Marrying Her Royal Enemy

CHAPTER THREE

THE DAYS FOLLOWING Stella’s return to Akathinia passed in a blur, likely a good thing given the magnitude of what she’d committed herself to. She knew her decision to marry Kostas had been the right one, knew this was the challenge she had been looking for. It was the noise that was getting to her.

Everyone seemed to have an opinion on her upcoming nuptials to the king of Carnelia, from her hairdresser, who pronounced him “a real man among the current flock of pseudo-men,” to her sister, Aleksandra, who agreed with her hairdresser, referring to Kostas as “one sexy hunk of a man,” to the celebrity press, who’d dubbed their pairing “the most exciting thing to happen to royalty in decades. Camelot has come to Carnelia.”

The traditional media, on the other hand, Kostas’s harshest critics, were taking a wait-and-see approach. Not all of them were convinced King Idas’s son, the thirty-two-year-old Oxford-educated proponent of democracy, could turn his legacy around. Rumblings of military discontent were rippling across the country, approval ratings for the monarchy were down and all bets were off as to whether Kostas could win the hearts and minds of Carnelians.

But there was also hope. The Carnelian people seemed guardedly optimistic, as spontaneous parties broke out in the streets as the first elections in the country’s history were announced for the fall. Those celebrations continued with the news of the king’s forthcoming match to the elder princess of Akathinia. For the great majority, she appeared the bright, promising light Kostas had painted, but for others she was an unknown quantity in a culture historically closed to outsiders. Not a Carnelian.

That would have to be overcome, she thought grimly as she flew to London for an official appearance the week before her engagement party. The future of a country, the self-determination of its people, depended on it, though they were so wounded at the moment, they weren’t sure what they wanted.

The oppressive media coverage dogged her as she attended a charity luncheon in support of one of the major hospital’s cancer units. What started out as a peaceful affair was hijacked by the news of her upcoming nuptials. Irritation chasing a beat up her spine, she apologized to her hostess. It was only a taste of the wedding madness, she knew, and it left her in an exceedingly cranky mood as she returned to Akathinia for a dress fitting with her sister-in-law, Sofía, and sister, Alex. A designer who was making her name on the world stage, Sofía was creating both her engagement party and wedding dresses.

“What do you think about this?” Sofía held up a sensational sapphire-hued backless satin gown in the bright light of her palace workshop at the front of the white Maltese stone Akathinian palace.

“Too obvious.”

Sofía returned the dress to the rack and pulled out a white chiffon gown for her inspection.

“Too virginal.”

Her sister-in-law flicked through the row of dresses and held up an elegant, midnight blue lace number.

She shook her head. “Just...not right.”

Alex eyed her. “What are you, Goldilocks?”

At least there was a happy ending to that story. She ran a hand through her hair. “Sorry, I know I’m being a pain. It’s been a bad week.”

Sofía folded the dress over her arm. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Nothing has been done that can’t be undone.”

Her sister-in-law should know. She’d been an ambitious, career-driven dress-shop owner in Manhattan before she’d fallen in love with Stella’s brother, been swept up in romance and taken the unlikely path of becoming queen. But the road to happiness hadn’t been an easy one for her and Nik.

“I’m doing the right thing.” She said the words more vehemently than she felt them at the moment.

“For you or for your country?”

“For both.”

Alex stayed quiet and she knew why. Her sister was blissfully happy with Aristos, who’d mellowed out from his jungle-cat personality to something approaching civility of late. Stella was happy for her, she really was, but it was like being slapped in the face with her own romantic futility every time she saw them together.

A knock on the door brought their heads up. Her brother strolled in, jacket over his arm, tie loose. He gave his wife a kiss, then glanced at the dress rack. “How’s it going?”

Alex made a face. “How’s it not going, you mean.”

Nik took in Stella’s dark look. “Can you give us a second?”

His wife and Alex left, clearly happy for a breather. Her brother turned his ever-perceptive gaze on her. “Everything okay?”

“Never better.”

“This was your decision, Stella.”

“It’s not that.” She waved a hand at him. “I needed a challenge like this. I was dying inside going through the motions. It’s this media circus that’s getting to me. You’d think I’d solved world hunger instead of getting engaged.”

“Think of it as good for Carnelia. People are excited.”

