“Sapphires? Please. Blue diamonds.” His fingertips settle on my collarbones, right next to the necklace. “Perfect blue diamonds.”
My eyes widen in the mirror, and I try to calculate the worth of the bauble he’s just fastened around my neck. But he beats me to it.
“Priceless,” he whispers. “Approximately. But it’s easily in the top three most expensive pieces of jewelry in the world. The Danica Wyndham Blues, what do you think?”
I can’t speak. He’s going to name it for me. One more tie binding me to Sonoman-Versailles, even once I’m free. I can’t appreciate its beauty anymore. It feels like a collar.
He mistakes my horrified silence for awe and preens like a peacock. I wish for nothing more than the security of my corset as I rise and turn under the weight of that ghastly necklace. I think it weighs more than my dress.
Saber drapes my new shawl over my shoulders, and I bid him an unemotional farewell, telling him he may as well take the night off, in an aloof tone meant to set His Highness at ease. Saber takes it in stride, sweeping me a low bow and giving me a secretive smile as the King escorts me out the door.
I see the worry in his eyes. The last expensive gift the King gave me was at my request, and before an audience of hundreds at the birthday party I planned for myself. This was a private gift with my name attached.
The King is very much acting as though he’d like to keep me near.
I DON’T OFFER up the slightest argument when the King insists on replacing the necklace in its box before we enter the warehouse district. “Security and all,” he says. I’ve barely managed to smile through the publicity pictures on the steps of the palace with the precious anaconda around my neck, squeezing, choking, threatening to drag me to the ground. I want to fling it back at him instead of graciously turning so he can remove the beautiful, terrible thing with careful, gloved fingers.
He hands the boxed necklace to an armed guard, who joins us right in the cab of the vehicle for the sole purpose of casting his body in front of the jewelry should anyone threaten it. Our car is both fronted and followed by two others, also transporting armed guards, and I’m jealous that I don’t have my own retinue of soldiers to call on without the knowledge or consent of the King. I can’t help but fantasize about how much easier life could be if I had some honest-to-goodness thugs working for me.
“I apologize that you’re here in such formal attire,” His Majesty says as he pivots to help me from the backseat of the car, “but I can’t imagine you’d turn out very well if I asked you to dress in the car.”
“Certainly not,” I murmur in agreement, ignoring the insinuation that I’d agree to undress in front of him.
While the warehouse is hardly what I’d call clean, it isn’t particularly dirty, either, and though I lift my hem and hold it close to my body so it doesn’t rub against walls or crates, it’s not the dusty, neglected building I envisioned when I heard we were visiting a warehouse. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised; there are millions upon millions of dollars of inventory in these crates.
Crates. I should have also expected that. It’s not a warehouse full of bots standing at attention, their faces inclined toward the front doors, awaiting orders. Steel shipping containers line the interior, stacked fifteen meters high; some on the ground level are open, revealing wrapped pallets full of wooden cubes, about a meter to a side.
“This is amazing,” I say, affecting a hushed whisper, as though I were viewing a rare display in a museum. “A bot in every crate?”
“Each and every one.”
“Can we”—I pause and bite my lower lip in a show of innocence—“open one? Can I see?”
The King snaps at one of his men and points. Doesn’t even say a word; I’m deeply envious of how naturally he wears his authority. The guard retrieves a crowbar that he must have brought along for this very purpose while two others drag a crate toward us. Soon they’ve pried off the front and a man with a box cutter strips away layers of plastic packaging.
The reveal is anticlimactic. Released from its casing, the bot activates, straightening and unfolding its limbs. It looks more or less like the bots at the palace, but…naked. We dress our bots in livery, with blank-faced masks and powdered wigs. I’d never thought before just how much it humanizes them.
This bot is tastefully generic, a blank white torso on articulated treads, as suitable for climbing stairs as for level ground. The harsh angles of its frame are concealed by a friendly curve of decorative ceramic panels, giving its arms a more humanoid profile—though its agile, three-fingered hands barely resemble their biological counterparts. Atop its broad “shoulders” rests a cylindrical collection of sensors and scanners that I suppose would look like a head from afar.
I walk around the bot, examining it from all sides. When I reach out to touch the machine, the King doesn’t stop me, and soon I’ve located an access panel high on its back—though I suppose, to a machine with three hundred sixty degrees of spatial awareness, back is a pretty meaningless designation.
“It’s very nice,” I say to the King, making a mental note of what I find beneath the bot’s exterior. While I have relatively little understanding of the materials and mechanical engineering that must have gone into its construction, its innards tell me a very interesting story about its development. “And it operates without a central server? No need for M.A.R.I.E., I mean.”
“Not once it has a role assigned. If it’s given a task it doesn’t understand, it checks with a central server for new programming—which will be provided for a modest subscription fee. We’ll be building our servers here in Europe and expanding south and east. Amalgamated will cover Asia and the Americas.”
“So right now it’s…blank?”
“More or less,” the King says, nodding.
“And each bot has to be programmed individually?”
“Exactly. We’ll have multiple templates for easier programming. And some larger companies will have bots that program the other bots. It’s beautiful, really.”
