But she couldn’t quite get there. Because the rest of her attention was focused on the deeply pleasurable, if unconventional, wedding night she’d had.
Griffin had delivered her to her rooms and then left her to her own devices. That had included a tray of food from his kitchens that she tore into the moment she finally freed herself from that enormous gown. Only when she’d finally eaten enough to stave off the hollow feeling in her belly after a long day of performing her fragility did she and Fen, her sensei and friend since Melody was small, set about learning each and every contour of her new home.
Fen had been old and wizened when she’d started teaching Melody at the tender age of seven, or so she liked to claim. And as each year passed, she became more and more herself. Earning the right to her bones, she liked to say.
And what her bones liked the most that night was making sure Melody could navigate the house she found herself in with as much silent ease as she had her parents’ home.
They’d started in Melody’s rooms and then, when the household had gone quiet for the night, had fanned out to the rest of Prince Griffin’s domain, taking it room by room, chamber by chamber, until Melody had memorized the layout of her new home as best she could on an initial sweep.
Then she and Fen had returned to their upgraded royal apartments and settled into their new and improved life of luxury.
“I am all right with this Prince,” Fen said happily as she’d gone off to her own private room in Melody’s suite. “So far.”
“As am I,” Melody had murmured as Fen’s footsteps faded away, leaving her to her lovely new bedchamber, stocked with quietly elegant furnishings that warmed beneath her hands and complete with an honest-to-God four-poster bed with a princess canopy.
Nothing Melody had ever wanted or dreamed of, necessarily. But she was happy to have it all the same, and with so little required of her in return.
This morning, both she and Fen had revised their charitable opinions somewhat when they’d discovered that in her new role as a royal princess, Melody was no longer expected or encouraged to dress herself.
Her staff—because, apparently, she had a staff in the royal version of her life—had first appeared to hover about and smother her with unsolicited and unnecessary help while she’d tried to get out of her wedding dress. They’d appeared again that morning, three relentlessly cheerful women who would not take no for an answer. Instead, they’d bustled ferociously around the vast apartment, which would have resulted in their quick and merciless deaths at Melody’s hand had they not come bearing a tray of Idyllian pastries to complement the thick, rich coffee that had far more in common with traditional Greek coffee than the milky, frothy concoctions preferred in other places. Or so Melody had read.
Even Fen’s dark mutterings of the dire consequences she might mete out for waking her were soothed away with an infusion of caffeine. And lashings of butter and dough.
Melody had found that shoving bits of heavenly pastry in her mouth was the only way that she could make it through the experience of having more women flutter about her. Dressing her as if she was an oversize doll. It was creepy.
“I am only going to my sister’s house,” she said at one point, when she could no longer keep her words trapped inside her. And what came out was far more polite than what still lurked around in there. “We’ve spent many, many hours together wearing only our pajamas. I’m not sure this level of preparation is called for.”
“I can’t imagine that anyone would wish to go before Their Royal Majesties without looking their absolute best,” one of the women said. Mildly enough.
“I would die,” declared another.
And that was how Melody found herself slicked into her princessy place all over again.
She did not need to take stock of Prince Griffin to understand—merely from the elbow she held as he led her into the palace at a snail’s pace—that he was kitted out much the same. The coat beneath her fingers had a luxuriant richness that seemed to meld with the hardness of his forearm. And if she listened, she could hear his military medals clink about on his lapel.
Her marriage might turn out to be fine. It was already better than she’d imagined, because Melody had never dreamed that she’d be left to her own devices. She never had been before. That was all good news.
But she worried that the studied formality of royal life might kill her.
“Do you always dress in formal clothes to visit your brother?” she asked as they moved into the part of the palace she recognized. The private royal apartments, where her sister now lived.
“Only when there is a photo opportunity,” Griffin replied, and Melody found she liked his voice almost too much. It cast the same spell his physical presence did, as if there was a force field that emanated from it—from him—and surrounded the both of them when he spoke to her that way. Low and dark. Inviting. “And when it comes to things like national holidays, you can be certain that there will always be a photo opportunity.”
“I will make a note,” Melody said, without thinking, because she was still caught up on his voice.
Because if she’d been thinking, she certainly wouldn’t have used that tone. It was far too sharp and dry and revealing of her actual personality.
She could feel his gaze on her, measuring. Aware, perhaps, that there was more to her than the role she played.
And they couldn’t have that. So Melody clung to him instead, letting out a breath on a shuddery sort of high-pitched sigh.
“I’m so terrified I’ll do something wrong,” she lied. She endeavored to sound as feeble as possible. “There’s a reason my father has always preferred to keep
