Viktor

My first morning in Amoria, I escape the palace for an early jog through the fresh mountain air before even the errant chickens are awake, though I do hear Fred humming loudly when I pass the stables. I startle three guards on my way back through the rear gardens, which are so overgrown I wonder if the gardener has also been with the palace since my grandfather’s ouster.

Or if the palace even has a gardener.

I should be quite unsurprised to discover he or she died on the job years ago but is still drawing a salary. I dart off an email to Leonie requesting a briefing on the palace staff on my way into the family wing of the palace.

Alexander and Samuel are at the carved mahogany table in the dining room, their heads together as they murmur over the morning paper. They both look up, each with his own amused smile when I enter.

“Ah, the man of the hour,” Alexander says. Had he not dropped everything in his own personal life to be here for support and guidance—he’s far more knowledgeable about matters of politics, Amoria, and the nuances of human nature than I am—I would sometimes wonder at his brotherly affections for me. “Pray tell, why must we learn the details of your marriage from an American wire story?”

I don’t respond, but instead take the newspaper and skim the article in question quickly.

It paints Peach as a saint dedicated to the protection of children everywhere, telling the story of her mad balloon ride with her as the hero, the brave and fearless woman whose motherly instincts led her to an unsafe balloon, with me the bumbling boyfriend who realized how very much I loved her at witnessing the lengths she would go to save a helpless baby, even if the baby turned out to be a sandbag.

According to the article, the balloon crashed because we were both so overcome with emotion when I dropped to a knee and proposed spontaneously inside the basket.

The palace shall undoubtedly be fielding calls for interviews and confirmations or denials for weeks.

I look at Alexander.

“I’m quite uncertain of their source,” he says with a diabolically delighted smile, “but I would not correct the story were I you. A mere the king wishes to enjoy his newlywed time as he takes the helm of Amoria, the country of love should suffice to lend as much credence as necessary to those who wish to believe such a thing.”

“You doubt the story?” I inquire.

“Of course not, Your Majesty.”

“Nor do I,” I deadpan.

I know Zeus Berger’s twin, Ares, better than I know Zeus himself, but I daresay this has a Berger bent to it. It’s quite as wild and unpredictable as he is.

But if Joey Diamonte’s fiancé has bought us a cover story, then I shan’t refute it.

“Pray have this recycled before Peach sees it. She’s still rather distraught over the arrest following the misunderstanding.”

Alexander and Samuel share an amused look that suggests they’ve already discovered distraught is not a common affliction Peach suffers.

I clear my throat and catch my brother’s eye. “I’ve several meetings with various government officials late morning and into the afternoon. Would you care to join me?”

“Of course.”

His interest in politics formed at a young age, and until he met Samuel, I’d never seen anything cause him to light up quite so much as the opportunity to discuss philosophical differences of various political parties throughout the world.

The private kitchen has been stocked with muesli cereal, so I fix myself a bowl and join Alexander and Samuel in the small private dining room for a quick catch-up. They arrived two days prior, and Alexander has learned much about the inner workings of the palace and some of the greatest needs of the country already. He’s pointing out another article—this one on precarious roads in the northern part of the country—when a scream splits the air.

My chair clatters to the ground behind me as I barrel through the swinging oak doorway, where I find a maid cowering in the corner, screaming and pointing.

I turn, expecting to see a creature—or an alpaca—or even a severed bloody head, but there’s nothing amiss.

I peer about the kitchen again. Nothing amiss, that is, beyond the scuffed porcelain sink, chipped countertops, crooked cabinets, and a spilled bowl of apples, oranges, and bananas on a hutch in the corner of the room.

“Miss?” I inquire as Alexander catches up.

She shrieks something in Italian.

“Haunted bananas?” Alexander translates much quicker than I am able, as my Italian is far rustier than my German. He adds something in Italian to the maid, and she nods and points to the hutch.

I swiftly cross over and look down.

Help me has been carved into the first banana of the bunch, the words standing out starkly as the etching oxidizes and turns brown against the yellow skin.

I’m not dead is carved in the second.

They’ve buried me alive in the third.

Come for me quickly.

King Roland.

I sigh, as it’s quite clear what’s happened.

Papaya.

Papaya has happened.

Already.

Alexander muffles a smile and murmurs something in Italian to the maid. She nods, replies with a grazie and a curtsy, and scurries out the staff entrance to the private kitchen.

“I must go locate my wife,” I inform my brother.

“You may wish to go easy on her, as you’ll need her smiling for official royal photographs and any interviews you’re coerced into doing. Oh, and of course, Mum told me again she can’t wait to meet the darling girl who finally stole your heart.”

I consider strangling him with one of the bananas, but the fruit would be a rather ineffective weapon, even in my hands.

“You also may wish to consider adding a secondary cook before Mum gets here if you don’t wish her in the palace kitchens all day.”

