Then he bows low and returns to his seat.
His kingdom for six words.
It’s brilliant, truly. Acting as though Duke Tremain’s proposal were so inconsequential it’s not even deserving of his attention—as though this new plan were what he’d intended the meeting to be about all along. The unspoken implication being that the plan will roll forward only if he remains in his position. It’s a gamble, but he’s laid out some serious bait. Not to mention intrigue.
The exits are sealed, M.A.R.I.E. disabled. The time for consultation is over. For the first time in months, I wish my corset were looser.
This is the moment my mother promised to the King months ago—that I would use the Queen’s shares, and my father would use our family’s shares, to support Justin. But there’s no one—no blackmail—to enforce my decision anymore. If I support the King, I’ll retain the power I gained by becoming the Queen. If I support the King, Saber will be waiting for me when I return to my rooms.
Assuming Justin keeps his word.
I touch first my own screen and then my father’s, casting every single one of our combined votes. Then I close my eyes and try to decide what the hell I’m going to do next.
THE CELEBRATION CONTINUES until the rosy hours of dawn, but finally I’m allowed to retire to my rooms. My rooms by right, as I’m still the Queen of Sonoman-Versailles.
I don’t know how it happened; I voted for Sir Spencer.
It seems Fate has an incredibly perverse sense of humor.
On his own merits, the King changed enough minds to succeed not only without me, but in spite of me. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t vote to further inflict Justin Wyndham upon this kingdom. Lord knows I’ve hurt the people in this palace enough in the last few months.
He won anyway.
Amalgamated is paid well to keep the voting process private and secure, so there should be no chance of Justin discovering my duplicity. But I’m suspicious of shoulds.
He can never know. He might actually kill me. Or worse.
So far, he doesn’t know a thing. Indeed, at the “spontaneous” fête that followed the announcement, His Majesty grabbed me around the waist, spun me off my feet, and planted a hard kiss on my mouth, before laughing with a gaiety I’m not sure I’ve ever seen from him.
But I gambled with Saber’s life and it’s killing me. I’m terrified of what I’m going to find—or not find—on the other side of these doors. I touch the intricate detailing on the faux-wooden panels, and my fingers tremble, my throat so dry I can scarcely choke out the command that gains me entrance.
At first I think the room is empty—but no. There, in my bed. A large lump.
I stagger forward as a sob builds up in my chest and tears stream down my cheeks; I reach out a hand. I almost can’t bear to wake him. He’s likely been waiting for hours, and he can’t have slept well while imprisoned. I clamp my hand over my mouth to quiet the tide of emotion I’ve been holding back all day, but it’s not enough, and soon his green eyes are fluttering open. Saber snaps to attention at the sight of me, sitting up and pulling me to him, my skirts heavy across his lap. He’s whispering soothing words in his native tongue, and his lips pepper my face, but I’m sobbing too hard for him to even attempt to kiss my mouth.
The fear I didn’t dare to acknowledge finally rises to the top—that he’d been dead since the morning of my wedding. That his chip had triggered and no one—at the King’s order, of course—had bothered to tell me. That his body was just lying there, abandoned and cold on the tile floor of the bare prison cell.
My chest finally stops its spasms, and when Saber’s hands start unfastening bits of my clothing, it’s not to assuage any hunger more complex than a need to be close. My panniers, the stiff overdress and petticoats, my heavy jeweled shoes: all barriers. He just wants to hold me.
He reaches for my corset strings, and I suck in a loud breath.
“Danica,” he says, and my heart shatters all over again when it comes out as a mild rebuke.
“It was a hard day,” I whisper. My stays are too tight. Have been from the first moment I managed a brief respite from my wedding party to summon a dressing-bot. I wait for Saber to lecture, loathing the thought, but I should have had more confidence in him. He simply loosens the ribbons, then ties them again. My head spins, but I don’t faint.
