Page 14 of Vows to a King
WITH ONE SILKYremark Prince Adonis reminded Jemima that it was she who needed this marriage. Desperation stole her composure and the comportment she’d been taught at the finishing school her father had banished her to for years.
He radiated distaste as if he were a melting glacier and she dared not touch him. As much as a part of her wanted to soothe him. And that too, she told herself, was an impulse left over from a lifetime of pretending subservience. One that she needed to break with him. “I vow to give you everything I can, Prince Adonis. My unflinching loyalty whether you’re in Thalassos or not, my political expertise, my knowledge of the inner workings of the palace. Every little bit of cunning information my father has secretly amassed about the power players. But I cannot pretend that this marriage is…anything but an arrangement and temporary at that. In fact, except to produce the required two children, I think we should refrain from any physical association.”
From behind her, the light shifted, suddenly leaving his features in shadows, as if it were in cahoots with him. As if it too wanted to please him.
When he remained stubbornly silent, she huffed in frustration. What did the man want of her? “You can’t honestly tell me that you’ll be faithful to me beyond the few minutes you’ll spend in my bed,” she bit out. “At least Adamos was honest about what we were getting into.”
And she knew, the moment those words landed on her own ears, something precious and pure had been stripped from her by her father’s constant criticism and relentless demands over the years. When had she become so unwilling to give life a chance, begun to think so little of herself? When had she become so judgmental and self-righteous that she would spit on an offer made in good faith?
Also, it was the worst thing she could have said to the man she’d nearly begged to marry. No, bringing the dead brother he hadn’t fully grieved yet into the discussion was the worst.
But she was beginning to see that the Devil Prince was unlike his brother. Or any man she’d known. Even the moniker seemed like nothing but a mask. One of several he used to hide his true self from the world.
He didn’t betray anything, even at her direct insult. Whatever else he pretended to be for the rest of the world, Adonis Vasilikos exercised his control as though it were the jaws of a steely vise.
No shadow, no mockery, not a sliver of anger showed across his features. Only a slick smile coasted over those sinful lips, as if she had been relegated to the rubbish heap in his head. “I have a better idea, Princess,” he said, using the mocking address she was beginning to hate. “How about we do not produce these required two children the fun, traditional way at all?”
“What do you mean?” Jemima whispered, her heart hammering in her chest.
“It is clear that you’re willing to wear the crown and sacrifice yourself at the altar of Thalassos’s well-being for reasons of your own. But I find it extremely distasteful, not to mention downright disgusting, to touch a woman who will bear it under sufferance. As you cleverly reminded me, I’ve never been deprived of the sources of infinite pleasure.”
Jemima stared, with no apology to offer in return, for she had dug the hole to bury their tentative truce with her own hands. Still, she said, “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m a very possessive sort of man, Princess, for all that I don’t get possessive about most things in life. The idea of my wife, the mother of my children, cavorting with some lover…fills me with distaste. I’d rather we stay strangers to create these children. Science has come up with all kinds of neat little tricks,ne?”
That the last thing she wanted was a lover when she’d be bound to him rose to her lips but she pushed it away. She’d ruined any chance of truce between them already. “And you, Adonis?” she demanded, provoked by both distrust and a gnawing sense of loss. “Would you promise to not look at another woman in this marriage of ours?”
“You have lost the chance to find out, Princess,” he added, without a trace of bitterness. As if he had already overcome the insult she had dealt him.
To her utter dismay, their little heart-to-heart apparently wasn’t over yet. For one miserable moment, she thought it would be better if he rejected her and her stupid, desperate proposal, even at this last minute.
But, as she was beginning to learn, Adonis Vasilikos was a man of his word, of integrity, of kindness even. The last an impossible quality to find in men of power.
With smooth movements, he opened a dark blue velvet box that looked tiny and fragile within his fingers. “I asked Mama to have this brought out this morning from the crown treasury.”
In his hands, the emerald and sapphire ring shone brilliantly, the simplicity of its cut emphasizing the regal beauty of the stones. It was as different as could be possible from the diamond monstrosity Adamos had pushed onto her finger with such alacrity that she had felt utterly humiliated.
“This comes from Mama’s line,” Prince Adonis said, a strange grief dancing in his eyes. “I’m told it has been worn by strong, selfless women through centuries.”
Her breath punched out of her lungs so painfully that Jemima would have slid to the floor if not for the wall at her back.
She knew, as surely as the loud clamoring of her heart, that Adonis had picked the ring for her specifically. That he had meant to honor their arrangement as much as was possible given the strange circumstances surrounding it.
That, despite his mockery of protocol, and grief over his brother, and anger at being shackled to her and the kingdom, he had appreciated her, like no one else ever had.
Adonis Vasilikos, the Devil Prince, the man who could have anything and anyone in the world, had seen something of note in her. Hadseenher, period.
If there was a moment in her life where Jemima would have given up all pretense of strength and bawled her eyes out, it was that. All through her life, she had lost countless precious things—friendships and opportunities and freedom and something as fundamental as a sense of self—thanks to her father’s autocratic nature. But this loss of the…tentative trust between her and this man, hit harder than anything else, for she had wrought it with her own hands.
“Adonis—”
“You might think it all the same,” he said, reaching for her hand, “but I find it tacky to marry you with my brother’s ring on your finger. Even if it’s the renowned Pink Diamond ring worn by every Queen of Thalassos.” Blue eyes, of the shade of arctic frost, held hers. “But I’m also not a man who forces his views or his touch on a woman. So choose for yourself, Princess.”
Her fingers shook in his grasp even as soft heat pooled where he touched her. Her pulse went haywire under the pad of his thumb, as if rushing to say the words she couldn’t form.
The tips of his fingers lingered over her empty ring finger, his surprise evident in the sudden tightness of his jaw.
“I removed the ring as soon as I heard of his death,” she said, not mentioning his brother by name. “And I want the one you picked. For me.”