I leave him in the kitchen and go in search of Peach, starting in the family bedroom wing.

The hallway smells of hay and wet fur, which is either a sign the former king used it as his own private stables, or that Papaya has succeeded in sneaking the llama into the palace. The dim chandeliers overhead cast ghastly shadows over the crumbling plaster walls and stained gold filigree adornments. I knock at Papaya’s door, as I’m reasonably certain Peach would have spent last night here, since she never returned to our bedroom.

I knock three times before something grunts an incoherent response. I test the door, find it unlocked, and push it open with the bananas tucked behind my back.

“Is your sister about?” I inquire, casting a glance about the darkened room. The strong scent of a flowery perfume makes my eyes water, and I wonder if she’s attempting to mask the odor of a llama. I can make out a lump on a four-poster bed, along with several items scattered about the floor. Clothing, luggage, books, I gather.

No pets.

“Lost your bride?” comes the muffled response, and I can quite plainly hear a smirk in her tone.

“It appears I have.”

“She’s not here.”

“Do you happen to have any insight into her current whereabouts?”

“Do you always talk like some overeducated snob?”

“It would seem so, my lady. Have you yet solved the dot puzzle?”

She rolls over and pulls the covers over her head. “Go away.”

“’Tis feeding time for the livestock. If you wish to feed Fred, you’d best hurry.”

She groans. “This is why he needs to live in here with me.”

“Then perhaps we should have considered a dog or a cat or a lizard. There’s no need for an animal of Fred’s size to be making messes for the staff to clean up all about the interior of the palace. Livestock belongs outdoors.”

“Go away and quit ruining my life!”

Peach’s eyeball twitch makes so much more sense now. I wonder if Prince Manning is aware of the fate he’s brought upon himself in siring a child. For his sake, I hope Sophie has inherited Gracie’s disposition, rather than whatever dragon stock the Maloney women seem to have descended from.

“Of course, my lady,” I murmur, and I pull her door closed and continue my search for Peach.

She’s nowhere to be found on this level, nor anywhere else in the wing. I’ve yet to check the bedroom, as I wouldn’t have expected to find her there, but now I climb to the top of the tower.

I push into the round chamber, which I’m rather surprised King Roland didn’t have re-formed into the shape of a heart as well, intending to make a quick inspection of the room and glance into the gardens to see if she’s slipped outside when her voice stops me.

“I told you I wasn’t making this up. You should see the toilets in the main castle hall. The seats are shaped like hearts too. You literally shit on a heart. Whose idea was that?”

“Hopefully a really funny woman’s,” Miss Gracie’s voice answers.

“Most likely a man who didn’t see the irony,” Joey replies too.

The Diamonte sisters are not, in fact, in my bathing room, but are on a joint call with Peach, who is descending the stairs from the bathroom. A quick check of my watch tells me it’s nearing bedtime back in Alabama—it’s seven hours between Amorian time and Alabama time—and also that I need to hasten my own preparations for the day.

Peach turns into the bedroom from the stairwell.

A red towel adorned with hearts is knotted at her breasts, dangling just barely low enough to cover her curvy arse cheeks. Her hair is tied up in an identical towel, face newly scrubbed and glowing pink, the tips of her toes red as the tips of her fingers. Though she’s not a tall woman, her slender, shapely legs give the appearance of stretching for days, and I quite forget what I’ve come to discuss with her.

She turns, holding the phone before her as though she’s taking a video of her journey. “And this is the bed I was—oh!”

While Peach clasps a hand to her chest, presumably to check the knot on the towel, she aims the camera of her phone at me. “Viktor!” Miss Gracie’s voice says, though I can’t see her. “Oh my dog, we miss you so—erp.”

“Enjoy your bride, Viktor,” Joey interrupts. “Fuck with her and I’ll kill you. Bye, Peach. Love you.”

“No, no, don’t—” Peach starts, but when her nose wrinkles and she tosses the phone on the bed, I deduce they’ve hung up.

Her shoulders squirm about while she hangs tight to the knot at the top of her breasts. “Hello, Viktor. Early morning?”

She smiles a wide, bright, fake smile, and I feel the first stirrings of irritation rise in direct proportion to the swelling occurring below my belt. “You slept well?” I inquire.

“Just peachy,” she says happily. Fake happily, as though she’s not a care in the world, despite the dark circles under her eyes suggesting she hasn’t slept a wink, and the accompanying lines that denote a night spent worrying. “You?”

Irritation is quickly giving way to anger, and I’ve no explanation for my reaction. She’s doing everything she’s agreed to do.

Playing the part of the happy bride.

“Fine, though decidedly not peachy.”

She furrows her brows. “You okay, Viktor? You have a vein getting all throbby in your neck. And you’re squishing your bananas there, bud.”

I open my mouth to inform her I’m bloody fine, but she is correct.