When the rest of my finery lies in a pile on the floor, he tucks us both under the comforter, our bodies snugly spooning. I give a tiny thought to the possibility that security is watching us, but how could it matter now? I’m married, documents signed, and the King has been affirmed CEO. Certainly a tryst on my part could threaten nothing of the King’s.
Saber whispers close to my ear, “Tell me you didn’t come back to Versailles for me.”
Of course. He doesn’t know what Reginald did. The agony of that betrayal hits me again, and tears leak down my face. I pretend for everyone else; I can’t do it for him. Not when I don’t have to. He seems to understand and holds me tighter, one arm wrapping around my stomach. “Reginald brought me back,” I finally whisper. “He told me he never specified when he’d take me away. And he wasn’t ready yet.”
Saber mutters what I’m quite sure must be a string of Mongolian curses. “This is so like him,” he finally says. “I should have—it doesn’t matter. As usual, it’s over and he won.” He hesitates, his fingers tracing details in the lace on the cap sleeve of my shift. “You’re married?”
My innards freeze and I clench my fingers over my wedding ring, as if the gesture could hide what I’ve done. “Yes.”
“And Queen?”
I groan and bury my face in his neck.
“Did he…?” He stops. “Did—”
“No.” I cut him off with a harsh whisper. The last time I confronted the King before Saber was imprisoned, he’d threatened to take me by force. But he didn’t—not even after we were wed.
Saber pulls back, staring into my eyes, perhaps disbelieving. “Why not?” he finally asks.
But I don’t have an answer. “He came to my room after the reception.” I squeeze my eyes shut, remembering the terror. “I was so scared. All the high nobles escorted us in here—courtly tradition and all. They cheered and toasted and, well, let’s just say it’s a good thing they no longer undress the bride and groom and tuck them right into bed. I might have been sick.”
A low chuckle from Saber shakes me from the vivid recollection, enough to unclench my knuckles and try to massage feeling back into my fingers. “Then what?” he asks.
I shrug. “He opened the champagne that was waiting here, poured me a glass, drank the rest right from the bottle, and went to sleep.”
I don’t tell him about the quarter hour during which the King removed one piece of his clothing, took a swig, removed more clothing, and repeated the process until I wanted to scream from the tension that seemed to scrape the skin from my bones. In the end, he’d been wearing a slouching set of breeches, looking almost exactly as I’d found him the night he stood over Sierra Jamison’s body. Complete with his long, silken hair pulled back at his nape, his chest bare, and the hollow just below his hipbones peeping out from the waist of his breeches; too beautiful to be such a villain.
And as I had on that night six months earlier, I cowered.
He’d turned and looked at me in my corner, then strode over. I stood, still fully dressed, the glass filled with champagne gripped between my fingers as I wondered how best to use it as a weapon. With one arm braced on the walls on either side of me, he’d leaned in, his body so close I could feel the heat radiating off him. “I want you,” he’d whispered, and I closed my eyes, knowing I was about to be raped. “And I could take you tonight.” He trailed a finger down my cheek. “But that doesn’t please me. When you give yourself to me, it will be because you choose to.”
And then he withdrew, so fast that by the time I opened my eyes, there was nothi
ng in front of me to focus on. He threw the empty bottle into the fireplace, where it shattered into a million pieces, before stalking to my bed, tossing back the coverlet, and sliding beneath it.
“He didn’t say anything to you?” Saber asked, pulling me back to the present.
“No,” I lie.
“And you haven’t brought it up?”
“If a man said he was going to shoot you tomorrow, and then he didn’t, would you remind him?”
Saber loops an arm across my chest and pulls me even tighter against him. “No, I suppose not. So…what now?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I turn to him, our faces near enough to share the air we breathe. I whisper so quietly even M.A.R.I.E. can’t possibly make out my words. “I didn’t think I would be here for the wedding. I expected to be able to escape, but…” I tilt my neck so my brow touches Saber’s chest. “It’s not just the palace I didn’t escape from. I can’t stop thinking about what I’ve done. I keep turning down the hall to Molli’s apartment and remembering all over again that she’s not there. She haunts me now. Maybe forever.”
