Instead, she had been whisked off to a suite in the palace, something she found pleasant enough until she realized she’d been locked in. And come morning, her sister had emerged from what should have been newly wedded bliss to make her announcements.
“This is about making sure you’re free, Melody,” she’d said over breakfast. Sternly. Taking to her new role a bit too eagerly, in Melody’s view. They’d sat in a private salon so sunny that Melody had leaned back in her chair, the bitter coffee she preferred between her hands, and tilted her face toward the heat of it.
“Are you sure? Because to me it sounds like a royal decree. Your Majesty.”
“It’s both.”
Calista sounded the way she always did, stressed and sisterly and racked with grave concerns. Melody never had the heart to tell her that she enjoyed her life a whole lot more than anyone—including Calista, who unlike the rest loved her dearly and was thus forgiven her unnecessary concern—seemed to imagine. That didn’t suit most people’s view of what blindness must be like, Melody was well aware. She had learned to keep it to herself.
“I appreciate your help, of course,” Melody had told her. “But I don’t need it. You shouldn’t be worrying about such things, Calista. It’s the first day of your new life as the Queen of Idylla, all hail. Not to mention, it’s Christmas.”
“I know it’s Christmas,” Calista had retorted, but her voice was softer. “And once a few practicalities are sorted out, I promise you that we’ll celebrate the way we always do.”
“You mean, with Father drunk and belligerent, shouting down the place around our ears while we all cower until January?” Melody had laughed. “As appealing as that sounds, maybe it’s time for new traditions.”
“But tonight is the Christmas ball,” Calista had continued, sounding ever more dogged. Melody could feel the daggers her older sister was glaring at her, and, she could admit, took pleasure in remaining as placid and unbothered as possible. Because it annoyed Calista so deeply and obviously. “And I want to give you a gift that no one, least of all Father, can ever take back.”
That Melody had not wanted this gift was neither here nor there.
“I think I’d rather take my chances with Father’s temper,” Melody had said when Calista had told her what she wanted Melody to do.
What she, as Queen, had decreed Melody would do, that was.
“You can’t,” her sister had replied. “If you go home again he will ship you off to one of those institutions he’s been threatening you with for years. It might as well be a prison, Melody! And it’s unlikely that he will ever let you out again. Do you hear me?”
“My ears work perfectly well, Calista. As I think you know.”
But the new Queen had made up her mind.
That was how Melody had found herself in the arms of Prince Griffin, Idylla’s so-called charming rogue as he led her in an excruciatingly formal and horrifically long dance in the Grand Ballroom of the palace.
Prince Griffin, who was forgiven his many sins and trespasses in the style of his father because he was considered delightful, for reasons unclear to Melody.
Prince Griffin, who had declared he planned to turn over a new leaf to better support his brother back during coronation season, but had taken his sweet time in the turning.
Prince Griffin, her new assassination target.
And to her dismay, as of an hour or so ago, her husband.
Melody had considered knifing him in the back at the altar, for the poetry of it all, but Prince Griffin—renowned across the land for his cavorting about with any and all women, his cheerful debauchery, and his disinterest in the usual charitable pursuits of royalty that were usually erected to cover up the consequences of the first two—was under the impression that he was Melody’s...protector.
She would have been only too happy to disabuse him of this notion. But that, too, had been forbidden.
By yet another royal decree.
“Don’t be absurd,” Melody had said, while she’d stood gamely still in another of the palace’s innumerable salons. She’d been subjecting herself to a phalanx of dressmakers, all of whom poked and prodded and pinned her into a dress she had not wanted to wear at all, and certainly not after the extraordinarily formal Christmas lunch she’d eaten her way through. “I have no need or desire for protection. Prince Griffin’s or anyone else’s.”
Her sister and her new husband had been there, lounging about in their post-Christmas luncheon haze. And perhaps post–private time haze as well, though Melody knew her supposedly hard-as-nails, professional sister was enormously missish about such things. At least to Melody.
As if her eyes were the not the only thing that did not function as expected.
Everything smelled sugary and sweet, floating up toward the high ceilings. And over the mutterings of the vicious dressmakers and their sharp, cruel pins she could hear various rustles from the settee the King and his new Queen sat upon. Telling her there was a lot of touching. Perhaps more touching than had been seen in the palace for some time.
“I know you don’t need any protection,” Calista had replied, but in a tone of voice that suggested to Melody that her sister was rolling her eyes. “But it’s not about you, you see.”
“The forced wedding I want no part of is not about me?” Melody asked. Rhetorically, obviously. “And here I thought it was meant to answer my dreams of becoming a princess at last. Not a dream I’ve ever had, to be clear.”
She heard her sister
