I feel my brows shoot up to my hairline. “Lady Zervas.”
Of course. Poison is a woman’s weapon. She hated Kallias’s father for not choosing her. Of course she would have him and his wife murdered. And Kallias. She tried to warn me to stay away from him because he wouldn’t be long for this world. Her hatred must run so deep that she would want to kill the offspring of the romantic union that should have been hers.
Leandros hangs his head. “My uncle. I’m so sorry, Alessandra. I had no idea.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s all right. We’ve already apprehended him, but I need to alert the guards to Lady Zervas’s treachery as well.”
“No need. I’ll do it. You—Will you just take care of him and tell him I’m sorry?”
I place a hand on his shoulder. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” “I should have noticed something, surely. I could have—”
“Stop it. There’s nothing to do but let it go. You helped Kallias today. And you two as well,” I add, turning around to where Petros and Rhouben are keeping a lookout. “I’ll make sure the king remembers it. It’s time he stopped pushing his friends away. Especially with his parents’ murderers finally caught.”
 |
I PLACE THE GIRL in a room on the opposite side of the castle from Kallias and me, giving her over to one of the kitchen staff for safekeeping. I’ll of course have to make more permanent arrangements later, but for now, I’m utterly spent.
Lady Zervas and Lord Vasco are in separate cells of the dungeon. I finally managed to shoo away the nobles and their questions and congratulations.
Who was behind it?
Was my drink poisoned as well? I think I better see a physician. Let’s see the ring, Lady Stathos!
You two are a smart match. Of course, my Clarissa would have also been a good choice for the king.
I shut the door to my rooms and lean against it for a moment, rubbing at my temples.
Managing people can be tiresome, but there’s still nothing more satisfying than watching people do exactly what I say.
“You look how I feel,” Kallias says from my bedroom. He sits on my bed, one foot crossed over the other.
“I had to assuage the worries of the nobles.” “You’re already a fine queen.”
I kick off my boots, wincing as my torn feet hit the floor. Walking on my heels, I make it over to a cushioned chair and collapse.
“You’re hurt.”
“Nothing that a long soak in hot water won’t fix.”
“I’ll draw you a bath.” Kallias moves methodically to my washroom. I hear him fiddling with the faucets and soaps before the sound of heated water filling a basin can be heard.
He pads over to me on bare feet, scooping me up in his arms and carrying me over to the tub.
“It was Zervas,” I tell him when he doesn’t ask. “She was working with Vasco. The girl from the club confirmed his treachery and named her as well. We’ve got them both in the dungeons.”
When Kallias moves us to the washroom, he’s careful to position me so my rump can sit on the edge of the tub, my back leaning against him, and my feet dangling in the water. I wince once the cuts on my feet make contact. The hem of my now-dirty gown soaks up the water, but I don’t care. It’s already ruined.
It feels so nice to wiggle my toes in the warm water, and Kallias’s hands start kneading at the knots in my shoulders.
I’m a little worried by his silence at my revelation, but I give him the time he needs to process everything. I don’t say anything. Just let him focus on me if that’s what he needs right now.
“I’m relieved that it’s over,” he says at last. “I really am. But I’m also done with this.”
I swallow, and I’m certain Kallias must feel the sudden tension in me. “Done with what?”
I don’t know what I’ll do if he says me.
His hands are in my hair now, letting the strands sift through his fingers. “The whole night, I watched you from afar, save at the end, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. And just now? I stayed hidden from a little girl for fear that someone would be able to touch me.” He gives one shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter what precautions I take. I could lock myself up in a concrete box so nothing could ever hurt me, but that’s no way to live.
“Being king comes with risks. I’m willing to take those. In the end it’s worth it.” He looks at me now. “You are worth it, Alessandra. I’m done living separately from everyone else. My parents’ murderers will finally be brought to justice. But even if they weren’t, I would still make this choice.”
“What choice?”
His hand comes down to the side of my face, and he turns me, tilting my mouth upward.
I draw in a startled breath, and Kallias uses that parting to place his lips around my lower lip. He licks lightly at my skin as he gently pulls upward.
Forgetting my injured feet, I stand and shove him so hard, I nearly fall over in the almost-full tub.
I take the time to shut off the water before stepping out on the other side, keeping the basin between us.
But it’s already too late. “What did you do?” I yell.
