Chapter One #2
Last night, she had lain awake in her bedchamber, entirely too aware that the new Prince had spent the day before their wedding moving into the chamber next to hers and its adjoining rooms that would now belong to him.
They had been separated only by thick stone walls and a dressing chamber, which did not seem like nearly enough of a bulwark.
Every Princess of Zaccaria had slept in the same historic chamber, perhaps even in the same bed with its intricately carved posts—if, she hoped, a different mattress.
The same tapestries had adorned the walls for centuries.
The same windows let in the same bright Aegean sun.
The palace had originally been built to stave off the incursions from the mainland—Greece, Rome, and hordes aplenty in between.
It had been built for defense, not to let in the ocean breezes or captivating view.
There were the gardens for that. The Royal Quarter of the island was more garden than anything else.
Usually, she slept with all the windows open, listening to the ocean and the breeze and letting the night-blooming blossoms scent her dreams.
Last night she had curled up in a ball, windows shut tight, as if Kyriakos might take to the battlements, praying for a deliverance that she knew would not come.
And sure enough, her attendants had woken her too early, and not to effect her escape. They were there to prepare her, though she thought that it was only they who truly understood the somberness of the occasion. They had dressed her, making certain that she would shine no matter her mood.
They had done a wonderful job, she was sorry to say. Aikaterini looked appropriately sacrificial and serene, exactly as planned. She would grace the cover of every paper and magazine for days.
And now she was running out of aisle, and the sight of her soon-to-be new husband made everything in her clench tight like he already had her in a terrible grip.
Standing on the altar, Kyriakos looked every inch the devil, as far she was concerned. He, too, was dressed in ceremonial regalia and Aikaterini hated that the traditional epaulets seemed to bloom on his shoulders. As if they’d been made for such showy wideness and all of those distressing muscles.
She really couldn’t believe this was happening.
Her father had given her away at her first wedding.
But she was already the Princess of Zaccaria today.
Only she could give herself away, and more importantly, was compelled to do so by law.
So as she arrived at the altar, she did so alone.
She watched as the priest nodded his head toward the man who stood waiting for her.
He turned, and for a moment, it was as if everything fell away. The Cathedral. Her duty. Herself.
Because his dark hazel eyes slammed into her and she lost track of where she was. She wasn’t sure that she could breathe.
Kyriakos had the kind of face that belonged stamped on armor.
He had dark hair and darker eyes and something about his bearing was like an insistent drumbeat, entirely martial and resonant of an ancient sort of warrior that could not possibly exist today.
He reminded her of paintings she’d seen of the Zaccarian generals who had fought off the Greeks and the Romans and the endless hordes in turn, and had spent the whole of their lives crafting and honing their bodies into instruments of destruction for use on battlefields.
She tried to remind herself that the only battlefields Kyriakos encountered were bedrooms, and he did not so much fight in them as indulge in a bit of sport. If he weren’t so intimidating, they would call him a playboy. Or worse.
Aikaterini could think of a great number of other things she would like to call him and she wondered if they all showed on her face, because she was certain she saw an answering gleam deep in Kyriakos’s disturbingly intent gaze.
The priest bade them join hands and Aikaterini wanted nothing less, but she was too well trained to refuse or even pause. There were too many eyes on her. She had to live up to her role, always—but especially today.
She told herself that the role she played today honored Venediktos and the sacrifices he had made for the sake of the country. That being so, how could she do anything less than her duty? No matter how little she wished to do it?
Duty wasn’t about personal likes and dislikes. Duty was about honor and tradition and the expectations borne of her position. There was no pretending she didn’t understand this. She always had—she just liked it a lot less now.
She slid her hands into Kyriakos’s and was somehow both unsurprised and filled with despair that she could feel his intensity. It seemed to wrap all around her, shooting deep into her limbs.
Like a creeping vine, she told herself, but it was like no other vine she had ever encountered. It seemed to wind all around her. It seemed to affect the most curious parts of her body in ways that not only made no sense but were embarrassing. Given where they were.
Given who he was.
It was only a wedding ceremony, she reminded herself, perhaps a bit sharply.
It was a foregone conclusion with a bit of pomp and circumstance, that was all.
Immediately afterward, it would shift into an even more archaic ceremony, where she would be required to pledge her fealty to Kyriakos, here before the country and the world.
To the reigning Prince of Zaccaria, who would also be her husband at that point.
This had not been required at her first wedding, because there had been no doubt that Venediktos ruled, then.
It was her widowhood that left her strangely ranked in the hierarchy of the principality.
The law was clear on that, too. A new Prince was called the moment the old one died or stepped aside, and it was only if the widowed Princess was pregnant with the old Prince’s heir or already in possession of his heirs that things might change.
The Princess would become a kind of regent, assuming her eldest child’s status as heir apparent until that child came of age.
The successor was required to rule in concert with her until the rightful Prince was old enough to dismiss him.
Kyriakos had been bound over to his duty a year ago. Today, once she knelt before him as his wife and subject, he would rule in concert with his own wishes and no one else’s for the rest of his reign.
Aikaterini might have been Venediktos’s partner in the principality while he lived, but Kyriakos had made it clear over the course of the last year that he had no need of a partner.
Aikaterini was to take her place as his wife and the mother of his children, and nothing more that did not fall into the purview of the Princess’s traditional role.
As the priest mouthed the ancient words, she couldn’t help but go back over every time she had ever come into contact with this man who was to become her husband in short order.
While Venediktos was alive, it had been easier to handle him.
Kyriakos would turn up when called back to Zaccaria for various functions, always a dark, sardonic cloud over any proceeding.
As first in line to the throne, he had always been seated too near to Aikaterini for her comfort.
Though she supposed it had given her some measure of insight into him, however unwanted.
Despite Venediktos’s wishes, Kyriakos had never produced a wife. When asked why, he would laugh. The world is filled with adventure, cousin, Kyriakos would say. If you ever left this island, you would know that.
Aikaterini had always found him disrespectful and disruptive. Their meetings throughout her year of mourning had not changed that opinion.
Their first private meeting had taken place precisely two months after the funeral. In retrospect she now realized that those two months were the only real mourning she’d been permitted, because after that it was back to work. If in limited ways.
Her meeting with the new Prince had taken place in one of the private sitting rooms in the palace.
She knew that he had moved into one of the other buildings on the property, in deference to her period of mourning, but she had been happy enough to never lay eyes on him.
That day, Kyriakos had already been in the room when she’d entered it, which she had thought showed a shocking lack of protocol and decent manners.
What was more, she was certain he knew that.
You should know that I find this law archaic, she had told him at once. Barbaric, even.
I assure you, Princess, that my tastes run less to ice sculptures and more to full-blooded women who claim their own pleasure.
When she’d blinked at him, not certain she understood or cared to understand what he meant, he’d let out a sardonic sort of laugh.
What does it matter if it is archaic? Your wants and my wants are equally immaterial.
It had not occurred to her that he might have some objection to their mandated marriage. She wasn’t sure she liked thinking of him as a person with preferences instead of simply as her nemesis.
She didn’t remember much else from that first meeting. It had all been too grueling, so soon after Venediktos’s sudden, shocking death and with the Sword of Damocles in the form of their inevitable wedding pressing in on her. Nonetheless, after that, she’d seen him once a month.
My uncle is now first in line should something happen to me, he had said at one of those meetings. And he’s the sort who I wouldn’t trust at a meal. Far too likely to sneak arsenic into something. He’s wanted a throne his whole life.
If you mean Panayiotis, Aikaterini had said frostily, I have never known him to be anything but a decent man.
How would you know the difference? Kyriakos had returned, with a certain silken menace.