SOME DAYS LATER, Shona was escorted back to her rooms in the middle of the day when she would normally have expected to be corralled somewhere with another set of dour royal advisors for more tedious lessons about the role she resolutely declined the opportunity to play.
“What’s going on?” she asked Yadira drily when she was delivered to her own sitting room and found the other woman waiting for her. “Am I finally getting a little bit of built-in naptime in between all these exhausting stonewalling episodes?”
Yadira smiled in that way she did that told Shona that her personal servant—a term Shona still didn’t care for on any level—didn’t think much of her witticisms. And maybe there really, truly was something wrong with Shona. Because the less the people in the palace seemed to find her amusing, up to and including the king, the more she kept right on doing the very thing it was they found so distasteful. Over and over and over again.
She was beginning to think that she was naturally perverse. Or something worse. Something a little closer to boneheaded, another familiar term she’d been called by various foster parents.
“I have laid out clothes for you, mistress,” Yadira said in her deliberately calm manner that Shona understood was her own form of a weapon—and one she aimed well, every time.
“I think you can see that I’m already dressed.”
“Indeed. But the king has specifically requested that you wear what has been chosen for you today.”
“I was under the impression that the king made the same request every morning.” Shona eyed the other woman, who stood there emanating a kind of wholesale meekness Shona was beginning to suspect she didn’t actually possess. “Has that been you, all along?”
“Shona.”
She didn’t have to turn to identify that voice. She would know it anywhere. It haunted her dreams in ways she pretended she couldn’t remember every morning when she woke up, heart pounding with an ache between her legs.
But she had never heard Malak’s voice here before. Here in this suite of rooms that she had, perhaps foolishly, begun to view as her refuge. The one place in the palace she could escape this crazy new life she’d been hauled into, at least for a little bit.
And better still, where she could escape from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her gaze on Yadira. “I thought these were my private rooms.”
“I think you will find it is my palace,” Malak said.
Shona didn’t want to look at him. But she made herself do it anyway because what she wanted even less than a glimpse of him was to show any hint of weakness. Particularly in front of Yadira.
“Forgive me,” she said, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. “I’m only emotionally prepared to see you at dinnertime. This is…alarming, to say the least.”
“There is no need to be alarmed.”
“And if I was truly, deeply alarmed, your telling me not to be would change it…how, exactly?”
Malak’s dark green eyes flashed, but he ignored that. “There is a small ceremony taking place shortly. Your presence is required. And I’m afraid that it will be recorded for posterity, so you must dress according to expectations. My expectations, before you ask.”
“I thought we had discussed your expectations already.”
His mouth curved. “But in this case, my expectations are not my problem—they instead carry the weight of the whole kingdom. It is unavoidable, I’m afraid. You might as well resign yourself to that now.”
There was a kind of disconcerting steel in the way he gazed at her, and it occurred to Shona that there could be only one reason that he had actually come all the way over to this side of the palace. And was actually standing here, personally demanding she dress in a certain way. She glanced at Yadira, then back at Malak, but could read nothing on either one of their faces.
“Are you here to force me into some awful costume?”
“I don’t like that word. I am the king of Khalia, am I not? Surely I need only make a request for my will to be done. Force is quite beneath me.”
“I know we’ve covered this. You’re not my king.”
She heard Yadira’s shocked gasp, but what really bothered her was the fact that she felt a kick of shame along with it. As if she’d agreed, somewhere or somehow, to keep her fight with Malak to herself, when she knew very well she’d done no such thing.
His gaze was steady on hers, and she didn’t know why that made it worse. Only that it did.
“It is always such a delight to have these arguments with you, Shona, particularly when they inevitably end my way.” He didn’t look delighted. But he didn’t look particularly affronted, either. And Shona was starting to view that veneer of laziness he liked to cloak himself in with suspicion. “But there is no time for the game today. I’m afraid this is a matter of some urgency and importance, or I would, of course, continue to support your curious need to wear and rewear the least attractive items of clothing in your wardrobe. And stand through dinners. And ignore your tutors. And all your other pointless attempts at defiance.”
“There is no way—”
“Shona.” And with that, he flipped a switch. She could see it just as easily as she could hear it in his voice. She felt her spine straighten against her will. “This is not about you. This is not about any battle you seem to feel you need to keep fighting with me. This is about Miles.”
She swallowed, though it was harder than it should have been. “Miles doesn’t care how I dress.”
“I am certain he does not,” Malak said coolly. “But we are discussing my official coronation and what will happen there. Miles will be introduced as my son and heir, the crown prince to the throne of Khalia. This will be his first introduction to the kingdom and, more than that, to the world. Do you really want every eye to focus on you and the inappropriateness of your outfit? Is that what you want them to take away from their first exposure to your son?”
