“Marcus wasn’t a stranger when we married. We met at university.”
“A love match?” he asked, one dark brow raised.
Her stomach twisted uncomfortably, a bit of numbness starting at the tips of her fingers and slowly spreading upward. “Yes.” She swallowed hard. “Just another reason I find it so easy to entertain the idea of a mutually beneficial alliance. I am not searching for, nor do I anticipate having, another marriage like my first. I don’t want one.”
“I can promise you a marriage between the two of us would be nothing like the one you shared with your first husband.”
She didn’t doubt it.
“Fine. Don’t send me back. Give me one month. I will help you with the finer points, and we can engage in a kind of courtship. A bit of something for the media, something for your people. If it doesn’t work out, there is no harm. But if it does... Well, it solves several problems.”
He stood abruptly, his movements fluid. It reminded her of the strike of a viper. So still in the moment just before the fatal hit was administered. Over before you ever knew it had occurred.
“Dowager Queen Olivia of Alansund, we have an accord. You have thirty days to convince me that you are indispensable. If you are successful, I will make you my wife.”
CHAPTER TWO
“A MEMBER OF staff will show you to a room.”
“Perhaps you might trouble yourself just long enough to show me?” Olivia didn’t know why she was pressing for any more time spent in Tarek’s presence. Perhaps it was simply her attempt at reclaiming control of the situation.
She didn’t like feeling out of control, and the past two years of her life had given rise to the feeling that she was nothing more than a rock hurtling through space, at the mercy of gravity’s pull. She hated that feeling. It was too close to what she’d experienced growing up with the specter of terrible illness hanging over the household.
Nothing highlighted your true lack of influence on anything important like death, or the threat of death. Olivia was far too familiar with both.
So you can wallow in it, or you can make a difference. It isn’t like Anton wants to send you on an unpleasant mission. But he has a country to consider.
And so did she.
This wasn’t the time to break down. This wasn’t the time to start making things all about her, and her comfort. There was a broader scope to consider.
“You assume I might know where a prepared guest room is. I assure you I do not.”
“You don’t know the layout of the rooms in your own palace?”
He stepped down from the raised platform the throne sat on, making his way toward her. “This is not my palace. It is my brother’s palace. That is my brother’s throne. I wear my brother’s crown. Metaphorically, of course.” Olivia found it impossible to breathe with Tarek advancing on her as he was. He was nothing like the men she was accustomed to. Nothing like her gentle, sophisticated father. Nothing like her cultured, amusing husband. Or indeed her quiet and steady brother-in-law. If she was focusing on space metaphors, Tarek was a black hole. Sucking the air, the sound, the energy from the room around him, internalizing it. Creating a void that he alone commanded. “None of this is mine. I was not meant for this. If you intend to make me your project, then you should be aware of that fact.”
“What is the solution, then? Because you seem to be here, whether or not you feel destined for it,” she said, not certain where the strength to speak came from. Apparently, though he had sucked the air from her lungs, he had not stolen her ability to speak.
“I suppose you are the solution. My brother’s advisers despair of me. Fair enough, as I despair of them. I feel they are weak-minded sycophants, trained to be so by a ruler who required mindless servitude. I do not. Nor do I want it.”
“Come now, most rulers enjoy a bit of bowing and scraping.”
Black eyes clashed with hers. “Only a man craves praise. A weapon wants nothing more than to be used. And that, my queen, is all that I am.”
She swallowed hard, trying to appear self-possessed. Trying to feel self-possessed. “Then, I will train you to fight. The way a king must fight.”
He began to pace, making a circle around her. A shiver ran through her, chilling her down to her bones. “I worry. I worry about the things I have left behind, untended.”
“Then, use what you have seen. I’m sure you know more about many things than your brother ever did.” She had no idea if that was true; she was simply trying to prove her worth. “Use that. And let me assist you with the rest. Interacting with diplomats is simply politics as usual. My husband excelled at that. As do I.”