“I kissed you,” he answers simply. “You touched me.”
He stands straight, unafraid of this fight, it would seem. “Weren’t you listening to me? I’m done with it all! I’m not my father. I’m not going to spend my life alone so I can reach a hundred. Three hundred. A millennium. I don’t care about a long life anymore. I can’t stand being alone for one second longer. I can’t stand being apart from you for one second longer.” His face falls as something occurs to him. “But if you don’t feel the same way, I’m sorry I accosted you.”
Water pools around me on the floor from my dress, but I ignore it. “The same way,” I repeat. “How? How do you feel?”
Kallias reaches into a pocket of his dress pants and pulls out a folded parchment. “I wrote it on paper.” He opens it, looks at the words, and shakes his head. “I can’t read it aloud. It’s for you to read. Later. Really, I just wanted to prove I could write a better one than Eliades. But I’ll leave it here and go.”
He turns around and places the letter on a nightstand before heading toward his room.
“Kallias Maheras, don’t you dare leave me right now.” He pauses and manages to find my eyes.
“Tell me,” I say. “You don’t need to read a letter. Just tell me.” He closes his hands into fists at his sides. “I want you.”
I wait for him to say more. When he doesn’t, I say, “Surely you can do better than that.”
He narrows his eyes at the challenge. “I’m done watching you flirt with other men. I’m sick of it. I don’t want you kissing or touching anyone but me.”
I keep a straight face as I rub one hand up my other arm. “That’s awfully selfish of you.”
“You be quiet now. I’m not done talking. You wanted me to say it.
So I’ll say it all. Selfish or not.
“When I first saw you, it infuriated me that you never looked at me. Not once during that inane ball. It wasn’t until I approached you that you deigned to meet my eyes. And then you insulted me. You mocked me every chance you got. You didn’t bow and roll over like every other human alive. You challenged me.
“That’s when I first knew I was doomed.” He takes a step forward. “And then we spent all those meals together, separated by a damned table. And you told me about your dreams. About your fears. And I wanted nothing more than to grant your dreams and remove your fears.”
He takes another step. “You asked to spend more time with me. It was the one thing I thought I could not give. Because if I spent more time with you, I would fall for you even harder. This girl who didn’t care that I was a king. But then you spent that evening with Leandros, and I realized the one thing worse than not having you was not having you and watching you be with someone else. So I tortured myself by spending more time with you.
“And you let me talk about my mother. You helped me challenge the council. You put a stop to nearly every problem in my kingdom. You were not only perfect for me, you were perfect for Naxos. So then I knew that marrying you was what I had to do. For the good of the kingdom. Even if it meant I would be miserable every day having you near and not having you.
“But the most exquisite torture of all was the night at the gentleman’s club, when I could feel your reactions to me touching you. I didn’t know
if it was because it was me touching you or if it was just because you hadn’t been touched in a while, as you’d mentioned before.
“I want a life with you, Alessandra, one without the shadows between us. And I don’t care about being vulnerable. That’s what my guards are for. I’ll get a poison taster. I will live as other kings do. I don’t need this centuries’ old gift that is really just a curse.
“And even if you don’t want me in return, I am still going to remove the law about people touching me. I don’t want this anymore. I’m tired of living a shadowed life.”
By now, Kallias’s knees dig into the other side of the tub, he’s so close. I can’t move. I’m both terrified and desperate to believe him. To let him be what he wants to be. To marry him for real.
Because there was Hektor. But—
Kallias knows I killed Hektor. He knows all my secrets, and he doesn’t care. He wants me in spite of them. Because of them, even.
“Please say something,” he says.
“You made this decision before the attack tonight?” He nods.
“You’ve wanted me … from the beginning?” Another nod.
And I realize that if I tell him no, I’ll be just as he was. Alone because I’m terrified to be vulnerable. But I can get past that, as he is now, and I can have it all.
The power. The kingdom. The man.
“Come here,” I say, because my feet still ache slightly, and I also don’t know if I can move with the way he’s looking at me.
Kallias keeps his eyes on mine as he removes his gloves and lets them fall to the floor.
I swallow.
Between one blink and the next he’s before me. He raises one hand, cups my cheek. I lean into that touch. The one I’ve been craving for so long.
Then Kallias lifts me, holds me with one arm at my back and the other beneath my knees. My arms go to his neck, and I draw his face toward mine.
