A Royal Wedding(53)

“I think I’ll announce to the world at large that the new Queen of Alakkul is in need of a king,” she said, her eyes bright, daring him. “Surely any number of suitors will present themselves. It can be like my own, personal reality show.”

She expected him to react badly, he could tell. But he saw the way her pulse pounded in the tender crook of her neck, and smiled.

“By all means, Princess,” he said. “Invite whoever you like to court you.”

“You don’t mind?” Her voice was ripe with disbelief. “You don’t think you’re the better choice?”

He laughed, enjoying the way the sound made her frown.

“There is no doubt at all that I am the better choice,” he said. “But more than that, I am the only choice.”

“According to you,” she said, defiant and beautiful.

“No,” he said softly. He reached across and traced a simple line along the elegant length of her neck, smiling in satisfaction when she hissed in a breath and goose bumps rose. “According to you,” he said, his own body reacting to her arousal. “You have loved me since you were but a girl. You will again. Your body is already there.” He did not smile now—he met her gaze with his own, steady and sure. “You will not pick another king.”

That bald statement seemed to hang between them, making the air hard to breathe. Lara’s stomach hurt, and her hands balled into fists.

“Why must I marry anyone?” she asked, her voice low and intent, growing hoarse with the emotion she fought to conceal, even as her body rioted, proving his words to be true no matter how she longed to deny them. “Why can’t I simply be queen on my own?”

But Adel only shook his head, in that infuriating manner of his that made her itch to explode into some kind of decisive action. But then again, perhaps touching him was not a good idea.

“Why should I trust anything you say?” she threw at him, angry beyond reason, dizzy with all she wanted and would not allow herself. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me from the start!”

“I will do whatever it takes to secure the throne and protect this country,” he threw back at her. Did she imagine the hint of darker emotion in his voice? Flashing in his gray eyes? Or did she only want it to be there?

“You are exactly like him,” she said, her voice a low, intense throb of all the pain she had not been able to admit she felt today. All the loss and the bewilderment, and her inability to understand why she should even care that King Azat was dead. Why should it matter to her? Why should she be questioning her mother’s motives? And why should she feel so betrayed that Adel was the same kind of man, when he had never pretended to be anything else? When he had as good as told her that he would do just what he had done? When he—like her father before him—cared only and entirely about the damned throne to this godforsaken place?

Hadn’t her mother told her this would happen, years before? “He picked, another snake for you, Lara—just like himself! “ she’d hissed.

“If you mean your father,” Adel said evenly, the suggestion of ice in his voice, “I will accept the compliment.”

“He forced me into this years ago, on my sixteenth birthday,” she said dully, wondering why her heart felt broken—why it should even be involved. “Didn’t you know? That was when my mother knew we had to escape. She refused to let me—”

“Please spare me these fantasies.” His voice was a hard whip of dismissal. Startled, she noticed his eyes had turned to flint. “Your mother left because her extramarital dalliances were discovered. She took you with her as insurance, because she knew that if she stayed here she would have been turned away from the palace in shame. Never deceive yourself on this point. She knew that as long as you were with her, your father would never cut off her funds. Just as she knew he was too concerned with a daughter’s feelings for her mother to separate you.”

“What?” She couldn’t make sense of that. She literally could not process his words. “What are you—? We lived on the run for years! We had to hide from his goons!”

“There was never one moment of your life that the palace did not know where you were,” Adel said coolly, every word like a blow. “And I assure you, if your father wanted his ‘goons’ to secure you, I would have done so personally years ago. If it was up to me, I would have reclaimed you before your seventeenth birthday.”