“You said I wasn’t beautiful enough.”
His mouth drops open. “No, I said you were the right amount of beautiful. I said you’re perfect.”
Now I am just being petty.
Tamp it down for now. Put on a smile and accept his offer.
“Forgive me,” he says a second later, surprising me. “It has been a long time since I’ve had a friend who didn’t walk around on all fours. My words didn’t come out the way I’d meant them.”
But they did. And that’s what’s so infuriating.
But I say, “I accept your offer and all that comes with it.”
“Excellent.” The Shadow King switches out his cake for the still-steaming soup. “If we are to be friends, then surely I should call you Alessandra when we are alone?”
“We are not friends just yet, Your Majesty, but once we are, what shall I call you?”
A faint smile still lingers on his lips. “My name is Kallias. Kallias Maheras.”
“Kallias,” I say, letting the syllables drift off my tongue: kuh-LIE-us.
I have been entrusted with the name of a king.
Now I need him to give me his heart.
CHAPTER
6
I fume as I walk back to my rooms.
Not beautiful enough to tempt him, am I? We’ll see about that. I’m going to make him fall so in love with me, he’ll forget he ever saw another woman. He will be begging for me by the time I’m done with him.
And then he’ll beg for his life right before I end him.
That sweet thought sustains me as I reach my rooms and tread toward my bed.
The king was not wrong. A large pile of letters rests on the table in my room, but I don’t get to open them right away.
There’s a man next to my bed. I half hoped it would be handsome Leandros, just so I could have a story to tell the king about chasing men away from my room. But alas.
It’s Myron.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demand. “How did you even get in here?”
He’s so tall his head is only a foot away from the ceiling. Impeccably dressed in black pants and a plum-colored coat, he turns at the sound of my voice.
“Alessandra, fancy seeing you here.”
“It’s my room!”
“Yes, and your maid was all too happy to let me in. All I had to do was smile and make up some story about leaving a trinket for you to find on your vanity. Apparently, she’s a romantic.”
I grimace. “For your sake, you’d better hope she doesn’t talk.”
“Why? Would it be so terrible for people to know I’d left you something?”
I stare at him, trying to make sense of why he could possibly be here, when he kicks off his shoes and reclines on my bed.
“Come here,” he purrs.
“Get out,” I say, my voice turning abrupt and sharp.
“Just because you didn’t want my ring, it doesn’t mean you don’t want this. I know you.”
“Since you’ve failed to notice, allow me to spell things out for you. I don’t want you. The king is courting me now. The king, Myron. Why would I want the second son of a viscount, when I can have the Shadow King?”
Myron rises so quickly, the bed creaks. “He won’t have you. You’re not a virgin. Not after I was done with you.”
I sigh. “Myron, just because you were a virgin when we met, it doesn’t mean I was.”
His mouth drops open.
“What did you say to Lord Vasco and the council?” I demand. “They said they spoke with you.”
“I wasn’t your first?”
I tug off my gloves and toss them aside, then do the same with my slippers. “Here’s how this works. You don’t say anything about knowing me ever again. You came to my father’s estate a couple of times with your father on business. Nothing more. You saw me in passing. That is all.”
“I didn’t see you in passing. I saw you naked. More than once,” he says threateningly. “I bet the council and your beloved Shadow King would love to hear that.”
I toss my eyes heavenward. “That’s not how this game is played. Have you forgotten, Myron? I know what you did. Your father gave you one of his most prized possessions. To you, his stupid second-born son. And you gambled it away. And if he found out? I’m betting a disinheritance is in your future.”
Myron’s jaw clenches.
“Why do you think I don’t have a reputation, Myron? It’s because I know how to play this game. Now leave, and don’t ever speak to me again.”
He grabs his shoes on the way out, slamming the door loudly enough for my neighbors to hear. As long as no one is out in the corridor, hopefully no one can guess which room he came from.
* * *
WITH MORNING COMES A fresh set of ideas for scheming. I’m getting my king, and I’m ridding the palace of anyone who gets in my way.
After breakfast, I tend to the pile of letters, rating them by importance. Invitations from duchesses and marchionesses go in one pile. Countesses and viscountesses in another pile. And those from baronesses I don’t bother to open. I use my morning to make replies, accepting invitations and declining others. I write up a schedule for myself, so I can keep track of all my appointments, and then I send a letter to Eudora. I will need more evening attire. It won’t do to be seen in the same dress twice.
Two hours later, and I call a maid to help me get ready. Naturally I had to fire my first maid, but the new one knows all kinds of fun coiffures. She piles my hair onto my head, placing every strand with an individual amethyst-studded pin. A gift from a previous lover, of course. My face is painted to perfection. I pull on lavender pants with a complicated bead design running down the front of each leg. The violet brocade overskirt is simply divine, with long sleeves and a floor-length hemline. I slip into black boots with a small heel, pull on black wrist-length gloves, and then head down for lunch.
Not so beautiful as to tempt me.
I huff as I remember those hateful words.
I appear to be one of the first to arrive in the great hall. Small groups of courtiers chat animatedly with one another. When I step into the room, a few heads turn, voices quiet to gossiping tones, and ladies pull out their fans.
And then a man approaches me.
“Lady Stathos! I’d hoped I’d get a chance to speak with you again.”
Blond. Handsome. Perhaps a decade older than I. Where have I seen him before?
“Orrin, Lord Eliades,” he says.
I still must give him a peculiar look because he adds, “Your father introduced us at the ball!”
Ah, that does the trick. He was the only person I met aside from the king. He kept bringing up Chrysantha and trying to compare me to her.
I do not like this man.
“I simply adored your sister while she stayed at the palace,” he says before I’ve even offered a reply, “and I know you are just as wonderful! Since we had such a connection at the king’s ball the other night, I hoped you might like to attend the countess’s upcoming charity ball with me. I’m sure you’ve received the invitation. Alekto is a friend, and I adore functions that raise money for the less fortunate. I simply have so much money to spend!” He laughs as though he’s told some joke before continuing. “I once bought a blanket for every child in the Naxosian Orphanage. Do you know how many blankets that is? Two hundred and thirty-seven. Can you believe so many poor souls are—”