She didn’t seem so self-conscious of her scars around him anymore, and he found he quite liked that.
Especially since he didn’t see them the same way he had at first. When he’d first seen them they’d looked like they weren’t real. Like they were a mask over the face he remembered. Now it wasn’t that way. He saw them as a part of her face. They didn’t bear extra notice, not more than those mesmerizing eyes, or the shape of her nose. The stubborn set of her chin.
They weren’t an intruder on his eyes or on her beauty. They were a part of who she was, what she’d been through.
Sometimes looking at them hurt, because it was a reminder of how much she’d been hurt. It was a reminder of her pain. But also a reminder of her strength.
“You’re staring,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“Because I like to look at you.” He let his eyes drift down lower. “But I do wish you’d drop the sheet. I could compose poetry about your breasts. And I don’t even like poetry.”
She surprised him by letting the sheet fall to her waist, her full, rose-tipped breasts on display for him.
He smiled. “Damn. I’m glad to be a man.”
“That’s the best you have, Drakos?”
“Shall I compare your nipples to a summer’s day?”
“Okay, you can stop now.”
“I don’t think I can. Not ever.”
She let out a long breath. “Xander, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
Stay with me.
It was the first thought in his mind. It was the thing he wanted above all else.
“Reform me,” he said, his throat tight.
“Sometimes,” she said, looking away from him, “I’m not really sure I want you reformed.”
He pulled her close and kissed her for that. And then more. Until everything faded away. And when they were done, Xander wasn’t alone anymore. He was with Layna. And he felt it all the way through.
And he had never felt more alive. He had never felt more.
“Actually, Xander,” she said, her voice a whisper, “I think you’re already the best man I’ve ever known. You make me...you know you make me feel like I just might be...beautiful.”
Light burst through him, bringing pain along with it. Like the sun hitting his face after a night of hard drinking. Only this didn’t feel like stale regret. It was hope. It was something bigger, better than he’d ever known before. He didn’t want to hide. He wanted to push off all the layers of rock and dirt, everything he used to hide himself, his secrets, from the world, to protect himself from the painful truths in his life, and emerge the man he was supposed to be.
But he could never do it, so long as everything was covered. He could never be free until he cut the ropes that bound him in the darkness.
With Layna by his side, the idea of it didn’t seem so impossible.
* * *
“I have to tell him.”
Layna looked up from her lunch and at Xander, a strange sense of dread filling her chest. “You what?”
“I have to tell him.”
And she didn’t ask who or what, because she knew. Somehow she knew what he was thinking without him saying it.
“But why, Xander?”
“Because he’s my father. Or, he thinks he is, and for all intents and purposes and everything that matters to me, he is. And moreover he’s the king, and he has the right to choose who his successor is. With all of the information given to him.”
“Xander, don’t do this. He won’t have a choice—”
“There is always a choice, Layna, and this is the thing I’ve been hiding from. It was horrible to lose my mother, but I couldn’t fight against my father’s anger, I couldn’t stay because I was far too afraid that the truth would come out and then things would be...then they could never be fixed. I have to tell him everything, all of it. So that I can have forgiveness. So that I can have my life. So I can be free.”
“But, Xander,” she said, a desperate fear clawing at her now and she didn’t know why. Didn’t know why this was so terrifying. Only that it was making her feel like she was clinging to the ledge of a cliff, her hold slipping with each passing moment. “If you do this, he might send you away. He might...you might never be king. You won’t even be a prince. You’ll be the royal bastard.”
“I’m the royal bastard whether anyone knows it or not,” he said, his voice quiet. “And I can’t keep hiding behind a lie. Because that’s the key, I think. To reforming. To...to changing and being a man who’s actually worth something. I have to stop hiding. And that doesn’t mean leaving Monaco and returning to Kyonos, clearly I’ve done that already.”