Page 45 of Mistaken as His Royal Bride

The fear of disappointing him was acute.

She forced herself to meet his eye. Regret was already burning her insides like bile. ‘I’m so sorry, Aristedes... I’m truly not playing any games... I just think this isn’t a good idea.’

His face was suddenly expressionless. His eyes shuttered. He said nothing for a long moment and then he took a step back. ‘As you wish. If you change your mind, you know where I am.’

He turned and walked towards his bedroom suite and Maddi fled back to her rooms before she changed her mind. She went inside and leaned against the door.

What she’d just walked away from was seismic.

Ari saw her.

She knew he did. Even if his cynicism had got in the way briefly. And he wantedher, which was intoxicating.

For her whole life Maddi had felt somewhat invisible. She’d been acutely conscious of her mother’s sadness, and conscious that it had to do with her. So she’d tried to make herself smaller, so as not to cause any more sadness.

She’d learnt not to ask too many questions about her father, but had pored over his image online and that of her half-sister, fascinated by their resemblance while knowing that they were a world apart.

It had always hurt to know that her sister had had a relationship with their father. There was a picture that Maddi had come across online, of her sister and father on a boat, fishing. Laia was about ten years old, laughing up into the King’s face. He was smiling down at her indulgently. Maddi had printed it out and kept it for years—a bittersweet reminder that he hadn’t wanted to know her.

When she’d told Laia about it, Laia had cried.

Maddi kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot over to the dressing room, removing her jewellery and putting it back carefully in the boxes. The diamonds twinkled at her benignly.

She felt keyed up. Restless. About as far from being able to sleep as it was possible to feel. She looked at herself in the mirror. Flushed cheeks. Wide eyes. Yearning. Aching. Pulse throbbing. Still.

She couldn’t believe she’d stood up to the King like that. Called him out on his cynicism. And he’d admitted he was wrong. It had been exhilarating.

She wanted him.

Would it really be so selfish to savour this moment of someone really seeing her. Appreciating her? To take this one thing for herself, ready or not? To give her innocence to the man who had already fulfilled her fantasy of what a passionate awakening might feel like?

Sooner or later she would have to leave here. She would never see Aristedes again. Because she knew his marriage with Laia would never happen. Laia would persuade him to agree to a more modern peace agreement—Maddi knew she would. And he would weather this change in his plans and get on with his life, choose a new bride of royal blood...sire his heirs. He mightwanthis Queen. He might even fall in love with his Queen, in spite of his cynical arrogance.

You have royal blood, whispered a voice.

Maddi went still. She was a princess. Albeit very much in secret. But suddenly she couldn’t stop thinking of the tantalising possibility of telling Ari that she was also a princess of Isla’Rosa. That perhaps he might agree to switch marrying Laia for Maddi.

She caught her expression in the mirror, smiling moonily at herself, and immediately stopped and scowled. What on earth was wrong with her? She’d met the man scarcely a week ago and, yes, she had a crush on him, but was she really fantasising about offering herself up to him as a substitute royal wife? Before the people of Isla’Rosa even knew she was a princess? Offering herself up to a man who was cynical and jaded? Who had admitted that he was more than happy to have a marriage in name only. To breed the next generation with no hint of scandal or drama.

She wasn’t ready to be a queen! She could barely get her head around being a princess. And who was to say he would choose her even if he knew she was of royal blood?

Her blood curdled at the thought.Rejection.All over again. She wouldn’t risk that for anyone.

Maddi might have sown doubts in his head about his marriage to Laia, but there was no way she could risk revealing her full identity in case he used it against her. To lure Laia out of hiding. Or, worse, to create a scandal in Isla’Rosa by revealing her identity to the people before Laia had had a chance to do so.

It was Laia’s narrative to control, revealing Maddi’s true heritage as her half-sister, and Maddi would not betray her wishes. After all, she was loyal to Isla’Rosa too.

But in the meantime Maddi couldn’t deny that she did want something from King Aristedes. Now more than ever. Because she fully realised how finite this was. And how much he would potentially hate her when he found out who she really was. That she’d been hiding her identity as a princess.

He wouldn’t understand that she was still getting used to the concept. It wasn’t as if she took it for granted. She knew that until Laia actually acknowledged her birth in front of the people of Isla’Rosa she wouldn’t feel as if she truly was of royal blood.

And that betraying little fantasy she’d had of him choosing her to be his Queen instead of Laia? It would be buried deep down, where she’d buried all her very secret fantasies that perhaps things might be different for her, that she might experience a great love some day, even though she’d ruined her mother’s chances for love.

So for now she was still a regular person, and suddenly things were very clear. Maddi knew she would always regret not taking the chance to be with Aristedes. To know his touch. To surrender her innocence to him. To let him be the one to initiate her in the ways of being a woman.

Maddi stopped thinking. She turned from the mirror and walked back to the door, opened it and walked out. Guided by sheer desire, Maddi retraced her steps back down the corridor and to Aristedes’s rooms.

The guards were outside. Wordlessly, one of them opened the door. Vaguely Maddi computed this, and what it must mean.