Page 2 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

The aide pressed a manicured finger to her ear and nodded at the guards, then smiled by rote at Herbert. Over Helene’s swaddled form, making it clear that she was the person here with the least significance.

Or, perhaps, she had been identified as the one least likely to complain.

Faith murmured something that sounded like Ready when you are, which Helene decided to pretend was about the wedding and not escaping it. She waited a breath, then another, and then moved in front of Helene only when Herbert made a huffing sound, accepting the bouquet the palace aide handed her as she slipped in one of the smaller doors to start down the aisle.

The music carried on, a tumbling, soaring symphony that twined with the humming inside of Helene and made every part of her...electric.

Then the great doors were hauled open. The crowd within rose, turned to look at her, and she settled in for a nice long think about...well. Everything that had led her here.

To this cathedral halfway up a mountain in a tiny kingdom that alpine dreams were made of. Where she had lied by omission to her beloved cousin, because she’d allowed Faith to believe that she was being forced into this marriage. It was easier to pretend that she was. Because Helene wasn’t sure she had the vocabulary to explain what had happened to her to make her a far more willing participant than Faith was likely to imagine possible...

Besides, it was a very long walk down the cathedral’s main aisle. So long that Helene couldn’t really make out which figure down there at the end was the man who was the real star of this show today. There was a scrum of finery blocking the view and the bishop himself looked resplendent, and yet she somehow doubted that her august groom would blend.

Her groom. The King of Fiammetta himself. One Gianluca San Felice, known far and wide for his stern male beauty as much as his forbidding magnetism that should have scared Helene but, instead, had hummed deep within her from the start.

It hummed in her now, too, darker and deeper with every step.

He would shortly be her husband, and, one day, the father of her children. At least two, she expected, since Gianluca was in possession of a throne. And everyone knew full well that anyone who happened to find themselves on a throne—or even in the vicinity of one, really—generally preferred to have a distinct line of succession put in place behind them to lock the whole enterprise down for generations to come.

Helene preferred to think about blood and lines of succession as if they were somehow unconnected to people. And to her. Because otherwise there was only that heavy, odd feeling that settled in her as she thought about children. Or, rather, the act of making said children with Gianluca, more an immensity than a man.

That thing inside her that she thought was him, or his, hummed all the more.

Marrying advantageously, and always ambitiously, was the single task of an heiress, her father had told her. Over and over again. Back when she was small he had talked quite openly about the consolidation of hereditary assets—the usual estate or two—and the way in which that could, if done well, create an upgrade in his own, personal status as well as hers. Which ought to have been her primary goal, clearly. Her mother would catch Helene’s eye across the long, polished table where children were permitted to appear only if silent, her bright eyes brimming with laughter.

Later, she would curl up with Helene in the nursery and spin out the most fantastic stories about how Helene’s marriage would be a wondrous thing, no matter what her silly Papa imagined. That she and her dashing prince would have adventures and slay dragons, dance at marvelous balls, and live a happy and glorious and magical life.

But when it turned out that Helene was going to be first lovely, then objectively pretty, then really quite beautiful, Herbert had gotten greedy. Especially when Helene had turned out to be clever as well, locked away in her exclusive Swiss boarding school where a certain sort of rich man sent his daughter if he wanted to be absolutely certain that she could have no personal life he did not know all about. There was no sneaking out of the Institut. It was a truly lovely prison, set behind high walls and surrounded by guards, where there were never more than ten girls in each year and all of them were earmarked by others for the sort of lives that took place in hushed, elegant castles of one sort or another the world over.

There wasn’t much to do but study, take classes, and dream of Prince Charmings they were not allowed to meet without familial oversight.

Helene had always considered herself lucky that her father actually let her finish her education, which was not the case for many of her schoolmates. Plus the extra finishing year that the school was famous for—because, it was whispered, certain monarchs who married for love had made use of the Institut’s finishing when their scandalously lower-brow queens needed a quick gloss-up.

She’d graduated in full just before her twentieth birthday and had expected her father to put her directly on the auction block—figuratively, she hoped. She had anticipated a heap of tedious social engagements under her father’s watchful eye, where she would have to not only be effortlessly charming as was expected from a graduate of the Institut and the Archibald heiress, but suffer her father’s commentary on whether or not he thought she’d hit the notes he wished for her to hit.

In truth, she hadn’t been sure that she would make it through a week like that, much less the entire summer season her father had been threatening her with when he’d installed her in his summer estate in Provence that year. The men he had in mind for her were all wealthy and titled and Helene and Faith had texted back and forth about them, tracking them all across the internet, and trying their best to turn their evident flaws—from mistresses to gambling to the kind of partying that never ended well and so on—into charming quirks.

Because it was easier to make it all a game. It was almost fun that way.

Or we could run away, Faith would say, as if she had anything to run from herself, with parents who adored and indulged her. I think I would make a smashing artist in some charmingly bohemian city somewhere, living off my wits and my creative energy.

I believe, Helene would reply, that you are thinking of Broadway musicals, not reality.

And while it was true that reality felt a bit heavier on this side of graduation, with actual candidates for her glorious marriage apparently queueing up across Europe, Helene was still resolved to go through with it. Because her father was not a warm man. This she had always known. But if this was the only way she could show her love to him—the only way she knew how to honor her mother now that she was gone and certainly the only way he could receive it, if he could receive it at all—she rather thought it was the least she could do.

She, too, could bloom quietly. Safe and cared for, in a very particular way, as she had been all her life. It was only that her mother had managed to make it seem brighter—but then, Helene could do that too. When she was settled in with the man her father chose for her.

But then, one day, the royal messenger had appeared.

In person, before the first party, where Helene had been expected to make her marriageable debut. He had arrived ostentatiously and had proclaimed the good news: Helene had—by what means, he did not specify—managed to secure the notice of the grand and notably great King of Fiammetta himself, who would very much like to meet her.

It had not been an invitation.

My God, girl, Herbert had seethed at her that very evening, beside himself with notions of crowns and consequence run amok. If you ruin this, I shall never forgive you.

Helene had not felt there was anything to be won by pointing out that she had not ruined anything yet. That she had been all that was good and obedient, all her life, so much so that Herbert really ought to have been under the impression that she was biddable.

That he was not, she could admit, pleased her. It must mean that her real self lurked just there no matter how diffident and obliging she attempted to act in his presence.