“I wanted to do this the very first time I saw you,” I say before our lips touch.
And then I’m aflame.
There is no softness or patience to this kiss. For Kallias, it is one he has waited a whole year for. And for me, I feel as though I’ve waited my whole life.
He stumbles slightly as he tries to veer around the tub without breaking the kiss, and I laugh against his lips before he silences me with his mouth.
I don’t know how he manages not to drop me. But he makes it all the way to my bed. All while giving the utmost attention to my lips.
I’m flat on my back while he holds himself above me, his mouth moving to investigate the slope of my neck.
“Promise me—” I start, and then I lose my train of thought as he finds a spot at the base of my throat and runs his teeth across it.
I put my hands on his shoulders, pushing him away for a moment, just so I can collect my thoughts. “Promise me you won’t send me away because I’m the one making you mortal. Promise me you won’t change your mind later and decide I’m not enough for the price of mortality.”
His breathing is ragged, but he manages to focus. “I swear it, Alessandra. You’re not going anywhere. You’re mine.”
He sits back on his knees and starts unbuttoning his shirt.
I follow his fingers with my eyes, watching as each inch of his beautiful skin is revealed.
I don’t like being on uneven footing, so I sit up, too. He draws his shirt away from his chest and tosses it to the ground, and I understand.
I place the palm of my hand flat against his chest, and he closes his eyes. He hasn’t been touched in so long. And what he wants right now— what he needs—is to be touched.
My hands do a thorough search of his chest, and then I replace them with my lips, feeling every muscle, every slope, every smooth and coarse surface.
I lay him back, climb atop him, let him feel the weight of my body. My hair slides against his cheeks as I kiss the stubble at his chin, and then I move to his neck, up to his ear, grab the lobe between my teeth and tongue.
And then, as though he can’t stand it anymore, he rolls us, effectively sliding me underneath him. My dress hitches up, and one of his thighs goes between mine, nudging upward—
And then I’m gasping, but he covers the sound with his mouth. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t—
Kallias slows the kiss. Draws each connection of our lips out almost lazily, as if he has all the time in the world.
My senses return, and I just enjoy the feel of him, the heat of him, the way his clever lips move across mine.
The Shadow King is the most patient man in the world. He kisses me for hours. He plays with me, speeding the kisses up for a time and then slowing them down, as if to see how close he can bring himself to the brink of control before calming back down.
He never takes off his pants. He never takes off my dress. He doesn’t even let his hands stray to fun places.
And I’m so terrified that he’ll change his mind. That he’ll send me away. That he’ll decide he doesn’t want me anymore—as Hektor did— that I don’t try to push anything. As badly as I want him, I let him control the pace and speed at which we go.
Just for tonight. When things are new and terrifying.
Perhaps that is what he needs. To ease himself back into remembering what it is like to feel.
|
WHEN I WAKE, I try to cling to the remnants of a delicious dream. There was me and Kallias and—
But when my eyes open, I find him in bed next to me, one gloveless, shirtless arm slung over my middle.
Not a dream.
A beautiful reality. My Shadow King.
His eyes crack open, and he just stares at me, as though startled. But then he collects himself. “That’ll take some getting used to.”
“Waking up to another face?”
“Waking up to a face that isn’t Demodocus’s. As much as I love him, I much prefer yours.” His hand snakes forward to cup my face, and he draws me in for a sweet kiss.
An hour or so later, he leaves me to dress in his own room, but he doesn’t bother to shut the door that usually separates us, so that we might talk.
“I’m having your things moved in here,” he says. “Moved where? Into your room?”
“Into our room. We’ll knock down this wall. Make it one great room. I don’t care. But you’re sleeping with me. There will be no your-bed- and-my-bed nonsense.” His next words are muffled, as though he says them while pulling a shirt over his head. “Unless you really want your own bedroom…” It sounds as though the words cost him greatly.
I smile, not answering right away because it’ll drive him mad.
Finally, I say, “I don’t need my own room.”
“Good. I’ll order the staff to move your things over immediately. We’ll get some builders up here to take out the wall while we’re away on our honeymoon.”
“We’re going away for our honeymoon?”
He appears in the doorway, not having bothered to ask if I’m dressed. “A very long one.”
While I managed to get my dress over my head, I can’t do the laces in the back. “Will you help me, or should I ring for a maid?”
