Free A Queen for the Taking? by Kate Hewitt

once more.
    * * *
    Sandro had heard the doors to the chapel open, knew Liana was walking towards him. He fought an urge to turn around, knowing that tradition had Maldinian grooms—royal ones, at least—facing the front until the bride was at their side.
    When she was halfway down he gave in and turned around, tradition be damned. He wanted to see Liana, wanted to catch a glimpse of the woman he was about to promise to love, honour, and cherish before he made those binding vows. For the past six weeks he’d been trying not to think of her, of the proud contempt he’d seen on her face the last time they’d spoken, when she’d told him with a sneer in her voice that she didn’t respect him.
    And as shocked as her contemptuous indictment had been, how could he actually be surprised? Hurt? She’d been speaking the truth, after all.
    Now as she came down the aisle, her bearing regal and straight, her chin tilted proudly and her eyes flashing violet ice, he felt the hopes he hadn’t even realised he still had plummet.
    She was just as he remembered. Just as composed, just as soulless and scornful as he’d first feared. And in about three minutes she would become his wife.
    As she joined him at the altar, her dress whispering against his legs, she lifted her chin another notch, all haughty pride and cool purpose.
    Sandro turned away without so much as a smile and listened to the archbishop begin with a leaden heart.
    An hour later they were man and wife, circulating through one of the palace’s many receiving rooms among the few dozen guests. They still hadn’t spoken to each other, although Sandro had brushed his lips against Liana’s cold ones at the end of the ceremony before she’d stepped quickly away.
    They’d walked down the aisle together, her hand lying rigidly on his arm, and gone directly to one of the palace’s salons for a champagne reception.
    Liana, Sandro couldn’t help notice, seemed to take to the role of queen with instant, icy poise. She smiled and chatted with a reserved dignity that he supposed fitted her station. She was friendly without being gregarious or warm or real.
    She wasn’t, he thought, anything he wanted. But he had to live with it, with her, and he was determined to put such thoughts behind him.
    He moved through the crowds, chatting with various people, conscious of Liana by his side, smiling and yet so still and straight, so proud. She seemed untouchable and completely indifferent to him, yet even so he found his mind—and other parts of his body—leaping ahead to a few hours from now, when they would leave the reception and all the guests behind and retire upstairs to the tower room that was the traditional honeymoon suite.
    There wouldn’t actually be a honeymoon; he saw no point, and he doubted Liana did either. But tonight... Tonight they would consummate their marriage. The prospect filled him with desire and distaste, hunger and loathing.
    He wanted her, he knew, but he didn’t want to want her, not when she didn’t even respect him. And she obviously didn’t want to want him.
    Sandro took a long swallow of champagne, and it tasted bitter in his mouth. What a mess.
    * * *
    Liana felt tension thrum through her body as she made a valiant effort to listen to another dignitary talk about Maldinia’s growing industry, and how Prince Leo was helping to raise funds for technological improvements.
    But her real focus was on the man next to her. Her husband. He listened and chatted and smiled just as she did, but she felt the tension in his body, had seen the chilly expression in his eyes when he’d turned to her, and in the moment before she’d said her vows she had felt panic bubble up inside her. She’d wanted to rip off her veil and run back down the aisle, away from everything. The anxiety and hope in her parents’ eyes. The ice in her groom’s. And the churning fear and guilt inside herself that she could never escape, no matter how far or fast she ran.
    And so