Pretender to the Throne. Maisey Yates

old men sat and played chess, it was now a place for hipsters and artists to hang out and “be inspired” by the beach and the architecture.

      His sister was not the same. Not a dark-haired, mischievous girl, but a woman now. Married and expecting a child. His brother had become a man, instead of a rail-thin teenage boy.

      His father was old. And dying. His father...

      And Layna Xenakos had joined a convent.

      “I will be straight with you,” he said. “I am not the favored son of the Drakos family.”

      She nodded once but remained silent, so he continued.

      “But I have decided that I will rule. For the next generation even more than for this one.”

      “What do you mean?” she asked.

      “Stavros’s children cannot inherit. And that would leave my sister’s child. The changes it would require...it was never her cross to bear. I have done a great many selfish things in my life, Layna, and I intend to keep doing many of them. But what I cannot do, when it comes down to it, is condemn my brother to a life he never wanted. Or give to my sister’s child a responsibility it was never meant to take on.” He had ruined things for his siblings already. Their childhoods had passed by while he was gone. Children who’d had no mother.

      Especially Eva. She’d been so young then. It was unfair. He couldn’t continue to hurt her. He wouldn’t.

      “You speak of the crown as though it’s a poison cup,” she said, her words muted.

      “It is in many ways. But it is mine. And I have spent too many years trying to pass it off to others.” Yes, his. As far as anyone knew, it was his. It was the expectation. What he had trained for until he was twenty-one.

      The truth, was another matter. But it didn’t change Stavros’s reality. It didn’t change Eva’s.

      It didn’t change what had to be done.

      “A conscience, Xander?” she asked, using his first name, the sound sending a shiver through him. A ripple of memory.

      “I’m not so certain I’d go that far. Maybe a bit of forgotten honor bred into me. Thanks to all that royal blood,” he said, his tone dripping sarcasm. “Imagine my disappointment when I realized I hadn’t replaced it all with alcohol.”

      “A disappointment for many,” she said. She sounded more like her old self now. He’d officially destroyed her serenity. Perhaps a lightning bolt would be in the offing after all.

      “I’m sure. But I had thought there might be a way of softening the blow.”

      “And that is?”

      “You,” he said. “I’m going to need you, Layna.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      LAYNA FELT LIKE the world had just inverted beneath her feet, and only the wooden gate was keeping her from folding. “Excuse me?”

      “I need you.”

      “I can’t imagine why you think that, but trust me, you don’t.”

      “The people love you. They don’t love me, Layna.”

      “The people love me?” she spat, anger rising in her, anger she always thought was dealt with. Until something came up and reminded her that it wasn’t. Something small and insignificant, like catching sight of herself in the mirror. Or burning her finger when she was cooking. In this instance, it wasn’t a small something. It was the ghost of fiancés past, talking about the people. The people who had loved her.

      She’d made her peace with some of the people of Kyonos. She served them, after all, but she didn’t feel the way she once had about them—confident that she had a country filled with adoring fans.

      Quite the opposite.

      “Yes,” he said, his voice certain still, as though he hadn’t heard the warning in her tone.

      “The people,” she said, “behaved more like animals after you left. Everything fell apart, but I assume you know that.”

      “I didn’t watch the news after I left. A tiny island like Kyonos is fairly easy to ignore when you aren’t on it. And when you’re drunk headlines look a little blurry.”

      “So you don’t know, then? You don’t know that everything...everything went to hell? That companies pulled up stakes, stocks went down to nothing, thousands of people lost their jobs?”

      “All because I left?”

      “Surely you knew some of this.”

      “Some of it,” he said, his voice clipped. “But there’s a lot you can avoid when you’re only sober for a couple hours a day.”

      “I wouldn’t know.”

      “I imagine vice isn’t so much your thing.”

      “No.”

      “So the economy collapsed and I’m to blame? That’s the sum of it?”

      She shrugged. “You. The death of the queen. The king’s depression. It was an unhappy combination, and no one was confident in the state of things. People were angry.”

      She looked at him and she tried to find a place of serenity. Of strength. What happened to her wasn’t a secret. It was in newspapers, online. It was widespread news. It was just hard to say out loud.

      But you aren’t going to show him that you care. You aren’t going to be weak. It doesn’t matter. Vanity. All is vanity.

      “There were riots in the streets. In front of the homes of government officials, who were blamed for the economic crisis. There were different kinds of attacks made. Several attempts at...acid attacks. We were leaving our home when a man pushed up to the front and tried to throw a cup of acid onto my father. He stumbled, though, and the man missed. I was hit instead. I don’t think I need to tell you where,” she said, attempting to smile. Smiling could be difficult enough at the best of times since half of her mouth had trouble obeying that command, but when she didn’t feel like smiling it was completely impossible.

      But telling the story was easier when she imagined it was another girl. When she remembered what happened without remembering the pain.

      She searched his face. She seemed to have succeeded in shocking him, which was something she hadn’t imagined would be possible.

      “So, I think it’s fair to say maybe the people don’t love me as much as you think they do.” She pushed past him now, determined to put an end to this. To this strange bit of torment from the past.

      He grabbed hold of her, his hand on her arm sending a rush of heat through her. She breathed in sharply, his scent hitting her, like a punch in the chest.

      Her head was swimming. With glittering palaces and silk dresses. Dancing in a sparkling ballroom in a man’s warm embrace. A trip to the garden where his lips almost touched hers. Her full, beautiful lips, unencumbered by scar tissue. It would have been her first kiss. And right then she wanted to weep for the loss of it because now there would never be one.

      Not on those lips. They were gone forever.

      Not even on the lips she had now. Because she had vowed to never know that pleasure of life. To forego it in favor of serving others, and release her hold on her own needs. Not that it should matter. No man would ever want to kiss her anyway.

      But Xander was...he was too much. He was here, right when she didn’t want him, and not fifteen years ago when she’d needed him.

      Right now, she didn’t need him. She needed distance. The more Xander filled up her vision, the more faded everything else seemed to become. Xander was a look into a life that she didn’t have anymore. Couldn’t have. Didn’t want.

      She just needed him gone. So that she could start to forget