“Indeed,” I say softly, my head already spinning.
By the time we step back into our motorcade, bound for the glitzy center of Paris, my brain is buzzing with possibilities. All through a gourmet dinner at a high-rise restaurant overlooking the City of Light, all through a musical production that must surely be exceptionally well performed, my mind fills in the details of what, until tonight, had only been an outline—a framework of what might be possible.
I know that I speak, I converse, I pretend to pay attention. Luckily, even if His Highness wanted to have an intimate discussion, we’re surrounded by security everywhere we go. People whose names I don’t recognize, but who must be important, are continually permitted into our presence; I smile and shake hands. I endure compliments—and leers, sometimes, that I’m expected to take as compliments—but two minutes later I couldn’t have picked out one face in a lineup or regurgitated a single name.
An hour or so after a final round of edge-smoothing champagne along with a bit of fresh air on my face, I’m once again sufficiently present to worry about what’s happening around me. Just in time for my husband’s head of security to assist me into a wide-bottomed boat, where Justin waits, reclining in a pile of blankets. I’m clearly supposed to join him there, to snuggle close against the cool breeze that rolls off the river.
It’s the first time all evening we’ve been essentially alone. Instead of a Nav system, there’s a man steering the boat—an amusing anachronism—but he’s sequestered from us in a little boxlike shelter at the bow, and Justin’s security detail have stationed themselves on the shore, rather than with us in the boat. As we float out onto the water, Justin strokes the skin along the bottom of the necklace—not coincidentally, I’m sure, just barely above the line of my décolletage—and I shiver.
“Poor thing,” the King coos. “Your dress really is far thinner than you’re used to. You must be
freezing.” He gathers a thick blanket around us both, but the soft fabric is no match for the ice in my spine.
I say nothing and we float along silently for a long time. I wonder if he’s as weary from the whirl of social gaiety as I am. Maybe we won’t have to talk at all.
“So I’m off tomorrow,” he finally says. There goes that hope.
“Where are you going?” I ask, even though I already found the answer to my question in the itinerary I pilfered from Mateus’s tablet. But I want to know what he’ll say. If he’ll lie.
“It hardly matters. But I’ll be gone for about a week, just like last time.”
It’s now or never. “I think I should have more power while you’re away from the palace,” I say, as though it were truly a casual topic.
But I feel him stiffen at my back. “What do you mean?” he asks, not sounding like he’s even paying attention. I’m not fooled.
“The incident with the Tremain girl was a PR nightmare,” I say, keeping my voice low. Without accusation. “In part because security followed cut-and-dried procedure instead of exercising actual judgment and discretion. If you’d been around, they’d have consulted you, and you’d have crafted a narrative before word got out, and everything would have gone much more smoothly. Instead, the death was all over the news so quickly one could almost think we had a reporter there in the palace. I know I told you I didn’t want to be an executive, but I think I’ve changed my mind.”
He stretches and leans back a little, still holding me close, but no longer pushing his attentions on me.
“Hear me out,” I say to his silence. “I’d like a position in security. So it’s clear to everyone who they answer to while you’re gone. I suspect,” I say, heavy emphasis on the word, “that you’ll be traveling frequently the next few years in support of your latest project. And things happen. You can’t micromanage the palace while you’re out globetrotting.”
He doesn’t answer, but shifts and brushes his lips along the skin at my neck. I tilt my face away, giving him better access. The better to keep him distracted. He moves his hand a little higher as his lips kiss their way up to the curve behind my ear. “I did return to a bit of a public relations disaster,” he admits.
I suppose that’s as close to groveling as I’m going to get from someone as lofty as him. “You’ve got to learn to trust me,” I whisper, letting my lips brush his earlobe.
“How about this?” he says, sitting up so quickly I have to brace myself against his thigh. Maybe that was his goal. “Senior vice president of palace security.”
That seems promising. A position like that should give me all the access I need. It’s the last piece of my puzzle. “That sounds a bit intense,” I say demurely, knowing my reluctance will prod him on far better than an eager willingness.
“It’s a job often assigned to the crown prince or princess of the royal family, to bolster their résumé and justify paying them a salary while they wait their turn to take the throne. It was my position for a year before my parents…before I became King.” He laughs softly. “Technically, it’s still my position, I suppose.”
“And since we certainly don’t have a crown prince or princess…” I trail my fingers up his leg.
“Giving it to you instead would establish a clear chain of command in the court while I’m away.”
For a moment, I completely forget how to breathe. This is it. It’s perfect. Now I have to act like I don’t really want it that badly.
“You’ve been an amazing Queen these last few weeks. Truly grown into the role,” he says, settling against the back of his seat, his fingertips brushing the sides of my neck. I hope he can’t feel my racing heartbeat. “But this is a big step. Especially for a woman who was fighting against marriage to me a mere few months ago. Such a position—so much control—requires a great deal of trust.”
I turn around so I can face him. “Do you?”