Saber strokes my hair silently. An open condemnation might have hurt less. He knows I never meant to harm my friend, but he also knows—as surely as I do—that Molli is dead because of me. Every single day I relive the moment the King unknowingly handed Molli the Glitter after it slipped through my trembling fingers. She was dead within hours, drowned in thirty centimeters of bathwater.
Embers of slow-burning anger creep into my chest and I welcome them. They’re easier to manage than self-hatred. It’s his fault too—the King’s. Not for that moment with Molli, precisely, but for being the unbending, selfish, power-hungry creature that has driven me to the choices I’ve made. “He’s a monster,” I whisper.
“Which one?” Saber says wryly.
“Both,” I grumble, realizing that Reginald continues to be a greater threat to Saber than the King. “I feel like I’m stuck in quicksand. The more I thrash and kick, the deeper I sink. Somehow, I’m in worse trouble than before, and I don’t know how to begin getting out of it.” My chin trembles, and I force myself to smile, running my fingers through Saber’s sleek, straight hair. “But I’m glad I have you. You make everything better.”
“I’m not sure that’s saying much, under the circumstances,” he says with a grin.
I roll my eyes, but his levity chases away a touch of my despair.
He swallows hard and avoids my eyes when he whispers, “What are we going to do about the Glitter?”
I let several seconds pass as I remember his declaration when I said I hated Glitter.
You don’t hate it enough.
“Must we?” I whisper. “For one night can we forget about it?”
His jaw tightens but then relaxes. “One night.”
I don’t dare wait even that long for my next worry. “Saber, your chip—”
“—is fine,” he interrupts firmly. “It’s been years since Reginald gave me anything less than the two-week maximum, and he’s not the sort of man to lose his property by accident. If he decides it’s time for me to die, I’ll die.” I try to protest his macabre declaration, but he puts a silencing finger on my lips. “I’ve been dealing with this for years, so you let me deal with it. You have enough to worry about.”
My laugh is drenched in bitterness. “More than you? I don’t think so.”
He lets my comment pass while the room continues to brighten with early rays of sunrise. I haven’t felt tired until now. I spent two days hiding in an emotional fog, followed by the mascarade of celebration after the vote, then the exquisite joy of finding Saber in my bedchamber. After that roller coaster I feel weary, wrung out, and beaten.
“Is it weird?” Saber asks as I struggle to keep my eyes open. “Being married?”
There’s an edge in his voice. He hates it, but he can’t bring himself to blame me. “Weird?” I take a breath to stall, and consider. “It’s certainly…surreal. I was there at the wedding; I was in the dress and I said the words and signed the contracts. But the whole time it was as though it were happening to someone else. Like I was watching through someone else’s eyes. I hate him,” I add in a fierce whisper. “It feels impossible to be married to someone you hate.”
“Pretend you’re not, then,” Saber says simply.
I run my hand through his hair again. How can such a simple gesture be so endlessly satisfying? “When Reginald brought me back I was devastated, but part of me was just glad to be in the same building as you.”
Saber looks at me, his eyes deep pools of something sad that I can’t quite understand. “I’m not worth it, Danica. I adore you. I think I love you. But you have to understand that there’s no future with someone…someone like me. Certainly not a future worth everything you’ve done.”
My tongue itches to argue. To deny his condemnation. To promise that I’ll find a way to free him. But that step is, I think, distant at best. I don’t agree, don’t even nod, but I pull him close and sigh when he lays his cheek against my chest, and for the first time in days, my body relaxes. His breathing slows and I enjoy the feel of his limbs molding against mine—though as he falls asleep, his every twitch and jerk gives me a mild flutter of panic, stoic assurances notwithstanding. Only by placing my ear to his chest, where I can hear each beat of his heart, am I able to banish his perpetual death sentence into the corner of my mind.
My own eyelids are heavy, but I have trouble making my brain slow. My husband is still the King and I have Saber back.
Step one is complete. But there’s no time for celebration.