He doesn’t say anything, and in the next instant I feel his fingers sweeping my hair over my shoulder. He works at the strings on my back, pausing every other one to add a kiss to the back of my neck. When he’s done, I reach for my gloves, but Kallias plucks them out of my fingers and tosses them away.
“No gloves.” And he grabs my fingers with his, lacing them together. “You’ve suddenly become so much more demanding.”
“And I think you love it,” he says, pulling me close, running his nose along my neck.
Oh, but I do.
|
A WHOLE SLEW OF guards accompanies us down to the dungeons.
It will take some time, I think, to adjust to how many are appropriate throughout the castle, now that Kallias will be vulnerable to attack constantly, just like any normal man.
When we’re let through a thick door with a barred opening at the top, I’m glad I didn’t wear one of my own designs down here. The ground is positively filthy. I suspect it’s never been cleaned.
Every step echoes loudly, and lit torches shine from their sconces. Electric wires must never have been installed down here. Why would they need to be? Criminals don’t need the light.
“Ikaros first,” Kallias says, and a burly man with a ring of keys leads us through a maze of cells before stopping before an occupied one.
Lord Vasco—just Vasco now that I suppose he’ll be stripped of his title—stands with his back toward the bars, facing an abandoned corner. The other corner holds naught but a bucket, and I don’t want to think about what it’s used for.
No plumbing down in the dungeons, either, it would seem. “I just want to know one question,” Kallias says. “Why?”
Vasco doesn’t turn, doesn’t make any movements to indicate he heard our approach at all. He keeps his head firmly toward the corner as though it’s the most interesting thing in the world.
“My father and mother—” Kallias swallows. “They loved you. You had their respect. Why would you do that to them?”
Again, no response.
“You wanted the power, is that it? Without the Maheras line, you thought you would rule instead? Well, you wouldn’t have. I have third cousins. They would take the throne before you ever would. So why?”
When Vasco doesn’t move, Kallias screams. “WHY?” The sound bounces off the walls, and I resist the urge to cover my ears with my hands. I only stand by Kallias’s side, holding his hand for support. This issue is personal to him. I will respect him by letting him deal with it in any way he sees fit.
When the echoes die completely, Kallias tries again. “Did you think I would be easy to control? Is that it? You thought I would be your puppet king? And when I wasn’t, you thought to get rid of me as well?”
Still, no movement.
Kallias turns, taking me with him back down the hallway, but he says over his shoulder, “You have three days to think it over. After that, we resort to less pleasant means of getting information out of you.” To the guard, “Take us to Zervas now.”
“Your parents weren’t who you thought they were,” a cold voice says from behind us. Kallias halts but doesn’t turn.
“You were never supposed to be king,” Vasco continues. “Your father deserved what happened.”
Kallias’s grip tightens on my fingers, and I wrap my free hand around his upper arm.
“To Lady Zervas’s cell,” I tell the guard. And we put Vasco behind
us.
We’re led down another corridor, and where Vasco’s cell was
initially as silent as a tomb, Zervas’s rings with music.
She’s singing.
I can’t make out the words with the horrid way the cells echo, but it’s probably some little tune sung to her as a child.
I suppose one has to pass the time somehow.
Once she hears our footsteps, she silences, watching us as we come into view.
She sighs dramatically. “Are you here to let me out?” “No,” Kallias says.
“Well, then, let me know when you are here to let me out.” And she resumes her singing.
What the devils?
“You’re locked up for murder,” I tell her. “You should take this more seriously.”
Her voice cuts off again. “I’m not the one responsible for the late king’s and queen’s deaths. I’ve never raised a hand to Kallias. When the real murderer strikes again, I will be released.”
“You matched a description perfectly.”
“A description given by whom?” she asks. Neither Kallias nor I dare to say, “A little girl.”
“Either it was from a highly unreliable source, or it was from someone who was in on it. Someone who wants you to think it’s me so you will let down your guard. Honestly, the person behind the attack has my utmost respect. I’m a perfect scapegoat. I have the means and the motive. But while I did want your dear father to suffer as he did, I’m not the one who killed him. And there’s no reason why I should want to kill you.
“If I were you, I’d be very careful. And honestly, perhaps you should take a closer look at her.” It takes me a moment to realize she’s speaking about me. “After all, love is an excellent motivator to kill.”
And then she resumes singing.
