Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
J EMIMA CAUGHT HER passing reflection in an immensely large framed portrait of Adamos in full regalia as she followed the Queen and bit her lip self-consciously.
She’d dressed in a hurry this morning and was now regretting the choice of the dark navy, nearly black sheath dress she’d chosen for the meeting Prince Adonis had summoned with the crown council present.
Bad enough that she’d barely slept last night reliving the confusing encounter with him.
This morning, she’d alternately worried that the whole thing had been a bizarre dream or that she didn’t look good enough to marry the most beautiful man on the planet.
She scoffed at herself just as they arrived at the large doors to the summit room. Vanity had never been one of her flaws and she couldn’t begin now. If anything, she needed to toughen herself up even more in this marriage.
With Adamos, there had been no attraction, no zings, no awareness of any kind. But something about Prince Adonis—other than his blond god looks, had always piqued her interest. Had urged her to cross the lines that had always been drawn around her.
After all these years, it was the same again last night. The man both fascinated her and attracted her, all smoke and shadows, roiling emotions and sudden fairness. Every inch of her had been drawn to him like a magnet to true north.
Giving in to the ridiculous fantasies that had plagued her last night about him, about them…only heartbreak and humiliation lay that way.
She couldn’t, wouldn’t, become one of the multitude of women over the world who lost their hearts over him, who thought they could tame and leash the Devil Prince. Even if he was legally bound to her.
That brought her back to how she should approach the upcoming partnership with him and the terms she needed to lay out for their convenient marriage. Her belly twisted into more knots as they stopped in front of the doors to the summit room.
Prince Adonis and crown council in one room was not a peaceful combination in any way.
“Be yourself with him, Jemima,” the Queen whispered at her ear.
Jemima drew back to study the older woman, glad to be out of earshot of anyone. Shock made her words stutter. “What…do you mean, Your Highness?”
Grief clung to the Queen’s drawn features, but there was a new brightness to her eyes. “Adonis apprised me of your…talk last night. I’m glad you made him see sense in a partnership with you.”
Jemima flushed, both with pleasure and embarrassment. She clutched the Queen’s bony hands in hers, desperate to explain. “Please believe me that I’m not doing this for power or ambition. I do grieve for Adamos.”
“Hush, child,” the Queen said, patting her hand. “You’ll be a great queen, Jemima, precisely because you’ve never sought this for your selfish needs. I know I have no right to ask this of you but be patient with my younger son, ne ? Adonis has a heart of gold if only you can excavate it. And I believe with my whole heart that you’re the woman for the job.”
The Queen smiled at her own joke but it was strange how the conviction lit her up from inside out. Curiosity about the man flooded Jemima but she couldn’t betray herself, not even to his mother. Couldn’t make a habit of indulging either that curiosity or her fascination with him.
“All I aspire for are respect and the means to live my own life, Your Highness.”
“Do not sell yourself short. Believe me when I say that Adonis is unlike any man you’ve known.” The Queen’s brows drew into a fierce scowl. “Demand what you want of him and more. Remind him of what he owes Thalassos like you did last night, of what he owes you as his queen and wife. That’s the only way Adonis will respect you or give you anything.”
“I thought you would be angry with me,” Jemima said, relief making her tongue loose. “Or see it as an insult to Adamos’s memory.” Her heart ached at losing this gentle but fierce woman’s regard.
Jemima’s mother had loved her but she’d lived in her father’s shadow, never questioning his autocratic orders, never stating her opinion. In the end, her obedience had made her resentful enough to drive her into another man’s arms.
Queen Isadora, though, had taken Jemima under her wing in the last few years and Jemima had come to adore the woman for both the easy kindness she had shown her and the valuable lessons she had taught her. That her mind was a weapon she should wield with full awareness, especially since she was always going to be underestimated, and that she could be both soft and strong. Not one or the other, as her father had made her believe all these years.
“Only you could have convinced Adonis to walk toward the altar,” the Queen said with a mischievous smile. “As for Adamos, nothing would have made him happier than to see his brother find his place in Thalassos. I’m happy to gain one son back while I must grieve the loss of the other.”
Jemima squeezed the Queen’s hand back just as the doors opened.
Shivers of apprehension gripped her as she caught sight of the full contingent of the crown council—including her father—in formal regalia, their old, withered faces already radiating grave disapproval.
Prince Adonis’s absence, on the other hand, was highly conspicuous.
Was their displeasure simply because the Devil Prince dared summon them, first thing in the morning, for a meeting, like mere children? Or because they were realizing that he could ruin their greedy plans for ruling Thalassos?
Even having attended these meetings for nearly three years, Jemima didn’t dare do anything but stand at the back of the room like another ornamental decoration. Adamos had neither invited her nor discouraged her from being present for the meetings. It was because of the Queen’s command that Jemima learn everything about how Thalassos was run that Jemima had been included at all.
