies. But owed to years of war and corrupt leadership, there was a tradition.
All heirs of the King could issue challenges for the throne.
So while Alex had been born King, either of his brothers could challenge him at any time. Either to a battle, with the victor—either the last left alive, or the last to surrender—taking the throne.
Or there was the Dark Wood.
A week spent there, the last to surrender, or the one to emerge alive, named King.
The Lion of the Dark Wood.
And it was rumored that Alexius, even as a boy, had sought to end potential challengers to his throne.
King Darius had never accused him of such. His mother, on the other hand...
Things had changed.
And for all his life after, Alex had felt the distance between him and his mother. And the tension it had put between his mother and father.
What if he had been watching Lazarus more closely? What if he had stopped Dionysus that night he’d gone off drunk into the forest, rather than heeding his own selfish desires?
What if.
Some of his people revered Alexius as a god. He had, after all, met the challenge. Others saw him as fallible. A man who’d let those who should have been in his charge come to a tragic end. A man who had, perhaps, been born a ruthless, power-hungry monster.
Alexius had never known what his father believed. But the King had said to him, with a ferocity in his voice, that Tinley was now his responsibility. For her father was dead and her mother had never truly had the best interests of her daughter at heart.
I had thought for her to marry Dionysus. To honor her father’s position in the country. But she was suited to be the wife of the spare, not the heir. She is fragile, that girl. Sweet. She needed your brother. Her father’s wishes were that she marry, and