Page 41 of Christmas in the King's Bed

“I was presented to him with half the kingdom in attendance at your engagement ball. Not the same thing.”

Calista wasn’t deliberately keeping Melody and Orion apart. But she also wasn’t going out of her way to introduce them, either. She told herself there was no point. There were only six days remaining before the board meeting and seven days before her supposed wedding. Why pretend that her sister and Orion would ever need to interact?

Then again, here she was standing in one of the many palace salons, being pinned and sewed and otherwise fitted into a sweeping white gown she had no intention of everreallywearing. And certainly not for the ceremony it was being made for.

The palace advisers had decided, with very little input from Calista, that what was needed here was a fairy tale. The full Cinderella treatment, they called it, complete with a dress boasting skirts so wide she could have fit half the island beneath them, a tiny waist that stole her breath, and gold embroidered everywhere.

Just in case there was any doubt that she was marrying a king.

God help her, she was marryingthe king.

No, she reminded herself.You’re only pretending you might.

She seemed to keep forgetting that part.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Melody said then, snapping her back to the salon. The dress. The disaster that was her life. “You do like him.”

“I can’t think of anything that matters less thanlikingsomeone,” she replied, perhaps a bit grumpily. “Much less a person I’m being forced to spend time with.”

The fleet of brisk seamstresses had left the room en masse ten minutes before, forced to contend with some or other textile disaster. They had spared Calista the details. She was left standing on a raised dais, surrounded by a portable wall of mirrors. Melody was there in the midst of it all, looking feral and entertained in the antique chair she’d claimed, and somehow more at home in this palace than Calista was.

“I would personally consider it a good thing that I liked a man I was going to have to marry even if he was a monster I detested,” Melody said mildly. “But you do you, Calista.”

Calista’s hands were in fists, and she was glad her sister couldn’t see it. Though the expression on Melody’s face made her think that she knew, anyway. The way she always did.

“I have a plan,” she began, trying to keep her voice even.

“It’s not the end of the world if you change your plans,” Melody interrupted her, quietly. “Maybe it’s even for the best. There are opportunities everywhere, if you know how to look for them.”

Calista opened her mouth to snap something back at her, but then paused. She frowned. “Are you talking about you or me?”

Melody smiled with a certain edge. “Father has been talking to me about alternate living opportunities.”

Such a simple sentence, yet it sent cold water straight down Calista’s back.

She knew she should have found something to feed to her father. Some bit of palace dirt. Some terrible rumor. How had she imagined that she could keep fobbing him off? Ignoring his messages and acting as if she was too busy with the wedding he’d demanded to give him what he wanted?

The truth was, she’d been pretending—hoping maybe, or wishing—that if she ignored the mess she was in, it might go away.

This was their father’s way of reminding Calista what he was prepared to do.

What he had every intention of doing.

How could she have been so stupid?

“I knew this would happen.” And suddenly the enormous dress she wore felt like a cage. A prison, and she couldn’t breathe, and Calista didn’t know what would happen if she simply clawed the fabric off her body—

Breathe, she ordered herself.

But she couldn’t. Not really. Not with any depth.

“I think it will be fine, actually,” Melody said, sounding philosophical. “I’ve never been around any other blind people. I might like them. At the very least, I can learn...blind things. Whatever those are.”

Calista tried to breathe. She really did try. “This is all my fault.”

“I think you know it’s not, Calista. I think you know that the only reason I wasn’t shunted off into one of these schools at birth is because of you.”

Her sister sounded calm. Resigned.