Now, she settled into the seat at the back and waited with bated breath. Her quick conversation with the Queen settled inside her like the gnarled roots of a majestic tree sinking deep into the ground, making her lightheaded with relief.
A large part of her had worried that the Prince had been mocking her, or that he would think better of the whole plan in the light of the morning. But he had already shared it with the Queen.
Which meant she was about to marry the Devil Prince.
All that one impending arrangement constituted ran through her mind like a torrent drowning a bank.
What would he be like as a partner, a lover? Christos, what if he laughed at her inexperience? How long before he got bored with her? What could she do to hold the attention of a man who looked like some mythical warrior from one of her art history texts and behaved with the wild abandon of the very devil?
She was pulled out of her reverie by the hard scrape of a chair. A restless anger began to fill the room as the old men of crown council shifted in their seats. Some of them, like her father, dared cast doubtful glances at the Queen, both in pity and bloated arrogance.
Anger on Queen Isadora’s behalf flushed through Jemima. Just as she was about to get to her feet to request the Queen to leave, he strode in.
Looking as casual and devilish as he had done yesterday, in a white linen shirt that spanned his broad chest, open to below his chest to reveal taut olive-toned skin and delineated pecs. For a second, she wondered if he’d even gone to bed and that led to wondering whose bed he’d tumbled into eventually.
There were any number of his exes that would have waited at the doorstep of his palace wing, willing to restart their wild associations.
Hadn’t the Queen’s aide whispered that Prince Adonis had had an inordinate number of guests waiting for him last night when she’d inquired of his whereabouts this morning?
Had one of those beautiful exes given him an escape from his grief and the tightening shackles of the palace? Hadn’t she sensed the restlessness in him even as he’d agreed to her proposal last night?
She sighed. They weren’t even officially engaged and she was already tying herself in petty knots. The reminder that she had no real claim on the man, even if their agreement last night stood, didn’t help though.
There was something so primal about Prince Adonis that his presence had always been like a hook under her belly button, tugging her. Her gratitude at his continued absence in the kingdom—even as his mother and brother bitterly missed him, had filled her with constant shame.
Now, she gripped her seat with one hand, trying to resist the crazy impulse of running toward him.
His dark blond curls lay stylishly haphazard at the top of his head, making him look like he had just rolled out of bed after a night of debauchery. Thick bristles dotted across his sculpted cheeks. She wondered if he meant to make a statement with his disheveled, disrespectful appearance, or if he had simply treated this meeting as another boring, mundane task he had to deal with.
If not for his bright, penetrating blue gaze, Jemima would have thought him hungover. Those eyes now roamed the expansive room without landing on anyone, even his mother.
Until they found her and stayed.
Warmth bloomed under her skin as he skimmed her from head to toe. Something like displeasure flashed across that gaze before he shut it down.
Jemima couldn’t help rubbing a hand over her belly in self-consciousness. Clearly, something about her appearance had already disgruntled him.
He sauntered past the watching crown council toward her with all the grace and power of an untamed lion. And she, despite her best effort to control her raging heartbeat, felt like wanton prey, foolishly excited to be devoured whole.
His large hand, with its long, elegant fingers, landed in front of her face, upturned. Calluses and raised rope burns danced on his palm, reminding her that despite his appearance of dissipation and life of excess, the truth was something else.
This was a man whose physicality was the stuff of legends. The same physicality that seemed to press up against her like a warm blanket on a chilly night.
She stared at his hand, stunned beyond belief that he was seeking her out while dismissing the waiting council in the same breath. Beneath the sudden sticky tension that swamped her at his nearness, she was aware that he was creating a spectacle, making a statement from the get-go that they would not control him but still…fear and excitement twin punched her.
She hadn’t even informed her father of their discussion last night, worried that it had all been a fantastical dream. Surely, he would punish her in some way after this public statement the Prince was making, would only see it as blatant disloyalty.
“Princess?”
Her gaze trailed up his arm to collide with his.
Blue eyes danced with devilish amusement before they sobered at her expression. Could he see the fear and trepidation that kept her rooted to the seat?
In another move that sent shock waves rippling through the room, he went to his knees in front of her. His stunningly beautiful face swam into view and she got lost in the pure, poetic symmetry of his features, in the lush sweep of his lips and the sharp up-tilt of his cheekbones. A soft, slow heat drizzled down her spine as his blue gaze swept over her features with leisurely scrutiny. Pausing at her lips for way too long.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, the dark, delicious oceans and forest scent of him coiling around her like a sensuous leash. God, the man was a master at upending her hard-fought-for composure. Even knowing that this was an act for the benefit of their eager audience, she felt like a giddy teenager meeting her celebrity boy band crush.