Her heart seemed to squeeze too tight at that question. As if she was actively failing her child when none of this was what she’d wanted in the first place.
“I didn’t agree to this. I didn’t agree to any parading of Miles in front of—”
“I have put this off for as long as I could already,” Malak said, still in that implacable way of his that made her fight to keep from showing her reaction. “It cannot be put off any longer. Miles is here now. He is happy. I cannot imagine he will view a stuffy, private ceremony any differently than he would one of his usual adventures in the palace. The worry is not Miles, Shona. It’s you.”
That bit of shame she’d felt before bloomed wider. Deeper and hotter. She sucked in a breath, amazed that something like this could get to her. Surely she shouldn’t care. Surely she should be sure enough of herself and who she was to scoff at the notion that the clothing she wore might make any kind of difference to her child.
Not your child, a voice inside said in a similarly implacable manner. But his prospects, his future.
And that was worse. That hurt more.
“You’re presenting him to your kingdom as your crown prince,” she said quietly, because there was no use arguing that he wasn’t just as happy and well-adjusted here as Malak had said he was. And it didn’t matter how she felt about that, or the fact that her baby had a role to play in this place whether she liked it or not. “You don’t need me there. What I wear while out of public view shouldn’t matter at all.”
Malak looked past her for a moment and did something with one eyebrow that sent Yadira hurrying from the room. Then he returned that imperious gaze of his to Shona.
“I have been patient with you,” he told her, though there was no evidence of that patience in his tone, then. Much less in his glittering dark green eyes. “You can spend every night between now and eternity arguing with me in the privacy of my rooms, if you wish. I welcome it. Perhaps I even crave it, since it is the only remnant I have left of the carefree life I will never have again, one in which people talk to me as if I do not have the power to end their lives with the click of my fingers.”
Shona swallowed. “Is that a threat?”
“I have allowed you to keep reality at bay too long, clearly. Is this really so much to ask, Shona? There is a certain way the mother of the crown prince of Khalia must look. Act. It is not to put you in a box or whatever your objection to it is today. It is to protect him. I am starting to believe it is not that you don’t see the truth of that, but that you do not want to see it.”
“Miles doesn’t care how I dress,” she said again. And more fiercely this time. “What I wear has absolutely nothing to do with him or the role you want him to play for you.”
“I wish that were so,” Malak replied, all ice and certainty. “Perhaps it is true where you come from, but this is Khalia. There are expectations of royal behavior, whether we like it or not. And the tragedy for you is that I have spent my life ignoring those expectations. I was a playboy. I was a disappointment. I was everyone’s favorite scandal without even trying. I reveled in the fact that I could be depended upon to horrify the good people of this kingdom without even rising from my bed in the morning, because it is all fun and games when there is no possibility that you might ever ascend the throne. But now I have.”
“My condolences,” Shona gritted out.
“What it means, sadly, is that everything I touch, everything going forward, must be excruciatingly correct to make up for all my misbehavior.”
“You seem to be under the impression that your life and your problems are somehow mine, too.” Her voice felt strangled in her own throat. Her chest felt much too tight, as if she might crack in two at any moment.
“What is it you want, Shona?” Malak demanded then, and though there was fire in that gaze of his, his voice was cold. “You do not want to be queen. You do not want to take on board even the smallest lesson my people try to teach you about how best to fit in here. You do not want to learn a single thing that might help you feel more comfortable in this world. You would prefer to stalk about the palace, scowling at everyone, making certain that even the lowliest maid knows full well you do not belong here and never will. Is that it? Is that truly what you want? Because you are already well on your way to achieving it, if so.”
That it was such an accurate description of her behavior over the past few weeks stung. But more than that, it was an apt description of her behavior in every foster home Shona had ever been thrown into.
And that rocked her.
Had nothing changed at all? She’d been out of the foster system for eight years, and a mother for four. Had she learned nothing in all that time? Was she still that same surly teenage girl, well aware that no one would ever happen along and adopt her at her age, and was therefore determined to push everyone away before they could do the same to her? Or worse?
It made her feel sick. It made her feel unsteady on her own feet.
It made her want to take a swing at the man who stood before her, so easily shredding her to pieces. He’d done it that night on his balcony. He did it, again and again, as she sat at his table. And now this.
She wanted to open her mouth and admit it. She wanted to act like the grown woman she’d fought so hard to become, for a change, not that eternally passed-over foster kid who hadn’t mattered to anyone. But she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t give away the only weapon she’d ever had, no matter that every time she used it she was really only hurting herself.
