“What is Kostas doing here? He nearly blew your cover. I had to convince a regular you were a friend from church.”
She could use a little higher guidance right about now. “He wants me to marry him.”
Jessie’s eyes bulged out of her head. “Marry him?”
“Open the wine.”
Her friend uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses and handed her one.
She took a sip. Rested her glass on the railing. “It would be a political match.”
“Why?”
“I am the symbolic key to peace and democracy in the Ionian Sea. A way for Akathinia and Carnelia to heal. A vision of the way forward.”
“Are you expected to walk on water, too?”
A smile curved her lips. “It would be a powerful statement if Kostas and I were to marry.”
Jessie fixed her with an incredulous look. “You can’t commit yourself to a marriage of duty. Look what it did to your mother. It almost destroyed her.”
All of them. Her parents’ marriage may have been a political union, but her mother had loved her father. Unfortunately, her father had not been capable of loving anyone, not his wife nor his children. The king’s chronic affairs had created a firestorm in the press and destroyed her family in the process.
“Kostas worries about the military junta that backed his father. He plans to hold elections to create a constitutional monarchy in the fall, but he’s afraid the military will seize control before then if he doesn’t send a powerful message of change.”
“And you being the poster child of global democracy will give him that.”
“Yes.”
Jessie eyed her. “You aren’t actually considering this?”
Silence.
Jessie took a sip of her wine. Leaned back against the railing as she contemplated her. “Can we talk about the elephant in the room? You were in love with him, Stella. Mad about him. If this isn’t you repeating history, I don’t know what is.”
“It was a childish crush. It meant nothing.”
Jessie’s mouth twisted. “You two spent an entire summer with eyes only for each other. It was predestined between you two... Then you finally act on it and he slams the door in your face.”
She shook her head. “It was never going to happen. It was too complicated.”
“Does that discount you measuring every other man by him? This is me, hon. I knew you back then. I know you now. You looked shell-shocked when he walked into that bar. You still do.”
“I can control it.”
“Can you? You once thought the sun rose and set over him. He was the newest superhero to join the party, sent to rescue all of us from the bad guys.”
What an apt description of her teenage infatuation with Kostas... Of the heroic status she’d afforded him for his determination to bring a better democratic way to his people. Her belief he was the only one who could recognize the bitter, alienating loneliness that had consumed her, because, she’d been sure, he’d carried it with him, too.
But that had simply been a manifestation of her youthful infatuation, she conceded, her chest searing. Her desperate need to be understood, loved, rather than seeing the real flesh-and-blood man he had been.
“I know his flaws now,” she said, lifting her gaze to Jessie’s. “His major fault lines...” She no longer harbored the airbrushed image of him that had once steered her so wrong.
“The thing is,” she mused, her subconscious ramblings bubbling over into conscious thought, “I haven’t been happy in a long time, Jess. I’ve been restless, caged in a box I can’t seem to get out of. Everything about my life is charmed, perfect, and yet I’m miserable.”
Jessie gave her a rueful look. “I was working my way around to that. But why? You do amazing work. Meaningful work. Doesn’t it give you satisfaction?”
“Yes, but it’s not truly mine. Other than my support for the disarmament issue, it’s the sanitized, gilded, photo-op version of philanthropy the palace directs.” She shook her head. “You know I’ve always felt I have a higher calling. The ability to effect widespread change because of who I am, the power I have. And yet every time I’ve tried to spread my wings, I’ve been reined in. Athamos and Nik have taken precedence. I was the one left to toe the line.”
Jessie was silent. “I hear what you’re saying,” she said finally. “But this is big, Stella. Irreversible. If you marry him, you’re going to be queen. You will be taking on a nation. You’re going to be walking into a very delicate situation with no real control.”
But weren’t those the kind of challenges that made her feel alive, despite the inherent risk involved? Wasn’t this what she’d been craving all her life, a chance to make her mark?
She and Jessie talked late into the night. When her friend finally pleaded exhaustion and drifted off to bed, Stella stayed on the terrace, tucked in a chair, the fat half crescent of a moon, tossed in a sea of stars, her silent companion.
She didn’t question her ability to do what Kostas was asking of her. She’d walked through war zones to promote peace in countries where young people were the innocent victims of conflict. She’d met and challenged tribal leaders to find a better way than destroying each other. What she was afraid of was Kostas. What he could do to her in a political marriage with her as his pawn.
Tonight had proved, a decade later, she was far from immune to him. In fact, it had illustrated the opposite; revealed the origins of her stunningly bad mistake with Aristos Nicolades last year.
She had worked her way through a series of men whom she’d discarded one after another without allowing any of them to get close. When that had proved unsatisfactory, she’d fixed her sights on Aristos to prove she could win a man every bit as unattainable as Kostas; as elusive and undeniably fascinating. She’d sought to exorcise the ghost of her most painful rejection, to prove she was worth more than that. Instead, Aristos had broken her heart and, worse, fallen head over heels in love with her sister and married her.
She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest, the pang that went through her only a faint echo of what it once had been, because she’d anesthetized it, marked it as mindless self-pity.
She was destined to be alone. Had accepted that love was unattainable to her. That she’d been too badly scarred too many times to view the concept as anything but a destructive force. Which would almost make the suggestion of a political match bearable. Practical. If it was with anyone but Kostas.
Tying her fate to a man who could destroy her, if the forces threatening to splinter Carnelia apart didn’t do it first, seemed like another bad decision in a long list of many. Unless she neutralized his effect on her.
If she was to do this—marry Kostas—and survive, she would need to bury her feelings for him in a deep, untouchable place where he couldn’t use them against her.
The question was...could she?
* * *
“The princess is here to see you, Your Highness.”
Kostas looked up from the intelligence briefing he was reviewing, his heart climbing into his throat. It had been two days since he’d thrown all his cards at Stella, hoping she’d see the light. Two days with no response. Due to return to Carnelia tomorrow for a regional summit of leaders, he’d started to think his penchant for risk taking had been his downfall. That he had overrated his negotiating skills when it came to a princess who harbored a very personal anger toward him.
He betrayed not one