I didn’t know what to say to that. The admission of weakness was so unexpected that it momentarily silenced me.
“Well, I find that I’m in want of some as well. But...but again, it seems an inadvisable reason to start.”
r />
“I don’t disagree with you,” he said. “And so, in the interest of fending off addictions, we can have this together.”
“I did try to contact you,” I said. “Whatever you think of me... I could have had much more if you would have known. Surely you must see that. If you can’t believe in who I am as a person, if you can’t believe that maybe what we had for a while was real, then believe that, even if I’m grasping, I’m not stupid. Believe that if I really wanted to take you for your money, I would have done so in a spectacular fashion. I would have shamed you publicly, but I had no interest in that. All I wanted was what was best for Lily. When those men came... Hercules, I thought I was nothing to you. Nothing more than one of the many women that you seduce and leave behind. I had no reason to believe that I was anything else. And I had no reason to believe those men were not sent by you.”
He began to pour a glass of cider, and then he paused. Suddenly, the look on his face became one of stone. “It’s why they couldn’t find you,” he said. “They didn’t look. They were working for him, not for me. They had orders not to find you.”
“What?”
“I searched for you,” he said. “Your father said you were gone, and I didn’t accept it. I had my men go after you. I had them search. I have resources that stretch far beyond that of a normal man. I should have been able to find you. They should have been able to find you. The fact that they did not...” He shook his head. “Why did I not realize it before now?”
“He wanted to keep you from her,” I said.
“He did. Because he knew that when his birthday passed, I would succeed him. As is the law in Pelion. He wanted to delay my heir, wanted to set up hoops for me to jump through. Vanessa was a hoop. A suitable bride that was not ready to marry and reproduce immediately when my father passed his deadline.”
“We don’t need to punish each other,” I said softly.
For the first time, I honestly felt some sympathy for him. He didn’t know.
But I couldn’t just turn my whole sense of the last five years on its head.
“I...I felt so utterly abandoned, Hercules. I betrayed who I thought I was for you.”
He shook his head. “No. Don’t tell me that. You are a strong woman, Marissa. If you did not want to have sex you wouldn’t have.”
The truth in those words set me back on my heels. He was right. I hadn’t been seduced. Not in the way that I often let myself think of it. Yes, he was new and exciting, a window into sensations that I hadn’t even known I wanted. But I had wanted him. I had wanted him deep in my soul. Wanted him with a desperation that defied sanity.
It reminded me of when he had asked me if I always did as I was told.
I had, because it had never occurred to me to do things a different way.
And when I stopped doing as I was told, it wasn’t because I had simply replaced one set of commands with another.
It was because I had realized what I was. Who I was. And that I wanted it to be something different than I had been fashioned into.
It had nothing to do with faith, for mine had remained intact all these years. But it had become something deeper in many ways, something more personal, because I wasn’t following commandments and dictates because my father said so, but because of what rang true in my own soul.
And perhaps I didn’t have a life that looked perfect to everyone from the outside, but something in my heart felt healed.
No, it had never been about rebellion. It had never been about burning down what I believed in and starting from scratch.
It had been about finding me.
In the midst of everything that I had been taught to be, I found the person I was born to be.
I didn’t have to hide. Not now. Not behind excuses, and not behind the idea that I had somehow succumbed to the temptation only because of his wickedness. Or even my own.
“It doesn’t matter. Not now. I’ve changed. I assume you have too.”
“No,” he said, his expression opaque. “I have not changed. I am as I ever was. I’m a man who has the responsibility and the weight of an entire nation on his shoulders. And I never forget it. It doesn’t matter what you see in the media. If you see photos of me looking carefree. All that time we spent together on the beach. I am never carefree.”
I looked him right in the eyes. “I know that.”
He appeared shocked by that. “What is it you think you know?”
“The first time that I saw you, standing there on the shore. None of your friends had caught up to you yet, and you were standing there with your hands shoved into your pockets and a grim look on your face. You were clearly a man with a great weight on you. I could see it. A man who carried darkness around inside of him and understood that there might be a cost to that. I knew it. I did. I knew it then, and I know it now. All of what you show the world is... It’s an oversimplification. And even what you showed me, back when we were together.”