“I know.” She raked a hand through her hair. Strode to the window to look out at the glittering, sun-dappled Ionian Sea, across which her fiancé was attempting to manage the media firestorm he’d created. She wondered how he was doing. She’d talked to him on the phone a few times, but she’d mostly been working with Takis, his personal aide, on logistics, while Kostas attempted to hold a faltering country together.

“Kostas is a good man. Survivor’s guilt is a hell of a thing to deal with. Give him some leeway.”

She turned around. “You absolve him of any responsibility?”

“I have chosen to let go. You should, too.”

She wasn’t sure she was as enlightened as he was.

“I wanted to mention something else. Darius is going to accompany you to Carnelia. Permanently.”

“I can’t ask him to do that—he lives here.”

“He wants to go. His loyalty to you has always been unquestionable.”

She adored Darius. He’d kept her sane at times when it felt as if her life was just too much. “Does Kostas know about this?”

“He’s in full agreement. I trust Kostas implicitly—he will take care of you. It’s when he’s not there I want an Akathinian, a known quantity, with you.”

“Why? You think I’m in danger?”

“I think it’s a smart precaution. You’re walking into a very tricky political situation.”

She didn’t like how he hadn’t answered the question. But then she’d known taking on this challenge was full of risk.

“Kala.” Fine.

Nik’s gaze softened. “I think you’re very courageous to do this, Stella. I’m proud of you. Remember you are not alone. You are never alone. We’re with you every step of the way.”

Her heart softened. Her rock, Nik was. Passionate, idealistic like her, the yin to Athamos’s rock-steady yang, she’d had to get to know him in pieces. He’d been sent off to join Athamos at boarding school when Stella was four, leaving her with only her nannies and tutor to keep her company while her mother immersed herself in her charity work as her marriage imploded.

She’d seen her brothers on holidays, had eagerly eaten up any time she’d had with them, missing them desperately when they left. When she’d gotten old enough to travel by herself, she’d visited Nik frequently in New York, hoping someday to join him there with her studies. But her parents had axed that dream.

She held his gaze now, as Constantinides electric blue as her own. “S’agapao.” I love you. “You know that.”

“Ki ego s’agapao.” I love you, too. He enfolded her in a warm hug. “Now pick a dress. The party is days away.”

Sofía and Alex returned with coffee and biscuits. Stella eyed the tray. “You think it’s my blood sugar.”

“We’re working all angles,” said Alex.

She smiled. Eyed the dresses. Felt her old fighting spirit rear its defiant head.

“I’m thinking the sapphire blue.”

She was going to dazzle. She was going to shake things up. She was going to seize every ounce of her destiny and accomplish what she’d set out to do. The king had no idea of the storm headed his way.

* * *

Her storm surge was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm by the time she made landfall at the Carnelian palace. Perched on a chain of mountains overlooking a vast green valley in one direction, with the Ionian Sea in the other, the cold and forbidding Marcariokastro was every inch the imposing medieval castle.

It conjured up the dark, suspenseful tales of her childhood, with its square ramparts, circular, capped turrets, moat and drawbridge, although the moat and drawbridge, it was to be noted, were no longer in use. Instead, a beautiful, pastoral lake surrounded the castle.

Stella had visited the massive, gray stone castle with her family years ago when relations between Akathinia and Carnelia had been peaceful; friendly, even. It had seemed a place of immense excitement and mystery to her then, its dungeon and weaponry rooms and long, stone labyrinth of hallways the perfect place for hide-and-seek.

She had always been the bravest of the kids, lasting the longest in her hiding spot, her goose bumps and chattering teeth nothing compared to the thrill of victory. Not even the brave Athamos had liked the dark. But settling into the spacious suite down the hall from the king’s wing, where she would stay until she and Kostas were married, it suddenly felt more unnerving than exciting. Perhaps because the thought that this was now her home filled her with trepidation. Perhaps because she would miss Nik, Sofía and Alex terribly.

Immersed in meetings until late on the night of her arrival, Kostas had left word he would see her the next morning. By the time he deigned to make an appearance as Page was doing Stella’s hair for the party, the day had come and gone, the apprehension she hated herself for having once again kicking up a storm in her veins.

