Read Reign: A Royal Military Romance for Free Online Page B

thought anything of it. I was busy keeping my eyes down, on the table or on my food and not looking at Hazel.
    It feels like we have a secret, but I’m at a loss. I’ve got nothing to hide. There was no impropriety. She’s our guest, and I was hospitable.
    “The lamb was excellent,” I tell Yelena.
    “It was my mother’s recipe,” she says. She tilts her head just a little, looking almost like a pretty bird. “The chef asked her for it last week.”
    “Your mother is an excellent cook,” I say, but my half of this conversation is on auto-pilot.
    I’m just agreeing with whatever she says because my mind is back on the bench. I’m thinking of Hazel saying I’m a barbarian , of the strange electric jolt that passed through me when she took my hand.
    “She’s taught me everything she knows,” Yelena says. “I could make you that lamb dish in my sleep.”
    I’m so distracted that it takes me a moment to realize that Yelena is flirting with me. Or, if not flirting, trying to sell herself as my wife. She’s telling me that she’s a good cook, and if I’m not careful, she might move on to listing the number of children all her foremothers have had.
    “What did you think of the soup course?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation.
    She blinks, and I can almost see the gears turning in her blond head as she thinks back to the soup course. I missed it, of course, because I was taking a bread roll from the kitchen and finding Hazel in the hallway.
    “I think it had a bit too much kidney in it,” she says, after a long pause. “It was very well spiced, though.”
    “How would you have made it?” I ask as dessert comes around. It’s baklava and ice cream, and Yelena hardly touches it as she gives a long explanation of how she would have made the soup.
    My father gives another toast. I drink again, finally starting to feel the effects of the vodka.
    I glance over at Hazel, but she doesn’t look at me, instead carefully eating the baklava, doing her best not to get pastry flakes everywhere. Next to me, Yelena is eating neatly, delicately, with small bites.
    I keep my eyes down and finish dessert.

    * * *
    A fter dinner , Yelena suddenly wants to take a stroll through the rose garden. It’s a beautiful, warm August night, and she takes my arm as the two of us walk around and she talks about which flowers are the loveliest.
    How does someone who thinks so little say so much? I wonder, then feel bad immediately.
    Thinking bad thoughts about Yelena is like being annoyed at a puppy.
    Besides, she’s not the first girl who’s tried to win my interest. She’s not even the most aggressive. When you’re the crown prince, women just throw themselves at you in the most unattractive ways. Half the time I feel like a trophy to be won, like I’d simply be these women’s ultimate accessory.
    Yelena, at least, is here at her father’s urging, and probably my father’s too. She’s genuinely pleasant and kind, even if there isn’t much going on upstairs.
    “Don’t you ever wish it was the olden days?” she says, gazing up at a tower. “When ladies wore those beautiful dresses and men were so dapper, and the whole castle would have been lit by candlelight? There would be fancy dinners every night and balls each week, and everything would be lovely.”
    “How long ago do you mean?” I ask.
    “Oh, before all the bad things,” she says.
    I know that she means before 1919, when tiny Sveloria was swallowed up by the U.S.S.R., but I can’t help thinking there was never a time before bad things .
    I also can’t help being taken aback at the last hundred strife-filled years being reduced to the bad things .
    “No,” I say. “I’ve never wished that.”
    She smells a rose, then blinks at me.
    “Why?” she asks. “You would still be king someday.”
    I look up at the windows of the palace and imagine beautiful women swirling around, dancing with men dressed to the nines. The warm orange glow of a thousand