That lush lower lip of his stretched in a smile she wanted to touch and smudge with her finger. Stamp it with her touch. “Going to my knees for you, Princess. Something I forgot to do yesterday evening.”
A thousand butterflies flapped their wings in her belly. Not grinning like a silly fool was the hardest thing she’d ever accomplished. “There are no cameras here, Prince Adonis. All this playacting amounts to nothing.”
“You know better than me,” he said, as one shoulder rose in a fluid movement to gesture behind him, “that in all of Thalassos, no one gossips more than the bunch of old men behind me. In two hours, the whole world will know that you’re to be mine.”
A grin she didn’t want to give up danced on her lips. “Why do I have a feeling you’re creating a spectacle out of this, mocking me even?”
The harsh slashes of his brows met. “Mocking you? No, Princess. I simply wish to ensure the world, starting with these power-hungry vultures, knows that you’re my choice. Not a hand-me-down from my brother. I thought you would appreciate that too.”
Some dark, hungry thing inside her that she had stifled for so long found solace in his words.
Jemima searched his eyes, but the bitter edge she heard in his words didn’t taint them. The more he infused that laid-back charm into his words, the more she was beginning to realize the topic mattered to him.
He didn’t like that Adamos had had a prior claim on her, as trivial as it had been. The realization made her heart stutter in her chest. Why did it matter when it was nothing but a convenient arrangement between them?
“Come, Princess.” A cajoling note entered his tone, but something hungrier dwelled there too. Or she was already going mad, imagining things that didn’t exist. “Don’t back out on me now.”
She laid her hand in his and his fingers closed in a tight grip. Every inch of her being hovered hungrily at that place of contact. Giving in to the wanton urging of her flesh, she leaned in and rested her forehead against his shoulder. Her heart felt too big for her chest at her daring.
And for all his disheveled appearance, he smelled like fresh soap and…clean male sweat that she wanted to drown in.
If the sudden intimacy she took shocked him, he didn’t show it. If anything, he pressed into the contact, his broad shoulders both a shield and a cocoon. His fingers tightened with a possessiveness she desperately wanted to believe in.
For the first time in weeks, or was it years, Jemima felt a moment’s pure, utter peace. With hot, honeyed longings pulsing beneath.
“I don’t want to have this conversation in front of so many curious eyes and prying ears,” she said, looking up into his stunning face. This close, the tiny scar near his upper lip was visible—a tiny imperfection in a landscape of perfection. “Most of whom wish for us to fail in a spectacular fashion.”
A ferocious emotion dawned in his eyes, making them glitter. “I will not stand for any of them cowing you, Jemima. You should know that if you’re to be my wife.”
Her heart thumped against her rib cage.
Mine. My wife…
He made their association sound so much more than purely political and convenient. If he continued to talk about her like that, she was going to melt into a puddle of goo at his feet soon. And her poor, naive heart would surely take a beating too.
She pulled back and stared into the blue depths. “I’m more than glad to accept your support, Adonis. But I refuse to perform any part of our relationship that’s already going to be for public consumption, for anyone. And definitely not the damned crown council or my father.”
His answering grin was the very definition of delight. Because her little statement of rebellion pleased him?
She squealed like a scared bunny when he went from stillness to motion like a sudden flash of thunder. A spurt of childish—and utterly flippant laughter escaped her as he pulled her to her feet and dragged her along, past so many pairs of scandalized eyes, into a landing that cut off into corridors leading to different wings of the palace.
Her chest was still heaving when he pushed her against the wall, caging her with his lean body, but not quite touching. “Thank the lord there’s no dreary, draconic Vasilikos ancestor scowling down at us here,” he murmured lazily.
Far above her, the generous May sun cast a warm, golden glow that filtered through intricately designed stained-glass windows, scattering into vibrant patterns of reds, blues, and greens.
She stared up in awe as the brilliant light created a kaleidoscope effect around the Prince’s head, as if anointing him with its rich blessing. As if this was how it was supposed to be.
Adonis returned her stare, his gaze lingering on her smile. “You are not reconsidering this, are you?”
“No.” Something about interacting with this man made her feel like she was splayed open under a microscope. Like things she didn’t know she wanted were being drawn out of her by some secret sorcery he wielded. “But I have some conditions for this…marriage. That we have to agree on,” she added.
He nodded. “I do too.” His hand came up to her face, his knuckles grazing her cheek in a feathery caress. “And I had the best time dreaming them up last night.”
Molten heat uncoiled low in her belly at his teasing tone. “This is serious, Prince Adonis,” she said, sounding like a strict schoolteacher. It was the only defense she had against how easily he unraveled her.
“Of course, it’s serious.” He pulled back and air rushed into her lungs. “I would never think of producing the next heir to the mighty kingdom of Thalassos as a joking matter.”