Nodding her head to Page to admit the king, she felt her stomach fill with a thousand butterflies. Clad in a bespoke, light gray suit and white shirt that emphasized his good looks, with his dark hair scraped back from his face, the sleek, powerful impact of him knocked her sideways.

She’d told herself she’d have her response to him firmly under control by now, but the spacious suite suddenly felt as if it had shrunk to the size of a shoe box when he strolled over to stand by her side at the dressing table, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror.

Moistening her lips, she searched for a smart remark but, for the life of her, couldn’t think of one. His gaze slid to her mouth, as he appeared to absorb the evidence of her nerves, then dropped to the plunging neckline of her silk robe that had seemed respectable until he’d walked in, but now made her desperately want to pull the edges together.

She resisted the urge to do so. Somehow. The color riding his high cheekbones, the dark heat that claimed his whiskey-hued eyes as they lifted to hers, ignited a slow burn beneath her skin. Sparked a chemical reaction that climbed up into her throat and held her in its thrall.

He bent his head and brushed a kiss against her cheek. Unprepared, or perhaps overprepared for the press of his firm mouth against her sensitized skin, she flinched.

Kostas straightened, a dark glitter filling his eyes. Her gaze moved to Page, who was watching them with unabashed curiosity.

“Leave us,” the king bit out quietly. Page scurried from the room as if he’d been Zeus himself raising one of his thunderbolts.

Stella lifted her chin defiantly as the door closed and the room went silent. “You will need,” he instructed tersely, “to learn to hide your very...distinct response to me when we’re around others, when the cameras start flashing tonight, or this isn’t going to be a very productive exercise.”

Her chin lifted higher. “I don’t plan it, Kostas. It just happens.”

The glint in his eyes deepened. “Maybe we should do it again, then, maybe a real kiss this time, practice, so it doesn’t happen tonight.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Why not? Are you afraid of how you might respond?”

“Hardly.” The pressure on her brain pushed her temper to its very edge. “But why stop there?” she challenged. “Why don’t we do it right now? Up against the wall while Page is waiting... Would that satisfy you? Would that be enough of a reaction for you? To have the whole palace abuzz with how you keep me in line?”

He leaned his impressive bulk against the dresser, folding his arms across his chest. Dark amusement melted the ire in his eyes. “Is that the plan, Stella? To make me pay for entrapping you? To bait me until I fall over the edge? You forget how well I know you, how you deflect when you are stressed, when you feel cornered, how you use sarcasm as a weapon because that sharp mouth of yours is so very good at it.”

She lifted a shoulder. “You have to work with the tools you’re given.”

His mouth curved. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s eating you?”

“Oh, what would be the fun of that? I’m enjoying your amateur psychology course so much, I think you should tell me.”

He pursed his lips. Eyed her. “It’s been a trying two weeks. We’ve both been analyzed beyond endurance. Most of the Carnelians seem ready to welcome you, but some are reluctant to embrace a foreigner. Tonight is the night you must prove to them you belong. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t feeling the pressure.”

Remarkably spot-on. “I’ve been brought up in the media glare. I can handle it.”

He inclined his head. “Regardless, I appreciate how you’ve risen to the occasion.”

She had no smart comeback for that, so she left it alone. He flicked his gaze around the elaborately furnished, if exceedingly dark, suite. “How are you settling in?”

“Fine. Except honestly, Kostas, you were right. It’s like you’re caught in the Dark Ages here. Everything is cold, unforgiving stone. There’s no warmth to the rooms, no life. How in the world do you live like this?”

“It’s remained untouched since my mother died. My father refused to make changes. I agree, though, it needs massive renovations. It’s hardly the kind of place I want to bring our children up.”

There it was again. Children. An heir. She wished they could just forget about it for a while.

“What was it like?” she asked to distract herself. “Growing up here?”

“Lonely,” he said matter-of-factly. “Cold. I’ve been told the life went out of the castle when my mother died. Some say that’s when it left my father, too, and he became the dictator that he was.”

“He loved her a great deal?”

“Too much, by all accounts.”

Beauty and the Beast. She tipped her head to the side. “Was he really the man he was portrayed as?”

