Pretender to the Throne Read online

  No one walked away from him.

  He started toward the garden, and blocked her path. She raised her face to him, her expression defiant, and his heart dropped into his stomach.

  He hadn’t realized. Of course he hadn’t. But now that he could see her eyes, those unusual eyes, fringed with dark lashes, he knew exactly who she was.

  She was Layna Xenakos, but without her beauty. Without the laughing eyes. Without the dimple in her right cheek. No, now there were only scars.

  Not very much shocked him. He’d seen too much. Done too much. He and the ugly side of life were well-acquainted. And he knew well that life’s little surprises were always waiting to come and knock you in the teeth. But even with that, this wasn’t anything he’d expected. Nothing he could have anticipated.

  From the time he’d left Kyonos, he’d very purposefully avoided news regarding his home country. Only recently, when his sister had married her bodyguard and when Stavros had married his matchmaker, had he read articles concerning his homeland, or the royal family.

  Because he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Not then. But every time he opened the window on that part of his past, it was like scrubbing an open wound.

  And it took a lot to wipe his mind and emotions free of it all again. A lot of drinking. A lot of women. Things that made him feel like a different man than the one he’d once thought he was, than the one he was trained to be. Things that created happiness. Before they created a gigantic headache.

  One thing he’d never thought to look for had been the fate of the woman he’d left behind. But obviously, something had happened.

  “Layna,” he said.

  “No one calls me that,” she said, her tone hard, her expression flat.

  “I did.”

  “You do not now, your highness. You don’t have that right. Do you even have the right to a title?”

  That burned. Deeper than he’d imagined it could. Because she was edging close to a pain he’d rather forget.

  “I do,” he growled. “And I will continue to.” His decision was made. Whether or not it made sense to anyone, including himself, his decision was made. He had come back, and he would stay. Though, no one knew it yet.

  He’d felt compelled to come and see the state of things first. And then...and then he’d felt compelled to find Layna. Because if there was one thing he knew, it was that he had grown unsuitable to the task of ruling. And if he knew anything else, it was that no one was more suited to be queen than Layna.

  He had thought it unlikely she would still be unmarried. He hadn’t counted on her being both unmarried and at a convent, but he supposed it wasn’t any less likely than what he’d been doing with his time for the past fifteen years.

  No, he took that back. It was unlikely. Everything about this was unlikely. Layna Xenakos, the toast of Kyonosian society, renowned beauty and bubbly hostess, shut away in a convent, wearing a drab dress. With scars that made her mostly unrecognizable.

  “I should like you to go,” she said, walking toward him with purpose. He could tell she meant to go right on past him.

  He stepped in front of her, blocking her way. She froze, those eyes, so familiar, like a shot straight out of the past, locked with his. “I would like for you to unhand me as well, then leave.”

  “So unhospitable, Sister, and to your future ruler.”

  “Hospitality is one thing, allowing a man to touch me as though he owns me is another thing entirely.” She stepped away from him, her expression fierce. “You might rule the country, you might own the land, but you do not own me, or anyone else here.”

  “You belong to God now then, is that it?”

  “Less worrisome than belonging to you.”

  “You did once.”

  She shook her head. “I never did.”

  “You wore my ring.”

  “But we hadn’t taken vows yet. And you left.”

  “I let you keep the ring,” he said, looking down at her hands and noticing they were bare.

  “An engagement ring isn’t very useful when there is no fiancé attached to it. And anyway, I’ve changed. My life has changed. I suppose you thought you could come back here and pick up where we left off.”

  He had. And why not? It would be the story of the decade. The heir’s return and his reunion with the woman the nation had always been so fond of. Except, for some reason, a very large part of him had assumed she’d simply been here in Kyonos, frozen in time, waiting for his return.

  A large part of him had assumed that all of Kyonos had done so. But he had been mistaken.

  There were casinos now. An electric strip by the beach. His brother Stavros’s doing. The old town had been renewed. No longer simply a quarter where old men sat and played chess, it was now a place for hipsters and artists to hang out and “be inspired” by the beach and the architecture.

  His sister was not the same. Not a dark-haired, mischievous girl, but a woman now. Married and expecting a child. His brother had become a man, instead of a rail-thin teenage boy.

  His father was old. And dying. His father...

  And Layna Xenakos had joined a convent.

  “I will be straight with you,” he said. “I am not the favored son of the Drakos family.”

  She nodded once but remained silent, so he continued.

  “But I have decided that I will rule. For the next generation even more than for this one.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Stavros’s children cannot inherit. And that would leave my sister’s child. The changes it would require...it was never her cross to bear. I have done a great many selfish things in my life, Layna, and I intend to keep doing many of them. But what I cannot do, when it comes down to it, is condemn my brother to a life he never wanted. Or give to my sister’s child a responsibility it was never meant to take on.” He had ruined things for his siblings already. Their childhoods had passed by while he was gone. Children who’d had no mother.