Step two: figure out step three.
MY FIRST LEVER as Queen. I suppose it ought to feel momentous, but since the King has had me doing this particular chore for months, it feels almost comfortingly normal. Lady Mei powders my shoulders with gardenia-scented talc, and I try not to sneeze. “The duke has been raging about, trying to find out who voted for the King because he was certain he had it in the bag,” she whispers. “People lie in public, but when it comes to actually voting, they let their real selves show.”
I swallow hard—she’s only telling me this because she assumes I voted for my husband. Everyone does. They all thought the King would lose. But if I voted for Tremain, that means there are even more people than he suspects who turned coat. There must be; numbers don’t lie.
“Tremain is blaming the young shareholders,” Lady Mei continues, using a fan to hide her mouth from the eyes—and lip-reading Lens apps—of our audience, then handing it to me. “ ‘Fickle,’ he says. Several of us think some votes changed your way because we like your Glitter.”
My face registers shock before I remember to mask it. “You think so?”
“Of course. Easier to buy Glitter from the Queen.” She smirks, and I’m clearly supposed to appreciate the news that my illegal dealings continue to have unexpected and far-reaching consequences.
The crowd of tourists jostles and applauds as the lever concludes and we exit the bedchamber, into my back rooms. Before I can open my mouth, the ladies are pulling paper euros from their pannier pockets and stacking them on my dresser. Between this and the half million from before my wedding, I’m pushing my first new million all over again. I stare at that stack of money and I hate it. Hate it with a red-hot fury that threatens to spill out of my tight control.
Until I have a thought. Perhaps there is yet some purpose for it.
I’m startled from my brainstorm by Lady Mei jabbing her elbow into my side. “Something sparkly, perhaps?” Oh yes. Their payment. I’ve saved exactly enough Glitter to give each lady a canister for her service in my lever, but I have nothing else. And several hundred thousand euros’ worth of orders.
I don’t know what to do. Reginald promised more, but I don’t know how much, and I certainly couldn’t say when it will arrive. All I can hope is that Reginald loves money and hates Sonoman-Versaill
es enough to keep supplying me. To keep his word. Because I’ve certainly discovered that honor doesn’t compel him.
After letting my ladies out the small back entrance from my private rooms, I nearly bowl headlong into Saber—holding an enormous white box with a silver bow.
“It was waiting beside the rail in your bedchamber when the tourists exited,” Saber says darkly. “I don’t know how he managed. That man has tricks I can’t begin to understand.”
My mouth goes dry. For over twenty-four hours we’ve avoided even mentioning Glitter. We don’t want to fight. But here it is, in Saber’s very hands, and we can postpone it no longer.
Saber sets the box on the floor, and I crouch beside it and lift the lid to find the entire thing crammed full of canisters of Glitter, in more than the three colors I’d been mixing. Evidently, Reginald thinks the Sonoman ladies should have their choice of varied hues of drug-laced eye shadow, in addition to the foundation, lip gloss, and rouge. The thought of rouge makes my stomach lurch, remembering the glint of Glitter on Molli’s face. I place a hand over my stomach and breathe deeply; every thought of Molli feels like a knife to the stomach. I keep expecting the knife’s edge to dull, but it doesn’t.
“What do I do?” I ask.
Saber stands there, peering steadily at me. “Quit?” he says dryly. “Just say no?”
“It’s more complex than that and you know it.”
“But is it really?”
“Yes!” This whole damnable situation is even worse than when I made the original decision. Thanks to Reginald’s perfidy, I’m exactly where I would have been had I done nothing at all, minus one dear friend and one scheming mother. Plus one criminal nemesis and a clawing court of addicts.
And plus one Saber. That part I find difficult to resent.
“I don’t know,” Saber finally says. He kicks the box, not hard enough to do damage, but the inventory clatters loudly within. “Reginald doesn’t care about people or their lives or their families—he just wants to make money. But I know you. You do care.” He lifts an eyebrow. “At least you used to.”