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He could crush those pockets of resistance, jail the supporters or exile them from the country, but… The Accorsis had done exactly that when they’d taken power, and he was determined not to be like them. He refused. His country didn’t need a tyrant intent on suppressing any protest. It needed to heal, and so did his people. The divides needed to be bridged, not deepened.
Which was where the Accorsi daughter came in.
Eventually he would need a queen, and while obtaining one had been the very last thing on his mind certainly when his first priority had been claiming his throne, she was here now and his prisoner. A Benedictus/Accorsi marriage would be the kind of union that Kasimir needed. It would unite the divided families and factions and would categorically underline his intentions for the country going forward.
No more divisions. Only peace and healing for his people.
Guinevere Accorsi was eyeing him warily, as if he was an unknown and potentially dangerous animal—and, to be fair, she was right to view him that way.
Hewasdangerous.
He stared back, turning over the idea slowly in his head. Yes, she was very pretty, but she would definitely need some styling if she was to be Kasimir’s queen.
You will also need her consent to the marriage.
Of course. But he would get that. If he gave her a choice between being Queen and a prison cell, he was sure she’d choose the former rather than the latter.
Her eyes were startlingly blue against her white skin, and deep within them he could see her fear looking back at him.
Too bad. She was an Accorsi, of the same wretched lineage responsible for his mother’s death and his country’s near collapse. The things Renzo had done as King had been appalling, and while this little mouse might not have had a hand in any of it, she was still representative of the corruption that had lived in the heart of Kasimir for far too long.
He had no sympathy for her whatsoever.
Still, there was no reason to be unduly threatening. Not when it would serve no purpose. And he wasn’t a man who did anything without purpose.
‘In that case,’ he said, after a long period of silence. ‘I have a job for you.’
Her eyes widened. ‘What kind of job?’
Tiberius held her gaze. ‘Being my queen.’
Guinevere had watched Tiberius first enter the throne room from within the walls, safe in her little hiding place.
The enemy was here.
In the days leading up to his entry into Kasimir she’d overheard her father talking about him, calling him trivial, a minor annoyance that he would soon be rid of. Ineffectual and weak, like all the Benedictus family. One look at the Accorsi army and he’d be yelping his way back to Italy with his tail between his legs, Renzo had added.
It hadn’t happened that way. Obviously. In fact, her father and her two older brothers had been in such a rush to flee the palace no one had bothered to check on her, and so she’d been able to slip away unnoticed into the secret corridors. She’d waited there, hiding, as her father, her brothers and the remaining guards who were still loyal had all escaped. Leaving her behind.
The relief she’d felt in that moment had been so intense she hadn’t been able to quite believe it was real—that she’d finally managed to do what she’d dreamed of doing for so many years: being free of her family.
All she’d needed to do was to slip out through the corridors—no one in her family knew of their existence—and then the palace, and then she’d lose herself in the city streets and just…disappear.
Then he’d walked in and ruined it all.
Tiberius Maximus Benedictus, the rightful King of Kasimir.
She’d watched him sit on the throne, and then watched as the golden crown was lowered onto his short, inky black hair. He wore that crown as if he was wearing cloth of gold and robes of state, not grey army fatigues.
He wasn’t exactly handsome—his face was all blunt planes and angles, and deeply carved into hard granite lines—but there was an aura about him that set him apart from other men. An aura of power, of a command so overwhelming that she’d almost felt it seeping through the walls to where she hid.
Utterly terrifying.
She should have made her escape then, while the coronation was happening, but she hadn’t. She’d been caught, held fast despite her fear, by some kind of fascination she couldn’t adequately describe. Perhaps it had something to do with finally seeing him, this famous enemy of her family, in the flesh and finding him to be not at all what she’d imagined.
This wasn’t the beaten dog her father had kept saying he would shoot.
This was a man in total command of himself and his men and he was frightening.