  Especially Eva. She’d been so young then. It was unfair. He couldn’t continue to hurt her. He wouldn’t.

  “You speak of the crown as though it’s a poison cup,” she said, her words muted.

  “It is in many ways. But it is mine. And I have spent too many years trying to pass it off to others.” Yes, his. As far as anyone knew, it was his. It was the expectation. What he had trained for until he was twenty-one.

  The truth, was another matter. But it didn’t change Stavros’s reality. It didn’t change Eva’s.

  It didn’t change what had to be done.

  “A conscience, Xander?” she asked, using his first name, the sound sending a shiver through him. A ripple of memory.

  “I’m not so certain I’d go that far. Maybe a bit of forgotten honor bred into me. Thanks to all that royal blood,” he said, his tone dripping sarcasm. “Imagine my disappointment when I realized I hadn’t replaced it all with alcohol.”

  “A disappointment for many,” she said. She sounded more like her old self now. He’d officially destroyed her serenity. Perhaps a lightning bolt would be in the offing after all.

  “I’m sure. But I had thought there might be a way of softening the blow.”

  “And that is?”

  “You,” he said. “I’m going to need you, Layna.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  LAYNA FELT LIKE the world had just inverted beneath her feet, and only the wooden gate was keeping her from folding. “Excuse me?”

  “I need you.”

  “I can’t imagine why you think that, but trust me, you don’t.”

  “The people love you. They don’t love me, Layna.”

  “The people love me?” she spat, anger rising in her, anger she always thought was dealt with. Until something came up and reminded her that it wasn’t.
Something small and insignificant, like catching sight of herself in the mirror. Or burning her finger when she was cooking. In this instance, it wasn’t a small something. It was the ghost of fiancés past, talking about the people. The people who had loved her.

  She’d made her peace with some of the people of Kyonos. She served them, after all, but she didn’t feel the way she once had about them—confident that she had a country filled with adoring fans.

  Quite the opposite.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice certain still, as though he hadn’t heard the warning in her tone.

  “The people,” she said, “behaved more like animals after you left. Everything fell apart, but I assume you know that.”

  “I didn’t watch the news after I left. A tiny island like Kyonos is fairly easy to ignore when you aren’t on it. And when you’re drunk headlines look a little blurry.”

  “So you don’t know, then? You don’t know that everything...everything went to hell? That companies pulled up stakes, stocks went down to nothing, thousands of people lost their jobs?”

  “All because I left?”

  “Surely you knew some of this.”

  “Some of it,” he said, his voice clipped. “But there’s a lot you can avoid when you’re only sober for a couple hours a day.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I imagine vice isn’t so much your thing.”

  “No.”

  “So the economy collapsed and I’m to blame? That’s the sum of it?”

  She shrugged. “You. The death of the queen. The king’s depression. It was an unhappy combination, and no one was confident in the state of things. People were angry.”

  She looked at him and she tried to find a place of serenity. Of strength. What happened to her wasn’t a secret. It was in newspapers, online. It was widespread news. It was just hard to say out loud.

  But you aren’t going to show him that you care. You aren’t going to be weak. It doesn’t matter. Vanity. All is vanity.

  “There were riots in the streets. In front of the homes of government officials, who were blamed for the economic crisis. There were different kinds of attacks made. Several attempts at...acid attacks. We were leaving our home when a man pushed up to the front and tried to throw a cup of acid onto my father. He stumbled, though, and the man missed. I was hit instead. I don’t think I need to tell you where,” she said, attempting to smile. Smiling could be difficult enough at the best of times since half of her mouth had trouble obeying that command, but when she didn’t feel like smiling it was completely impossible.

  But telling the story was easier when she imagined it was another girl. When she remembered what happened without remembering the pain.

  She searched his face. She seemed to have succeeded in shocking him, which was something she hadn’t imagined would be possible.

  “So, I think it’s fair to say maybe the people don’t love me as much as you think they do.” She pushed past him now, determined to put an end to this. To this strange bit of torment from the past.

  He grabbed hold of her, his hand on her arm sending a rush of heat through her. She breathed in sharply, his scent hitting her, like a punch in the chest.

  Her head was swimming. With glittering palaces and silk dresses. Dancing in a sparkling ballroom in a man’s warm embrace. A trip to the garden where his lips almost touched hers. Her full, beautiful lips, unencumbered by scar tissue. It would have been her first kiss. And right then she wanted to weep for the loss of it because now there would never be one.

  Not on those lips. They were gone forever.

  Not even on the lips she had now. Because she had vowed to never know that pleasure of life. To forego it in favor of serving others, and release her hold on her own needs. Not that it should matter. No man would ever want to kiss her anyway.

  But Xander was...he was too much. He was here, right when she didn’t want him, and not fifteen years ago when she’d needed him.