I’m making banana paste of the evidence of the kitchen crime.

I lift the bananas wordlessly, because for the first time in a rather long while, I don’t trust my voice to remain even.

And I’m entirely uncertain as to why.

There’s no earthly reason for me to be angry that Peach should be pretending to be happy. Her happiness is not my responsibility, despite my irrational desire to make it so.

“Most men stop with just offering one banana, Viktor. Are you overcompensating for something?”

“I’m quite adept with a single banana, as you say, my lady.”

“Are you now?”

“I could provide references if you wish.”

She’s not quick enough to entirely mask the scowl that threatens to disrupt her composure, though the smile does return. “Why waste both our times?” she replies pertly.

I tilt my head at her and indicate the bananas again.

She steps closer and squints. She must’ve been stepping out of the shower when the Diamonte sisters called, because there’s still a drop of moisture slipping between her breasts, and gods above, I cannot look away.

I should rather enjoy licking that away for her, despite her blatant reminder last night that I’ve agreed not to.

I’ve also a hazy notion that I should not be wondering about the color of her nipples if I’m to maintain control of this discussion with her.

And we need to discuss something.

I’m quite positive.

She snorts. “Oh, lordy, someone’s been having fun in the kitchen. Don’t you worry about King Roland. By now, even if he was buried alive, he would’ve starved to death. Unless y’all do your burials like the Egyptians and left him some food and water in his crypt.”

“That is entirely beside the point, my lady.”

“I know it’s been a long week, Viktor, but a sense of humor can really help when you’re stressed.”

“This scared a maid quite out of her wits.”

Though her smile stays in place, the laughter leaves her eyes, and the softness that replaces it refuels my anger.

Peach Maloney does not get to be soft. She’s impertinent and troublesome and contradictory. She’s chaos and rule-breaking.

But most of all, she’s phony.

She’s not pleased to be here, yet she stands there smiling at me as though nothing’s wrong.

“That’s a shame,” she says. “I hate to get off on the wrong foot. Which one? I’ll talk to her.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”

That smile. That ridiculous, patronizing smile. “Since everyone’s going to blame Papaya, easier to apologize no matter what happened than it is to dig down to the truth. Don’t you worry, Viktor. We’re not going to cost you any of the maids. ‘Scuse me, I need to go get dressed.”

“No.”

Her whole body shimmies in a what did you just say? move.

“You’ll stop all this nonsense of acting as though nothing is amiss,” I instruct, quite uncertain why her cheerfulness is goading me so. “Now.”

She straightens her shoulders back one at a time. “Ain’t nothing wrong here.”

There’s a tone of danger in her voice. I’ve never shied from danger. ‘Twould have gone against every instinct down to my marrow. Yet this danger is new and fresh, and I don’t know the proper tools to combat it.

Which doesn’t stop me from trying.

“I beg to differ, madam.”

“Oh, something’s wrong, is it? Why don’t you go on and tell me what it is so I can tell you—again—that everything’s fine?”

“You, my lady, are faking your happiness.”

She arches a pale eyebrow. “Viktor, hon, every woman fakes her happiness.”

My entire head rattles with the strength of the breath I draw through my nostrils.

Or perhaps that’s the strength of my distaste for the idea of any man touching this woman, regardless of the level of happiness he provided her.

I force myself to concentrate on the conversation at hand, rather than the swell of her breasts above her bath towel. Because for my own sanity, I need her honesty this year. “We needn’t be enemies, my lady.”

Her gaze dips down my body, and my knob gives an unfortunate pulse of anticipation.

“Maybe not,” she says quietly, her eyes darkening, lashes lowering, “but it seems safer that way, don’t you think?”

My entire adult life has revolved around the safety of those around me, but at the moment, I’m half-mad with the insane desire to toss safety from the window. Her towel is loosening, and when she catches her lower lip between her teeth, the small shred of control I’ve retained flees my senses entirely.

“Perhaps we might reach a new compromise.” I’ve no idea who’s speaking, though he sounds like me. And I’ve no idea why I would sacrifice safety for the madness invading my thoughts, but kissing this woman is suddenly imperative.

Perhaps it’s an errant belief that action might compel her into silence and capitulation.

Or perhaps I’m a mere mortal who can no longer ignore the temptation of that bath towel sinking lower and lower upon her chest.

Soft pink.

The top of her areola is soft pink.

I swallow hard and force myself to look into her eyes.

Which is an even larger mistake, because she’s momentarily unguarded, and any trace of vulnerability in this woman makes me want to don my armor and go to battle to eradicate her troubles.

“You take care of you, Viktor. I’m taking care of me and Papaya.” She grips the towel, knuckles white, and pulls it higher. Then she steals the bananas, marches to the closet, and slams the door.

I do believe I’m in trouble.

Not because my wife is angry with me.

No, I’m in trouble because I’ve begun to care.