“Well, isn’t that a neat trick that you managed to speak of it now, and yet you didn’t say anything then.”
“I always felt like there was a timer ticking down on what we had. I didn’t want to clutter it up with unpleasant topics. And I never wanted to betray how much I cared. But I’m not a girl now. And while you may carry the weight of the fate of your nation on your shoulders, I carry the responsibility of taking care of our daughter. She is my primary concern, and she always will be. Lily is the most important thing in my universe. You must worry for millions. I worry for only one. And that means my focus is not split. I will defend her and her interest with all of me. Forever.”
“And what about your own?”
“I am second. And I chose to be second when I committed to being her mother. When I knew that I wouldn’t give her up. My father threw me out. He said I was an embarrassment. But it didn’t matter. Because at that moment it ceased to be about me. It was about Lily, and me doing the best that I could for her. It was a free and wonderful realization, and it has been a free and wonderful way to live. And maybe...maybe this isn’t what I want. I didn’t sign on for this. For the life of public scrutiny, or to be...at the center of your engagement falling apart, which I can only imagine is going to make headlines everywhere.”
“Yes. We are about to create something of an incident. I won’t lie to you.”
“I’m doing it for her.”
Suddenly, he closed the distance between us, reaching out, his large hand cupping my cheek. He was like fire. His touch was a flame. And I had not expected that. I had thought that all those years would have given me a sort of immunity to the man, and yet there was none. “Is it?”
The words were husky, and his breath was warm and I could feel it across my lips.
It made me ache. Everywhere.
“Is it just for her?” he pressed. “You do not think that even a small part of yourself is going to find some enjoyment in this?”
My heart was thundering hard, so hard that I was convinced he could hear it. I swallowed.
I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing that he had shaken me. I would not let him come in and simply think that he could assume control of not only everything outside, but all the things inside me too. I had raised my daughter on my own for years. And yes, I was affected by him, but I would not simply give him the satisfaction of knowing that.
“Are you sure that this is entirely for your country?” I shot back. “And not you satisfying your thwarted hunter’s instinct? You’ve caught me. And wasn’t that what you wanted all those years ago?”
He growled and closed the distance almost entirely between us. And I faced the black fire, so close that I thought it might reduce me to ash. “No one leaves me,” he gritted out. “No one abandons me.”
“Don’t they?”
I didn’t know why I asked the question, or if it would have a particular sort of significance to him,
but he released his hold on me, dropping his hand and turning away.
He raked his fingers through his black hair and then moved to face me again.
“Rearranging a wedding should not be too difficult. We have the venue. Guess all we need to do is change out the bride.”
I gritted my teeth. “Just as I dreamed. From the time I was a little girl. That I might be a replacement bride for the Prince.”
“She was your replacement.”
The words were stunning. Rough, and for a moment I was certain that he had actually been speaking in a foreign language and my brain had translated them incorrectly. It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t been insulted in some way. Quite the contrary. He had admitted something to me that I didn’t think he was happy to have spoken into existence.
“Well, then isn’t it good that we put things to rights,” I said. The words were barely above a whisper.
The problem was nothing felt put to rights at all. It all felt wrong and strange, deeply disconcerting.
And yet...
When he touched me, there was still heat. When he was near me, I still felt a kick of desire.
And if I was perfectly honest with myself, I would have been unhappy to go back home now.
No. That could not be. He could not have that kind of power over me. Never again.
I was not so weak that my attraction to Hercules could cause me to abandon reason.
“Perhaps we should toast,” he said, lifting his glass. “To our union.”
I raised my glass, my eyes never leaving his. It was a challenge, and I was not going to back down. Because I had changed. I had become someone different, forged in steel, in the fires of the conflagration that had occurred between us.
I had been a fool then. A girl easily wounded.
“This is for Lily,” I said, more for myself than for him. “And our marriage is for Lily. It is not for us.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his voice rough.
“Yes,” I responded, pleased that I managed to keep my voice steady then.
It was the fire that terrified me. But more than that...it was the hope.