  Right now, she didn’t need him. She needed distance. The more Xander filled up her vision, the more faded everything else seemed to become. Xander was a look into a life that she didn’t have anymore. Couldn’t have. Didn’t want.

  She just needed him gone. So that she could start to forget again.

  “I suppose you should go now,” she said. “Now that you know how it is. If you’re looking for a ticket to salvation, Xander, I’m not it.”

  “I’m not interested in salvation,” he said. “But I do want to do the right thing. Novel, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I can’t help you. Perhaps it’s best you found your way back to the village.”

  “I’m staying here tonight.”

  “What?” she asked, shock lancing her.

  “I spoke to the abbess, and explained the situation. I don’t want the public knowing I’m here yet, not until I’m ready. And I intend to bring you with me.”

  “I see. And nothing of what I said matters?”

  He shook his head, his jaw tight. “No.”

  “The fact that I’m not me anymore doesn’t matter?”

  He studied her face, the cold assessment saying more than any insult could. Before the attack, men...Xander...had never looked at her with ice in their eyes. There had always been heat.

  “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

  He turned and walked away from her, into the main building. She waited out in the yard, cursing silently and not caring that it was a sin as she stood there, hoping he was putting enough distance between them that she wouldn’t run into him again.

  She would speak to the abbess tonight and in the morning, hopefully Xander would leave. And he would go back to being a memory she tried not to have.

  * * *

  It was early the next morning when Mother Maria-Francesca called her into her office.

  “You should go with him.”

  “I can’t,” Layna said, stepping back. “I don’t want to go back to that life. I want to be here.”

  “He only wants you to help him get established. And as you want to serve, I think it would be good for you to serve in this way.”

  “Alone. With a man.”

  “If I have to concern myself with how you would behave alone with a man then perhaps this isn’t your calling.”

  It wasn’t spoken in anger or in condemnation, just as a simple, quiet fact that settled in the room and made Layna feel hideously exposed. As though her motives—motives she’d often feared were less than wholly pure—were laid out before the woman she considered her spiritual superior in every way.

  All that ugly fear and insecurity. Her vanity. Her anger. And old desires that never seemed to fully die. Just sitting there for anyone to see.

  “It isn’t that,” Layna said. “I mean, I’m not afraid of falling into temptation.” And even less worried about Xander falling into temptation with her. “It’s just that appearances...”

  “Are what men look at, my dear. But God sees the heart. So what does it matter what people might think? Of the arrangement, or of you?”

  Such a simple perspective. And one of the main reasons she felt so at home here. But that didn’t mean her ease and tranquility transferred to every place she went.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter.” And what she wanted certainly wouldn’t come into play. She could hardly throw herself on the ground and say she didn’t want to. Of course she didn’t. True sacrifice was hard. Serving others could be hard. Neither were excuses she would accept.

  “This is an opportunity to do the sort of good that most of us never get the chance to do. You have the ear of a king, in heaven and now on earth. You must use this chance.”

  “I’ll...think about it. Pray...about it.” Layna blinked back tears as she walked out of the room. By the time she’d hit the hall, she was running
. Out the door and to the stables.

  She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She needed to ride.

  And she did. Until the wind stung her eyes. Until she couldn’t tell if it was the burn from the air that made tears stream down her face, or the deep well of emotion that had been opened up inside of her. Threatening to pull her in and drown her.

  She rode up to the top of the hill, the highest point that was easily accessible, and looked down at the waves, crashing below, against the rocks. That was how she felt. Like the waves were beating her against stone. Breaking her down.

  Like life was asking too much of her. When she’d already given everything she had.

  She leaned forward and buried her face in Phineas’s neck. Maria-Francesca was right. It hurt to admit it. Even in her own mind, it hurt to admit it. She’d never taken her vows. And so much of that was down to herself.

  Was down to that piece of her that missed the ballrooms. That longed for a husband. For children. For the life she’d left behind.

  If she stayed here, she would be safe. But she would be stuck. She would never take her vows. Because it wasn’t her calling. And she’d been too afraid to admit it for so long because she didn’t know where else to go.

  You can go with him.

  Not for him. For her. For closure. So that the ache she felt when she thought of Xander, and warm nights in a palace garden, would finally fade.

  As it was, he’d been gone from her life with no warning. A wound that had cut swift and deep. An abandonment that had become all the more painful after her attack.

  It was safe here at the convent. But it was stagnant. And she saw now, for the first time, that it shielded her, instead of healing her.

  She could do this. She would do it. And when it was over...maybe something inside of her would be changed. Maybe she would find the transformation she ached for.

  Maybe then...maybe then she would come back here and find more than a hiding place. Maybe then, she would be changed enough to take the final step. To take her vows.

  Maybe if she finished this, she could finally find her place.

  * * *