“A tyrant, you mean?” His mouth twisted. “It depended on which iteration of him you encountered. He was charming, charismatic and warm when he wanted to be, self-centered, compassionless and sadistic during his dark moods. A chameleon. A compulsive liar—to himself and others.”

Sadistic. Thee mou. A chill went through her. “And to you, his son, what was he like?”

“I was his protégé from age five on. It was about learning the role, following in his footsteps. It was never a father-and-son relationship.”

And what about the childhood, the innocence, he should have been allowed? She recalled a photo she’d seen in one of the hallways of the castle of Kostas and his father inspecting a military guard when the prince must have been just five or six, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people. He had looked so lost...so bewildered.

The only man who could stand alone in the middle of a crowd. Kostas had been built that way, conditioned to stand alone, created by a man notorious for his lack of humanity. Her chest tightened. “Did he discipline you?”

“Beat me, you mean? Yes. It was part of his modus operandi. Fear and intimidation—the devices he used to control everyone around him. Sometimes it was physical, sometimes mental. He was a master at both.”

“Please tell me you had someone, a grandmother, a godmother, someone you could go to?”

“My yaya. My grandmother on my father’s side, Queen Cliantha. She died when I was twelve. But by then I was in school. It was an escape for me, a break from the brainwashing, the conditioning. I was lucky my father felt it necessary to present a civilized front to the world.”

It may have been a break from the conditioning, but Kostas hadn’t made many friends in school. By Athamos’s account, he had always been the loner in the British boarding school they’d attended, the aloof presence that had been hard to get close to even though the Constantinides boys had tried to befriend him, having their own painful knowledge of a larger-than-life father.

Where had he drawn his strength? His belief in his vision? From some unshakable core inside of him?

She sank her teeth into her lip. “What happened when you developed a mind of your own? When it became apparent your philosophies differed from your father’s?”

“I tried to keep them inside in the beginning. My grandmother said it was better that way. But eventually, as I gained in confidence, as I acquired external validation of my ideas, they came out. I was considered a threat then. A competitor. Anyone who questioned my father’s practices was, and was suitably disposed of, but I, of course, posed the biggest threat of all—the blood heir who wanted a different way for his country. I wasn’t so easy to contain.”

“How could you coexist like that?”

“Uneasily. I made it clear to my father I would bide my time until it was my turn. In the meantime, I did the official engagements he couldn’t manage, presented a civilized facade to the world, attempted to keep the internal workings of the country moving while he obsessed about taking Akathinia. But with the onset of his dementia, with his increasingly erratic behavior, it became harder and harder to talk sense into him—to stand back and do nothing.”

Given how passionate Kostas had always been about his beliefs, it must have been crippling for him. A gnawing feeling took root in her stomach. A feeling that she had been vastly unfair. “Things escalated before you left.”

“Yes. There were those who wanted my father replaced, those who supported me and my democratic ideas and those who fought any decentralization of power that would strip them of theirs. It was a...tenuous situation threatening to implode at any minute.”

With him squarely in the middle of it—loathe to turn on his own flesh and blood no matter how wrong his father’s actions. Surrounded on all sides. The man in the middle of the storm.

The uneasy sensation in her gut intensified. She lifted her gaze to his. “Was that why you raced Athamos that night? Because you were frustrated? Because you weren’t in your right head?

“It was...complicated.”

Clearly, from the myriad of emotions consuming those dark eyes of his. The pieces of what had happened the night she’d lost her brother started to come together, beyond what Kostas had told her. She didn’t like the doubt that invaded her head as they did. The gray zone it put her in with the man she needed to have zero feelings for.

Confused was not how she needed to enter this evening.

Kostas straightened away from the dresser. “I should get dressed.” He handed her the sheaf of papers he was holding. “The final guest list. You should look it over.”

She curled her fingers around the papers, glad for something to do rather than feel things for this man she shouldn’t be feeling. “Anyone interesting coming out to play?”

“General Houlis and his two key lieutenants. You will stay away from them.”

“Why?”

“Because they are dangerous men. You may think you are a dragon slayer, Stella, and no doubt you are, but this side of things you will not involve yourself in. Devote yourself to getting to know the people I’ve highlighted. They are key social, business and political figures who will be valuable to you.”

She nodded. She would do that and get to know General Houlis, Kostas’s biggest foe, because he would be her enemy, too.