Page 57 of Cursed

She closed her eyes. “You’re sure?” she asked. Vince’s sigh told her everything she needed to know before he spoke.

“The texts keep coming in. I thought something wasn’t making sense about the setup of this thing, the energy. But I didn’t expect it to go down like this, I truly didn’t.”

“I’m going to have to say something though.” Edeena tightened her lips. “What am I going to say?”

Vince made to speak again, his face fierce with fury and protection, and she stepped back, suddenly resolute.

“No,” she said. “This is my problem. I’ll handle it.”

“You don’t have to do everything yourself,” Vince said, but she shook her head.

“Who else will do it with me, Vince? You said it yourself. Every man who participated in that event has been reached by my father. Whether he coerced them, flattered them, intimidated them, it doesn’t matter. They’ve thrown in their lots with him and left the Saleri family, the future of our family, to be solved by some future generation, some future woman. And I wanted to solve it. I wanted to protect my family, to keep them safe. Was that so wrong?” She glanced at him, only to find that he’d gone a bit blurry with the tears building in her eyes. “Would you have done anything differently?”

“I wouldn’t have,” Vince finally said, heaving a sigh. “I would have wanted to save them, too.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “It’s what we do.”

“It’s what we do,” she repeated, and she drew in a shaky breath, blinking several times. “Okay, then.” She swallowed. “How do I look?”

“Like a woman capable of breaking a family curse,” he said staunchly, and she laughed despite herself.

“One day my prince will come, right?” she said, shaking her head. “Well, it looks like he’s got about five minutes.

Vince watched Edeena square her shoulders, then approach the front steps of the gazebo. If anything, the intervening few minutes while they’d conversed in the shadows had given more people time to flow out of the main ballroom and into the courtyard. The entire place had the feel of a carnival now, raucous and festive, exactly what the queen had had in mind when she’d invited such a large crowd to attend.

His sharp gaze didn’t miss the media either, lurking at the edge of the throng. The royal family wouldn’t have invited them, Vince knew. That had to be Silas’s doing, as well. Silas, who was so frightened or miserable that he’d sacrifice everything to recover the illusion of control.

He glanced again to Edeena. She wanted that control, too, craved it, but she had her limits. She would never sacrifice her family’s happiness to achieve it. She wouldn’t sacrifice anything, really, except herself. Her own happiness was always a suitable bargaining chip.

Vince blew out a deep breath. He’d be there for Edeena when this was through, that was a given. But he wished like hell she didn’t have to go through it. Wished like hell she could flip the script, be confronted with something so entirely different that it took all the attention off the men who were about to embarrass her, about to make her feel she wasn’t wanted, wasn’t special.

She’d survive, of course. Edeena knew all about surviving. But for once, he wished she didn’t have to. For once . . .

To hell with this.

Edeena held out her arms and spoke a few words in Garronois, obviously welcoming the crowd or something like that. Vince didn’t care. Now that he’d made his decision, he was single minded in his pursuit of action.

His beautiful, strong, responsible Countess was about to have a problem on her hands. Only it wasn’t at all the problem she expected to have.

The crowd was still applauding something else Edeena said when Vince reached her. Mindful of the microphone attached to her neckline, he reached out for her hands, pulling her close.

“Countess Saleri, you must hear me out first, before you make any decisions,” he said in his loudest, most urgent voice. It boomed out over the courtyard and suddenly, everything fell silent. Hundreds of people seemed to freeze in their places, no one more than Edeena.

“Vince?” she finally managed, the word coming out half strangled.

But now that he was here, Vince realized that it was the most natural thing in the world to gaze down into Edeena’s beautiful face and imagine himself making this declaration to her anywhere, whether it was on the beach back in his beloved South Carolina in front of his entire family, or on a gazebo platform in front of two hundred strangers, none of whom even knew his name.

“Edeena Arabelle Catherine Saleri, I have loved you since the moment I first laid eyes on you in America, when you traveled to my country with your sisters, hoping to help them start a new life, in a new place, with new experiences and opportunities, like any older sister hopes for her family. But you were more than their older sister,” he declared, and it was if everyone in the courtyard had stopped breathing, so silent had it become. “You were the person in their lives who, more than anyone else, was responsible for their care. Though you were barely a few years older, you had shouldered that responsibility for them since your mother died. By the time I met you, you were so used to taking care of everyone that you’d forgotten how to take care of yourself.”

“Vince, stop,” Edeena mouthed, but she couldn’t quite speak the word aloud, couldn’t quite seem to do anything but tremble in his grasp, her eyes brimming over with tears.

“You came to my home excited about anything and everything—until you heard me called a prince. Do you remember that?”

Edeena’s eyes flared in confusion, but Vince pushed on. “A prince was the last thing that you needed all the way in America, the last thing you wanted to think about. Because a prince was required for you to break the curse your family had labored beneath for hundreds of years, and though you wanted nothing more than to break that curse, you knew in a flash I was no true prince. No, for me the word was just a nickname, a harmless prank first made when I was barely more than a kid myself. The fact that the name stuck . . . well, it was a cross I could easily bear. No one much cared about princes in America.”

He smiled, looking down at Edeena with so much intensity, he could feel his own hands shake. “Little did I know that there would come a time when all I wanted in the world was to truly be a prince, to be the one person that this incredible woman had a need for. I met you, Countess Saleri, when your guard was down. You were this beautiful, rare creature whose heart was filled to the breaking point with love for your sisters, whose dedication to them was evident in your every word and action.”

He gripped her hands more tightly. “But it wasn’t only responsibility for your sisters that was important to you. It was responsibility for your family as well. The family you knew, the family you didn’t know. To break this curse, you needed to marry a prince. Or, failing that, a nobleman of your country who had the comportment and strength of a prince. Then, and only then, would your family feel safe in coming back together again, standing together as a single unit, strength building on strength. Then, and only then, would you feel like your sisters could move on with their own lives, finding loves of their own, raising families outside this curse that has hung over the Saleris for far too long. Am I right?”

At the question, Edeena seemed to come back to herself, blinking quickly. “You’re right,” she managed, and her words were strong now, resolute. “Bringing my family together, ensuring their safety, is all I really wanted to do.”

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