Heat poured up her neck and into her cheeks. She fought against the sudden shaking in her knees and forged on. “That heir you talk so casually about producing is first and foremost an innocent child. It’s the most important issue in all this.”
“Explain,” he said, for once very much the arrogant prince and not the scandalous devil.
“There is nothing in the world—no man or crown or kingdom, for which I’ll let my child be used as a political prize or pawn. If you have other ideas about the matter, we can call off this sham now.”
His eyes gleamed with something she thought might be sheer, giddy joy. Or was she imagining what she wanted to see? The man was like a chameleon, shedding and donning new skins too fast for her to track. “We’re in perfect agreement on that, Jemima. And it will be our child, not yours.”
Surprise made her mouth slack. His blue eyes glittered with a conviction she hadn’t expected. Especially of a man like him, who’d made an art out of escaping duty and commitment.
“And it should not be a sham either,” he said with a steely edge to his tone.
“What…do you mean?” she whispered.
He shrugged and even as her stomach twisted, Jemima couldn’t help admiring the sheer beauty of how he moved. “If we’re committed to doing this for Thalassos and we agree on not turning our child into a sacrificial lamb, then it should be as real as we can make it, ne ?”
It was as if he’d already read her most secret desire and decided to use it to manipulate her. Just like her father had done for years. “No. It shouldn’t,” she bit out.
He raised a brow and studied her.
She tried her best to not flush under his scrutiny.
“Illuminate me, Princess.”
For once, there was no thread of mockery in his words and that made it so much harder to speak the truth. “Real means respect and understanding and fidelity and…” Love , though she didn’t say it—the mirage of everything that word constituted scared her. For she had never seen it being real.
And suddenly, she could see past the haze of desire and foolish longings clouding her usually clear head.
“You have decided that these are qualities I’m incapable of?” The silky thrust of his question pulsed with anger and…something more.
“No.” She folded her arms at her middle as a defense against her own stupid need to touch him. “What you’re suggesting means committing to each other before anything else. It means…love.”
He scoffed, though there was no mockery in it. His lack of conviction in the concept sounded as oceans deep as her own. “You think I’m that desperate to be loved by you, Princess? Or that I set much store by the concept?”
Jemima knew she was making a mess of things, but faced with her pull toward him, even as he mocked her, she couldn’t stop herself. “I simply think that the palace and the politics surrounding it and Thalassos itself doesn’t allow for real marriages. Fairy tales are for tricking the populace into thinking everything is well with their betters. It is better to keep oneself on the ground than to imagine flying and come crashing to earth.”
“With such diplomacy at your fingers, no wonder you’re in quite the demand around this place.” A smile bloomed on his lips, of a different shape than his mocking ones, swirling with a darker emotion. “You sound less eager this morning than you were last night, Princess.”
That he could read her so well was…surprising to say the least. She frowned, trying to corral a thousand thoughts into some semblance of sense. Hard enough to do without the magnetism of the man pulling at her. For a man who was reputed to know nothing but his own pleasure, he was…proving to be far too perceptive.
“Yesterday it seemed impossible that another prince of Thalassos would agree to wed me.”
“And this morning?”
“This morning is for reality,” she said without hesitating. “You’re marrying me under the influence of twisted guilt and a belated sense of duty, Adonis. While I believe that you want to thwart my father and crown council and do the best for Thalassos at a critical time, you and I both know this won’t be any more than a temporary arrangement. I’m more than happy to be your representative here in Thalassos when the choking grip of those emotions fades and you want to return to your…exciting life.”
“Your arrogance, thinking that you know me, is astounding, Princess.” His tone cooled and yet, she could feel the sharp blade of his anger. Feel his retreat in the distance he put between them, as if she was some vile, stinky thing. “Maybe I should shop around a little more for a more suitable bride then. All this cynicism is extremely off-putting.”
The idea of him with some stunning, sophisticated creature made an unnamed ache pulse through her. Which only struck her—with sharp clarity, how tangled her feelings were already about him. Not one day since his return and he affected her more than Adamos had in years. She’d already given up on the why of it.
“I didn’t realize your fragile ego needed a bride that would cling to you with limpid eyes and adoring delusions, even in marriage,” she said, hating the taste of the acerbic words on her lips. “After all, you’re not a stranger to that kind of devotion everywhere else in your life.”
“Ahh…” he said, a plasticky smile rising to his lips. “Using my reputation to attack my character…how original of you, Princess.”
“I’m not…doing that.” But her protest was both weak and false.
“And here I hoped for a peaceful, stable marriage, given I’m told what an amenable, practical creature you are.” The words dug deep under her skin and stung. “There are any number of pretty, willing, desperate daughters among the men of the crown council for me to choose from, ne ?”