But she didn’t know how to stop.
“Every single thing that’s happened since you set foot in that restaurant in New Orleans has been about you,” she said instead, and she kept her gaze steady on him as if that could make her steady, too. As if it could change that rocking, rolling sensation beneath her feet. “Your life. Your kingdom. Your throne. Your son. You, you, you. And I get it. You’re the king, as you’ll be the first to remind me.” She found one fist over her heart and pressed it in, deep. “But I have my own life. And guess what? I have my own dreams. My own hopes. My own—”
“Wonderful,” he interrupted, in that same harsh tone. He moved closer to her, towering over her in a manner she should have found intimidating. But she didn’t. She felt…melty and too soft and lit on fire, but not intimidated. “Tell me your dreams, Shona. I will make them come true. This is what I do.”
“I want to be free,” she shot back at him.
He didn’t laugh. Not exactly, though he made a sound that could have been something like it. Only devoid of any humor.
“What does that mean to you?” he asked. “You throw that word around, but tell me, what would you do with this freedom you are so obsessed with?”
Shona glared up at him. “Live my life without all this commentary on my wardrobe, for one thing.”
Malak didn’t take that bait. “Will you head back to that restaurant in New Orleans? Will you toil away at your two jobs and never quite make ends meet? Fight to pay the rent on a disgraceful house in that appalling neighborhood? You’ve been free to live out your dreams for the past four years. And what have you done with it?”
Shona pressed her curled fingers harder against her rib cage and told herself she wasn’t shaking, deep inside. “I’ve raised your crown prince. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“And what else?” An expression she couldn’t identify moved over his face when she didn’t answer him immediately, that on another man she might have called something like desperate. But this was Malak. “This is not a test. I want to know. You’ve spent nearly a month here, and in all that time, all you have told me is what you are not. You are not this person or that person. You will not do this, you will not do that. What do you want, Shona?”
It was another hit. A wallop, just like before, but she weathered it. Somehow she kept herself from crumbling. “I don’t need to prove myself to you.”
“You are so focused on what you think has been taken from you that you cannot seem to see what’s been given to you.” He shook his head. “You call this palace a prison, but what you fail to see is that it gives you access.”
“Access to what? You?” She scoffed. “I had more than enough access to you in a hotel bar in New Orleans.”
“To the world, Shona. To anything you like.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and that startled her. It seemed such a perfect expression of frustration and she was amazed that she had the power to get to him when he seemed like such an impassable wall to her. She wasn’t sure she liked it. “My child is by definition an extraordinarily wealthy individual. As am I. And there is no possibility that I will permit that child’s mother to live in squalor. Your old life was hard, I grant you. And I admire the fact that you made it work at all. But all that hardship is a thing of the past now. Your days of working around the clock, worrying over child care and trading shifts with friends are over. You are the only one who does not seem to realize that.”
Her heart was pounding. She realized she was holding her breath and forced herself to let it out.
Malak pressed his advantage. “Don’t you understand? You are mine now. There are no longer any boundaries on what you can or cannot do.”
“Except you. Except your boundaries.”
This time, that curve to his hard, beautiful mouth seemed sad. “And this is what you think of me, in the end. That I am indistinguishable from poverty, from prison.”
She didn’t think that. Of course she didn’t think that.
But she hated—or maybe the real truth was that she feared—that part of her that longed to reach out to him. To apologize for saying such a thing. To make him feel better, somehow, when she was still fighting off that shaking deep inside.
She bit her own tongue so hard she tasted copper.
And when she didn’t speak, Malak continued in that same low, dark way that was only making her internal trembling worse.
“If you want to live out your days in this narrow, dark cage you seem to think is your only option, you are welcome to do so,” he said. His tone lanced through her like some kind of terrible lightning. It made her want to defend herself. Cry. Rip herself open and bring a different version of herself out into the light, free of all the ugly weight of her childhood—but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She didn’t know how. “But I would hope that you have better dreams for your child. He deserves better than that same small cage, do you not agree?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer. He looked past her yet again, and nodded his head, and then Yadira was there again.
“Come, mistress,” she said, her own voice subdued, as if everybody despaired of Shona. Including Shona herself, it seemed. “At the very least we can try on the clothes, yes?”
And Shona let the other woman take her by the elbow and steer her toward the doorway that led farther into the suite, and on toward her bedroom. She let Yadira guide her, but she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from Malak’s until the very last moment. She couldn’t seem to find her voice, either.
As if he had one hand around her throat.
And worse by far, the other clenched tight around her heart.