had done her best to put that royal mantle on, but much like every dress that had ever been made for her since coming to live at the palace, it wasn’t quite right. Oh, they could measure it all to fit, but it was clear that she wasn’t made for such things. That her exceedingly nonwaiflike figure was not for designer gowns and slinky handmade creations that would have hung fabulously off women who were more collar and hip bone than curves and love handles.
Oh, yes, she was well aware of how little she fit. And how impossible her feelings for Luca were.
And yet, they remained.
And knowing that nothing could ever happen with him, knowing it with deep certainty, had done nothing to excise it from her soul.
Did nothing to blunt the pain of this, of his words being ground into her chest like shards of glass.
Not only was he making it clear he didn’t want her, he was also using the memory of his father—the only man she had ever known as a father—to entice her to agree.
He was right. King Magnus had given her everything. Had given her mother a new lease on life, a real life. Something beyond existence, beyond struggle, which they had been mired in for all of Sophia’s life prior to her marriage to him.
He had met her when she was nothing more than a waitress at a royal event in the US, and had fallen deeply for her in the moment they met.
It was something out of a fairy tale, except there were two children to contend with. A child who had been terrified of being uprooted from her home in America and going to a foreign country to live in a fancy palace. And another child who had always clearly resented the invasion.
She had to give Luca credit for the fact that he seemed to have some measure of affection for her mother. He did not resent her presence in the way he resented Sophia’s.
She had often thought that life for Luca would have been perfect if he would have gotten her mother and his father, and she had been left out of the equation entirely.
Well, he was trying to offload her now, so she supposed that was proven to be true enough.
“That isn’t fair,” she said, when she could finally regain her powers of speech.
Luca’s impossibly dark eyes flickered up and met hers, and her stomach—traitorous fool—hollowed out in response. “It isn’t fair? Sophia, I have always known that you were ungrateful for the position that you have found yourself in your life, but you have just confirmed it in a rather stunning way. You find it unfair that my father wished to see you cared for? You find it unfair that I wish to do the same?”
“You forget,” she said, trying to regain her powers of thought. “I was not born into this life, Luca, I did not know people growing up who expected such things for their lives. I didn’t expect such a thing for mine. I spent the first twelve years of my life in poverty. But with the idea that if I worked hard enough I might be able to make whatever I wanted of myself. And then we were sort of swept up in this tidal wave of luxury. And strangely, I have found that though I have every resource at my disposal now, I cannot be what I want in the same way that I imagined I could when I was nothing but a poor child living in the United States.”
“That’s because you were a delusional child,” Luca said, his tone not cruel in any way, but somehow all the more stinging for the calm with which he spoke. “You never had the power to be whatever you wanted back then, Sophia, because no one has that power. There are a certain number of things set out before you that you might accomplish. You certainly might have improved your station. I’m not denying that. But the sky was never the limit, sorely not. Neither is it now. However, your limit is much more comfortable, you will find, than it would have been then.”
Her heart clenched tight, because she couldn’t deny that what he was saying was true. Bastard. With the maturity of adulthood she could acknowledge that. That she had been naive at the time, and that she was, in fact, being ungrateful to a degree.
Hadn’t her position in the palace provided her with the finest education she could have asked for? Hadn’t she been given excellent opportunities? Chances to run charitable organizations that she believed in strongly, and that benefited all manner of children from different backgrounds.
No, as a princess, she would never truly have a profession, but with that came the release of pressure of earning money to pay bills.
Of figuring out where the road between what she dreamed of doing, and what would help her survive, met.
But the idea of marrying someone selected by her stepbrother, who no more knew her than liked her, was not a simple thing.
And underneath that, the idea of marrying any man, touching any man, being intimate with any man, who wasn’t Luca was an abomination unto her soul.
For it was only him. Luca and those eyes as hard as flint, that mouth that was often curled into a sneer in her direction, those large hands that were much rougher than any king’s ever should have been. It was only him who made her want. Who made her ache with the deep well of unsatisfied desire. Only him.
Only ever him.
“I will be holding a ball,” Luca said, his tone decisive. “And at that ball will be several men that I have personally curated for you.”
“You make them sound like a collection of cheeses.”
“Think of them however you like. If you prefer to think them as cheese, that’s your own business.”
Something burst inside her, some small portion of restraint that she had been only just barely holding on to since she had come into the throne room. “How do you know I like men, Luca? You’ve never asked.”
Luca drew back slightly, a flicker in his dark eyes the only showing that she had surprised him at all.
“If it is not so,” he said, his tone remote, “then I suggest you speak now.”
“No,” she responded, feeling deflated, as her momentary bit of rebellion fell flat on its face. “I’m not opposed to men.”
“Well,” he said, “one less bit of damage control I have to do.”
“That would require damage control?”
“How many gay princesses do you know?” he asked. “The upper echelons of society are ever conservative regardless of what they say. And here in this country it would be quite the scandal, I assure you. It is all fine to pay lip service to such things as equality, but appearances, tradition, are as important as ever.”
“And I am already a break with tradition,” she pointed out.
“Yes,” he said, that tone heavy. “My father’s actions in granting you the same rights as I have were unheard of. You are not his by blood, and in royal lines blood is everything. It is the only thing.”
“I will go to the ball,” she said, because there really was no point arguing with Luca once he had made pronouncements. But whatever happened after that... It would be her decision.
But she was too raw, too shocked, from this entire conversation to continue having a fight with him.
He wanted to marry her off to another man. He wanted her to be someone else’s problem.
