CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEYWERETObe married the next day. Neither of them had seen the point in tarrying over the planning of the wedding. It was for security. And it needed to be done. Whatever else she might think about necessity, he knew that she understood that. His family had also arrived. They would be staying for a time after the ceremony, and there really was nothing he could do to persuade them otherwise. Annick, for her part, was pleased. And if he were a different man, he might find it charming.
“It is just that there has not been family in this palace for a very long time,” she explained, when expressing her delight about his family coming to visit. And he found he could not begrudge it to her.
She was so fragile. And yet so determinedly strong all at once. Annick and her chloroform. He had never intended to get himself embroiled in this sort of thing. Had never thought that he would get married. Most especially not after Stella. His love for her had been branded on his soul. Initially. Now what he did was not out of blind grief. It had left him in doubt of eternal love.
Because he didn’t feel that love anymore. He didn’t feel her close to him. That year he had spent loving her could do nothing to close the gap of the sixteen years spent without her. And so, revenge, balancing the scales, that was his quest. It was nothing to do with love. And the things he had learned about his father in the aftermath of it all...
It had twisted everything he thought about the world. Losing Stella had been more than simply losing her. It had meant a change to the way that he saw absolutely everything.
Annick made him feel something.
He did not care for it.
He had shared with her, though, and that had... It had moved things onto strange and shaking ground. There was a connection that he felt with her unlike anything he had experienced before, and that had not been the way this was meant to be.
He was supposed to protect her.
He was supposed to be helping her.
He was not supposed to be affected by her.
“Well, this really is quite something.”
He turned where he stood in the entry to the castle, just in time for his sister Violet and her husband, Javier, to walk through the door. Violet was pregnant and looking glowing. It did something strange to him, to see his younger sister grown in this way. He’d been through it already with Minerva, though it had come out later that the child she had come home from a semester abroad with was not actually her child, but the child of a friend who had needed rescuing. As if thinking of her conjured her up, Minerva came in as well, also pregnant. Dante was with her, carrying their adopted daughter in his arms. And behind them came Robert and Elizabeth King, his parents, who looked tan, fit and remarkably well-preserved. As always.
“This is incredible,” Minerva said. “You both live in such splendid palaces.”
“Cara,”Dante said. “Are you disappointed that I have not bought you a palace? Because I could. Would you prefer an atmospheric ruin in the Highlands? One with a very large library...”
“Yes,” she said. “Would you really buy me a castle?”
“And a pony if you so wish.”
His eyes glittered with humor. And Maximus was surprised to discover how pleased he was with that. His friend had been beset by darkness for years. And Minerva seemed to have brought him out of it. He never would’ve thought that. He would have said that Min was too shy. Too bookish. But she had done wonders for him. He didn’t know the Prince that Violet had married, but he had it on good authority that sunny, flashy Violet had done much the same for him.
He thought of his own fiancée. Wide-eyed, determined, and no less tortured than he was.
His sisters had brought with them a sense that the world could be right. And they had given it to those men that cared for them so.
He could bring nothing of the kind to Annick. And she would hold no magic elixir of healing for him.
They had seen too many dark things. They knew too many hideous truths about the world.
“Well, it’s good to see all of you,” Maximus said, working to put his mask in place. He wouldn’t have to explain that to Annick, which was a blessing. Because Annick understood. Annick knew.
He felt a ripple go through his family, and he turned. Annick was standing in the doorway, wearing her crown and a silver gown that wrapped around her curves.
Annick had taken this dressing-for-how-she-wanted-to-appear thing to heart. Intensely. She was nothing if not blatantly over-the-top at every opportunity.
“Hello,” she said.
“Your Majesty.” His mother curtsied.
“Your Highness,” came from his father.
Minerva curtsied and Dante inclined his head. Javier and Violet stepped forward, shaking Annick’s hand. “Your Highnesses,” Annick said. “It is good of you to come and grace my country.”