“Trust you?” He smiles. Only at the very corners of his mouth. “Let’s say…I’d like to trust you,” he whispers, a jagged dissonance to the way he’s nuzzling my neck. “We could be good together, and I think you’re finally beginning to see that. You’re like a bird in a golden cage, Danica. If I want to see how high you can fly, I suppose I must eventually open the door and stop clipping your wings, mustn’t I?” He runs his finger down my neck, and along the décolletage of my thin dress, pausing in the center to dip two fingers into my cleavage and pull me forward by the delicate edge.
“Then—”
“What’s your game, Danica?” he whispers, barely a breath away from my mouth.
I cradle his face in my hands. “Does it have to be a game, Justin?”
“With you? Yes. With me? Yes. So with us? Absolutely.”
“Then maybe I should be asking what your game is,” I say, keeping a firm grip on my rising fear.
His nose strokes up my chin, drawing out a shiver, and he sets his lips close to my ear and says, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I certainly would.
“What do you want, Danica? Be honest for once.” And then his mouth is on my neck, his tongue lathing. I close my eyes. This is a price I already decided I’m willing to pay.
“I want to be able to handle a crisis while you—”
“No, no,” he says, waving a hand. “That’s the plausible explanation you had to concoct—the bait, as it were. And I’m tempted to take it—I’ve seen enough of your discretion and your technical acumen to know you can handle such work as may arise. But I’m uncertain of your true motivation.” He leans forward, his face a breath away from mine. “What is it that you really want?”
How good an actress am I? I lower my eyelids. “Isn’t it enough that I want you?”
Justin’s ego is utterly blinding; in his mind, how could any woman not want him? He shoves my light skirts out of his way and his hands slide up my thighs. “Do you?”
I grab the front of his bow tie and shift so our hips meet snugly. “I want you to be happy.” And it’s so very true. I want him to be happy so I can work right under his nose.
Justin sucks in a loud breath and lets it out in a low moan; I give him another deep, long kiss and end by pulling his bottom lip between my teeth. Without releasing him from between my teeth, I demand, “Are you happy?”
Justin makes a noise of primal wanting; he pulls away and I taste blood against my teeth. Then he yanks me toward him—hard, violent. In that moment I gain an intimate understanding of what Sierra Jamison might have been feeling the night she died in the arms of the King. She chose to be with the King that night—I believe that now. But she paid a terrible price.
“Are you?” I repeat as he rocks against me, because I can only get those two tiny words out without letting my agony pour out with it.
“God’s teeth, yes,” he groans. “Let it never be said you’re not as conniving as the rest of us.” And his lips devour mine, rough and punishing.
I close my eyes and kiss him back. Because I don’t just need him to be happy tonight. I need him happy tomorrow and the next day and every day until I leave. I need him to adore me.
And maybe I’ve been lying to myself for weeks. When I took the first step on this road of seducing the King, did I really not know where it was going to end? Perhaps there’s part of me that simply wanted to conquer him.
But the answers to those questions don’t change this moment. This is my choice. My decision. And I make it.
I close my eyes and pretend I’m somewhere else.
I WALK BACK into my rooms at three in the morning, hoping Saber is asleep. I don’t want him to see me, at least not until I’ve changed my clothing. I feel empty and bereft—a somewhat faded version of myself.
But I’m to have a new position in court, and Justin assured me he would make the arrangements before his helicopter takes off in surprisingly few hours. By the time I awake, I should have near-total control
of palace security. More than enough to accomplish what I must before Justin’s return.
“Dani?” Saber asks from the darkness, and I’m not fast enough to stifle a yip of surprise. “Sorry,” he says with a wry grin. In my defense, he did pop up from a corner of the bed I couldn’t see at all. “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” I say, lacing my hands together in front of me.
Saber looks at me oddly. “Did you have a good time with the King?”
Adrenaline drowns me from the inside out, and I turn to set my small purse on my dressing table. My hands are trembling; I’ve got to get control over myself. “It was Paris,” I grumble. “Fine food, good theater, too much alcohol.”
Saber makes a sound of amusement in his throat. “You were out quite late.” His question is utterly innocent—idle, even—but my nerves are clanging like cymbals and everything makes me feel guilty.
“Big boat ride after the show. You know the King,” I say noncommittally. “Has to make an event out of everything.”
“Think he’ll let you sleep late?” Saber asks, scooting to the edge of the bed and pulling me close. “Or is that too much to ask?”
Tears well up beneath my closed lids and I breathe slowly, forcing them back. I can’t let him know that anything is amiss. I’d never stand up under his close scrutiny. Someone else’s, certainly, but never his. I carefully set down my valise and unwind the shawl, trying to buy myself some time. “Maybe? I thought I’d shower before I retire.”
Saber studies me intently and I can hardly bear to hold eye contact. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Groggy. I fell asleep in the car on the way home,” I lie. I lie like I breathe these days, but I hate lying to him. I keep secrets—but not lies. Though sometimes I wonder if they’re ultimately the same thing. “I probably had too much wine.”
After retreating to the privacy of my bathroom, I splash water on my face and stare into the mirror. I expect to look different—but no. Same face, same mouth, same eyes. Maybe my eyes are a little different. Maybe.