Courted: Gowns & Crowns, Book 1 (21 page)

The queen’s brow furrowed. “Emmaline?”

“Not that part, but my middle names are Aurora and Grace, and she always said Emmaline might one day be a prin—well.” Em stopped herself just in time.
Really? Can I please not embarrass myself any more for one day?
“She always did love a good fairy tale.”

“She sounds like a wonderful person.” Catherine’s tone was warm, her words almost too understanding. “Your father too. His pain at his wife’s injury is understandable. Men always blame themselves, even when they’ve no right to do so.”

Em nodded but didn’t trust herself to say more. As if sensing her sudden awkwardness, Catherine stood. “I have kept you awake long enough. If you need anything, do not hesitate to ask.”

“Of course.” Em stood as well, then a sudden thought struck her. “Do you have notepaper I could use? A pen, anything like that?”

Catherine nodded. “Yes, certainly. In the drawer. There are envelopes too, and postcards if you prefer to write something shorter.”

“Oh, it’s not a letter.” Em shook her head, too distracted to explain, despite Catherine’s surprised glance.

When the queen of Garronia finally took her leave, however, Em found her pursuit of notepaper and pen still delayed. The thick, creamy stationery was exactly where Catherine had said it would be, but it lay next to a DVD of “Garronia, Jewel of the Aegean.”

“You have got to be joking.” Em lifted the video out of the drawer like it was some kind of buried treasure, blinking at the images of the castle she herself was staying in, a picture of Jasen and Catherine standing in formal attire in front of a crowd, another of Kristos rigidly at attention in full military dress.

She practically ran to the large flat-screen TV that dominated the sitting room, sliding the DVD in the slot on its side. Clicking on the remote, she took an involuntary step back as already-familiar images filled the screen. The royal residences of Garronia, the king and queen, the tragic death but honored life of Aristotle, and finally, Kristos.

Em’s breath caught, and she sat down hard on the couch as Kristos filled the screen. His rich voice spoke in the lush accent of Garronois, but that was the only soft thing about his presentation. Though the captions that ran at the bottom of the screen were full of hopeful rhetoric, and though everyone around him was smiling gamely at the media assembled before the podium, Kristos might as well be announcing some horrible catastrophe. He looked nothing like the man she’d held in her arms just hours ago, laughing and splashing through the water. His bearing was excruciatingly formal, even more than his military uniform required. His jaw was tight, his eyes flinty and hollow. All of his bright passion was gone, replaced with a surly intensity that seemed almost foreign on his handsome face.

She checked the date stamp as a caption flared at the bottom of the image, and even that seemed impossible. It was only a few months ago! How had he changed so much in such a short time? And who was the real Kristos?

Em curled up on the couch with the images still flashing in front of her. She muted the sound, then traded the remote for a pen and the first piece of stationery. One thing was certain, she wasn’t going to sleep tonight anytime soon.

He was never going to get to sleep.

Kristos stared bleary-eyed as his father slid another stack of papers in front of him. “Tomorrow you will be expected to read these and sign them, Kristos,” Jasen said sternly. “Ari never took the time to look through them either, and you need to know what it is you’re agreeing to.”

“What am I
not
agreeing to?” Kristos shoved the papers away. “We’ve been through three hours of this, and it is everything I expected, which is that my entire life will be now dedicated to the state of Garronia, end of story. So why don’t we cut to the chase and discuss what that
doesn’t
actually include? Once I become crown prince—and king, though if you die anytime soon, I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kill you again myself—in what areas of my life
specifically
will I still have control?”

Jasen looked as though he were about to snap back at him, then settled back in his chair, contemplative. “I’ve never considered the matter from that perspective,” he said, sounding surprised. “I came to the throne at about your age. But I too had a younger brother, though in that case, no one was hoping he would take the throne.”

“Like father, like son.” Kristos grimaced, thinking of Frederick. He’d met Frederick’s father, of course, and Jasen was right. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Frederick was only twenty, so they needed to cut him a break, but a more rebellious soldier he’d never met. And a rebellious soldier usually ended up getting other soldiers killed.

Jasen nodded. “It was a shock to my system as well, though I’d been groomed for it since my teen years. All the paperwork, the travel, the endless sessions of the Council. And, of course, the social duties of the role.”

“Of course.” Kristos twisted his lips. “We can’t forget that.”

Jasen watched him. “I was fortunate in that I had already met your mother at several events prior to the Accession Ball. It was something of a foregone conclusion that we would marry, though my own mother did her level best to put other women out there in front of me—the best and brightest of Garronia, Greece, and half a dozen other countries as well.”

“Half a dozen!” Kristos looked at him, aghast. “You can’t be serious.”

“I wasn’t. She was.” Jasen shrugged. “She had a conviction that we needed a new perspective in the royal halls. New blood. To ease her acceptance of my choice in brides, my father created an external counselor role with access to the king and queen, a role that became the EU counselor in the midnineties.” He shrugged, looking weary but satisfied. “There is always more than one solution to a problem.”

“So you already knew you were going to choose Mother. What if you hadn’t? What will happen on Friday if I don’t make some sort of formal declaration—which is the stupidest, most insane thing I’ve ever heard of, by the way. Are we going to sacrifice a bull on the steps of the palace as well?”

His father ignored his sharp tone. “If you don’t make a declaration, then the media and a good portion of the population of Garronia will set up a Wedding Watch, not dissimilar, I’m sorry to say, to Rome’s convocation of cardinals as they prepare to announce a new pope.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Only slightly. You’ll not be barricaded behind closed doors, and the nation won’t hold its collective breath until white smoke wafts above the palace, but everywhere you go, everything you do, it will be the very first question. And not just for you but for the women who have been singled out as your primary candidates.”

