Harlequin Presents--December 2020--Box Set 2 of 2 by Maisey Yates

Author:Maisey Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

SOME MEN WERE driven by passion, acting on their instincts without thought or strategy. Much to his late father’s chagrin, Zayn Darius d’Argonia, the youngest ever King of Cyrano, was not that kind of man.

It was the old man’s own fault, though. After all, he had been the one to raise a young prince with an ironclad sense of self-reliance and an unwavering commitment to forging his own path. Early on in his life, he had decided that his was the path of careful study and planning.

To give his father credit, he had, on most issues, steadfastly supported Zayn in whatever approach he chose, saying, “Each man is his own. It does the world no good to try to walk the path of another.”

His father had believed this self-reliance was a vital characteristic for a king. Of course, neither of them had imagined that Zayn would become King so soon. Nor that, in that transition, his inner compass would be the only thing that saved the country from near governmental collapse, economic depression, and an attempted coup in the immediate and ugly aftermath of the King’s assassination and the ascendance of a young, inexperienced monarch to the throne.

But any self-flagellation for lack of foresight on the matter was a pointless waste of time—a luxury a working king could not afford.

Some believed that Parliament ran things. They were mistaken.

Cyrano’s monarchy had given its people a powerful voice through their elected officials, and more power still through the Parliament-selected advisory council, but the royal family had retained control and rule of the country—through centuries and countless plots against them.

Zayn would not be the one to jeopardize that—not through poor planning, not through acting rashly, and not through marriage.

And that was just one of the many reasons the shock of his betrothal still stung.

Filling the position of Queen was to have been one of his most potent bargaining chips—a lucrative lure to play to Cyrano’s strategic advantage.

The woman who would be Queen had to be cut from a particular cloth—intelligent, quick-thinking, compassionate, determined, unflappable, steel-coated, perfectly presented, and always poised. And she needed to bring something of real value to the Crown—money, trade, connections…something tangible.

She could not be common. She could not be unfashionable. She couldn’t let her feelings show in her beautiful green-gold eyes every time someone was frank with her.

His greatest bargaining chip was now a virtual throwaway, offering nothing advantageous to the nation and burdening him with a softhearted academic unprepared for the sharp edges of public life in the process. That his father had been the one to hamstring him like this made it all the worse.

It didn’t make any sense. Up to the very end, his father had done everything he could to support him.

Zayn had already considered the obvious—that Mina’s family had somehow blackmailed the late King—but it didn’t pan out.

While his father had been no angel, Zayn was sure there were no skeletons in his closet so monstrous that he would sacrifice his son. Nothing had mattered more to King Alden than his family.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.