Because I could not seem to banish it no matter how much I tried.
“I don’t care who you sleep with,” I continued, the words catching in my throat. “But it won’t be me.”
“Excuse me?” The cold, dark ice in his tone sent a chill through me.
“We must be good parents to our daughter,” I said. “Unless you’re willing to drop down on your knees now and profess undying love, it won’t work. We must be able to parent together, to exist together. To attend functions together and present a united front.”
“My parents managed to do it for years. And trust me when I tell you they do not care much for each other.”
“I am not your mother,” I said. “And you are not your father. I’m confident of that, without ever having met either of them.”
He stiffened. “Have it your way, Marissa. But I have to tell you I think your goals might be unrealistic here.”
“Why?”
He smiled at me, and he didn’t have to say a word, because electricity passed between us in that space, a switch flipped by the crook of his lips. And he knew it.
“We are not animals. We managed to go five years without touching one another, after all.”
“True,” he said, leaning in. “But that was when we were nowhere near each other. With an ocean between us it’s quite easy to resist, is it not?” He reached out, the rough edge of his thumb resting against my upper lip. “But is it so easy to resist now? When I am here. And you still want me, so very much.” My heart was tripping over itself, like the fool that I was, giddy and excited over the touch of this man.
“There is unfinished business between us,” he continued.
“No,” I whispered, calling on all of my strength and taking a step away from him. A step toward sanity.
“The business between us is Lily. And when she is finished, when she is grown, we will be too.”
“Divorce then?” he asked. “How dull.”
“It doesn’t have to be divorce. We can simply separate. Whatever you need for your perfect royal image.”
“You will not shame me by going out with other men,” he said, the words shot through with iron.
I might have taken pleasure in the thought that he was jealous if I wasn’t so desperate to release my hold on any sort of feelings for him. “I have no problem with that. I’ve managed just fine on my own this whole time.”
“Have it your way, then.” He downed the rest of the contents of his glass and took a step away from me, and I felt unaccountably cold when he did.
Then he removed his presence entirely from beside me.
“You might want to get some sleep. When we land, it will be morning in Pelion. And there will be much to attend to.”
CHAPTER SIX
Hercules
OF THE MANY rebellions I had expected of Marissa, this refusal to be my wife in anything beyond name had thrown me off entirely.
It was one thing that I knew we could count on between us. Our passion.
Yes, we’d had an innocent relationship at first, but when passion had ignited between us it had been undeniable, unstoppable. We had traded in words for sighs of pleasure, and I had never regretted it. But this... This could not be endured.
I gritted my teeth. What man was this inside of me who could not handle being absent the touch of a particular woman? Since when had it ever mattered to me? I had more pressing matters to deal with than Marissa and her reluctance to be my bride in any real sense.
I had my father to deal with.
There was no question of having Marissa and Lily or Marissa’s mother come to the palace.
Instead, I had them driven to my home that was nestled in the mountains of Pelion, on the opposite side of our major city from the palace.
My home was not a castle, but in many ways my father’s home and mine had been set up like two warring palaces on opposing hills, facing each other down.
But now I was ready.
Ready to cross the gulf, ready to go to war.
I had steadied my hand; I had played at diplomacy. And I had done so in order to keep my father’s wrath away from my mother and sister.
Though I knew at the moment neither of them were in residence in Pelion. They were in the French Riviera, as both of them preferred.
Even if not...
My father had already done the unforgivable.
He had kept me from my child.
I would not be civil.
I was given admittance into the palace immediately, and I walked directly through the glimmering obsidian halls down to the throne room.
It was Gothic, this palace. It always had been. As if the black heart of the Xenakis family resided at the center of this gilded mausoleum.
But then, I supposed it was true.
Whoever sat on the throne was the heart.
And my father had been up there spreading poison for far too long.
I would be better than the heart of this palace, than the heart of this nation.
I would be the brain.
That at least had a basis for reason. That at least had a code.
There were so many people who thought that the heart deserved to be followed. That the heart was the core of our humanity, but I knew the truth.
The heart could produce both humanity and unspeakable horror.
The heart was wicked. And it was deceptive. If you could find justification for your behavior deep in your heart, then a man could do anything.
However, reason would win out. I was confident in that. Reason I trusted in.
Reason I had violated only once.
With Marissa.
But it was funny how in the end she was the key to Pelion salvation. She had caused a shift in what was possible, and therefore a shift in my reasoning.
Something fascinating to be explored later, perhaps, but not when I was about to cross swords with my father.
I pushed the double doors of the throne room open without signaling my arrival.
The two Secret Service agents standing next to my father reached for their weapons, and I held up my hand. “Prince Hercules,” I said.
“Prince Hercules,” the other men repeated, nodding once.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I had not been home in some time, and I was surprised by how diminished my father looked.
It was not just aging, for the Xenakis family tended to remain strong like oxen until the end. He looked weathered, and he looked weak, and my father was many things, but he had never been that.
“Have you climbed off of your latest whore long enough to see to issues of state?”
His voice was not frail, and apparently the meanness that coursed through his veins was well intact.
“I have been on a fact-finding mission,” I said. “And I am not certain you will like what I uncovered.”
“Is that so?”
The gleam in his eye seemed to swallow the light rather than give it off. Like the obsidian walls all around us.
That darkness was my legacy. And I would wield it against him happily now.
“Yes. Perhaps there is a secret that you forgot to tell me.”
He did not look cowed by this; instead, he looked smug. “Oh, there are many, Hercules. Did you imagine all this time that you were sitting back pulling my strings and I never pulled yours? A common error of the youth. You think you know more. You think you know better. And because of that, you never take a moment to consider that I might be an opponent that is equal to you.”
My lip curled. “I am not you,” I said.
“That may be. But whether or not we are the same, we are an equal match.”
“You’re a monster.”
“There are reasons that monsters live in caves for hundreds of years terrorizing the townspeople, and it isn
’t because they are stupid. You don’t have to be good to win, Hercules. Perhaps you should remember that. If you’re looking at your victory as an opportunity to measure the purity of your morality, I feel that might come to a disappointing end.”
“Moral absolutism is not exactly at the core of what I’ve come to talk to you about. I found my child.”
That I could see impacted him. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Her mother was happy enough to sign away your rights for a payout.”
“Because you made her think it was what I wanted. Marissa is a proud woman and she would no more beg me for anything, for my attention, than she would submit her child to a life on the streets.”
Marissa’s own words filled me, and I found I believed them with a great conviction in that moment.
“She is a woman of absolute strength and dignity, and she has done what we all should have done for the past years. She has raised Lily. Lily is the heir to the throne of Pelion. We owe her the same that we have owed every ruler that has come before her.”