Kristos rolled his eyes. “Do the English princes go through this? I don’t seem to recall this level of frenzy.”

“The blood of the English does not run as hot as that of the Garronois. And their king—or queen—does not rule the country directly. Your succession plan is arguably a bit more of interest here.”

Kristos wanted to argue that point but couldn’t. Instead, he poked at the pages in front of him. None of this made any sense. He simply shouldn’t be here.

“You never answered the question. Out of all my personal rights that I’m signing away tomorrow, what do I keep? I’ve already had to bar the guards from stationing themselves outside the bathroom for fear I’ll fall into the tub and drown.”

“And they listened to you, which is an important distinction. You have the right to mandate your own level of personal security within the castle. You do not have the right to mandate it outside of it, and you will not be allowed to put yourself at unnecessary risk.”

“Like Ari and his plane.”

His father nodded once. “Had he already acceded to the crown, that plane would never have left the ground. You are allowed to choose your wife, as long as she’s approved by the ministers, which is generally a formality.”

“How reassuring.”

“You’re allowed to raise your children as you see fit, and in the event that you do not have a son, your firstborn daughter will be elevated to crown princess when the time comes. Should you have no children, the line reverts to any siblings, offspring of those siblings, then—”

He trailed off, and Kristos finished for him. “Frederick.”

“I’m afraid so.”

Kristos rubbed a hand over his face. “Anything else?”

“The money of the royal household is yours to spend as you wish, once you become king, but your royal holdings are immediately your own to manage. You can pursue any line of work or hobby you wish outside of your royal duties, provided it does not run counter to those duties. So, no—you cannot rejoin the military, Kristos. Not and run the country as well. Your patriotism is lauded, but the country could not weather another death in the family.” He sighed. “Neither could your mother, I suspect.”

But the military is where I belong.

Kristos stared down at the stacks of paperwork, not trusting himself to speak for a moment. His entire life, his parents had worked hard not to judge him by the decisions, abilities, or actions of his brother. Where Ari had excelled in school, Kristos had gone after every sport with unstinting gusto. Where Ari had been fascinated with tinkering with technology, Kristos had only been interested in what that technology allowed him to do. He didn’t need to build the plane, he’d often told his brother. He simply needed to fly it.

But now it seemed Kristos’s entire world was being circumscribed by one fatal act of a man who wasn’t around to explain it. And the most preposterous things being asked of him were clearly the ones of greatest importance to his family and to his people. It was ridiculous—but perhaps no more ridiculous than the idea of a ruling monarchy in the twenty-first century. You had to take the good with the bad, he supposed.

And yet.

It was almost dawn by the time he finally made it to his rooms. His bed was turned down but empty. He couldn’t see Emmaline, couldn’t hear her laughter. When the sun came up, she would be awakened to rejoin her friends, and the wheels of their respective lives would churn on, taking them ever farther apart from each other. Even though he would see her in a few short days at the Accession Ball, she would be surrounded by her friends, her world, her life. Gone from him.

He didn’t want to let her go, though. Not that quickly. Not quite yet.

He moved to the door of his room. He’d dismissed his guards, but that didn’t mean the palace wouldn’t be crawling with the men and women assigned to protect the royal family. Still, his father’s words had been clear. Within this very, very narrow scope, Kristos had ultimate freedom.

He planned on exercising that freedom one last time. Tonight.

He opened the door, and a familiar figure lounged across the hallway, leaning against the wall.

“I so knew this was going to happen.” Dimitri grinned.

Chapter 15

Em rolled over in her opulent bed, unable to sleep, though she desperately wanted to let the smothering tide of darkness take her away. She’d recorded on palace stationery everything she could remember of the events of the past two days—from her first—literal—run-in with Kristos, to his arms around her on the beach, the flight to the chateau, and the beautiful Estral Falls. She’d absolutely omitted any mention of being in his bedroom and what had happened at the falls and in the showers here at the castle, of course. With her luck, she’d leave those pages behind, and they’d end up on the front page of whatever passed for Garronia’s
Star Magazine
.

She turned again, then lifted her head, peering into the gloom. Had she heard her door open? She was ragged with lack of sleep, and there had been two guards outside her door when the queen had left her. She’d heard her giving them instructions in Garronois, but she still didn’t know enough to interpret any of the words. Hopefully Catherine hadn’t ordered them to come in and kill her, because honestly, she was too tired to care at this point.

The bedchamber the queen had granted her was extraordinary in every way—other than it was a fully interior room, which meant no windows. She supposed that was typical of a lot of the rooms in a building this big. There was only so much real estate you could mete out, but nevertheless, it gave the entire room the feeling of being a strange sort of cocoon. She wouldn’t want to stay here for long. Then again, perhaps that was why it was used for visiting dignitaries. Anything to hasten tedious guests along their way.

She let her eyes drift shut again, sleep finally starting to pull her under with its tempting touch. It seemed to stroll up to her on cat’s paws, soft, stealthy, and so, so sweet—

“Emmaline.”

Em’s gasping scream was cut short by a warm, heavy hand pressed over her mouth, and her eyes snapped open only to have her vision filled with Kristos’s face. “Please don’t scream,” he whispered, trying for stern and failing miserably. “You’ll ruin my reputation.”

He lifted his hand away, and Em scooted up against the headboard with its overflow of pillows, staring at him, unsure whether to laugh or cry or throw herself at him. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, looking from him to the door. She
had
heard someone enter. “Weren’t there guards outside?”