A Royal Without Rules

“You know that it was both.” His gaze bored into her, challenging her. “Almost from the very beginning.”

She shook her head, aware that it felt too full, too fragile. That she did. There was too much noise in her ears and that dark pit in her stomach, and all she wanted was to get to her feet and run—but she couldn’t seem to move.

“I don’t know that.”

“You do.”

He pushed away from the wall and came toward her then, imposing and beautiful, and she knew the truth about him now. She knew his indolence was an act, that the powerful, ruthless man she’d glimpsed was who Pato was. Now she couldn’t pretend she didn’t see it. She couldn’t pretend he was lazy, pointless, careless—any of the things he’d pretended he was. He’d manipulated her every step of the way and would no doubt do it again. He’d given up a throne for this. What was one woman next to that? She was nothing but collateral damage.

And still, she didn’t move. Still, her heart ached for him. No matter what this meant for her, what it said about the last years of her life.

“This is why you have to leave the palace, Adriana,” he said, that dark urgency in his voice and stamped across his face. “You deserve better than these games. No one comes out of them without being compromised. No one wins.”

She struggled with the tears that pricked suddenly at the back of her eyes, and then he was right there, sinking down in front of her to kneel on the floor and take her face between his hands.

“I don’t want to let you go,” he whispered fiercely. “But I will. Somehow, I will. I promise.”

The same old voices snaked through her then, crawling out of that darkness inside her to whisper the same old poison. He wanted the Righetti whore and he got her, didn’t he? She’d been a means to an end for him, a tool. Another instrument. Something he could use and then toss aside. “Remember who you are, Adriana,” her father had said when she’d first got the job at the palace. “Remember that your disgrace is already assumed—they only seek confirmation.” She was nothing but her surname, her face, her family’s everlasting shame, another headline in another tabloid paper. Temptresses and a traitor, marking her as surely as if she wore their sins tattooed across her cheeks.

But Pato had trusted her. He’d come for her when he could have simply let her leave, none the wiser. He’d brought her here, and she’d been the one to insist they give in to the wild passion between them, not Pato. He’d wanted to talk and she hadn’t let him. And now he’d told her everything, and yes, it hurt. But he’d told her a story that could rock the whole kingdom, and he wanted to set her free. Again.

And all she wanted to do, all she could think to do, was run away and hide—which was just what she’d done when she was seventeen. It was what she always did.

No wonder he’d mocked her declaration of love, she thought then, a different kind of shame winding through her. It wasn’t love at all. It was safe and removed. It was loving the idea of him, not loving the man. The complicated, dangerous man, who wasn’t safe at all and had never pretended otherwise—he only made her feel that she might be safe when she was with him.

Make it hurt, he’d challenged her, scowling at her, refusing to accept her half measures. Make it real or don’t bother.

And this was her chance to step out of hiding, just as he’d done. She wanted to be bold. She wanted to feel alive. For once in her life, she wanted to use her infamous name and her notoriety instead of sitting back and letting others use it against her.

Not as a sacrifice. Pato deserved better than that. He deserved a gift.

“It sounds like I’m an excellent weapon,” she said. She wrapped her hands around his wrists, tilted her face to his and lost herself in all that dark gold. “Why don’t you use me? I’m sure your father isn’t the only one who assumes that I’m your mistress as well as Lenz’s. Why not make it public and damn yourself in his eyes forever?”

“I’m not going to use you that way, Adriana.” Pato’s voice was harsh. “I didn’t accept the offer when it was for Lenz, and I won’t do it now. You are not a whore. You do not wield dark magic that turns unsuspecting men into your slaves. You’re better than this fairy-tale villain they’ve made you, that I’ve helped them make you, and I refuse to take part in it any longer. I won’t.”

She couldn’t help herself then. She leaned in and kissed him, feeling the electric charge that shuddered through him, then sizzled in her, making what she’d intended to be sweet turn into something else entirely. When she pulled away, his eyes were still dark, but gleamed gold.