She saw the dessert was being served at the table she and Andres had abandoned, and made the decision to go and sit back down.
She would give him a while, and then, once he had cooled off, she would go after him.
* * *
Andres couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. She couldn’t love him. It was impossible. Oh, for one, heady second, he had let himself imagine that it might be true. And let himself imagine it would be something that he could take full advantage of. A wife who would adore him. Who thought he was good. What an incredible thing that would be. Sadly it was something he would only lose in the end. Because that was what happened. It was who he was. It was what he did. He drove people away. His mother. He’d made the best attempt he could with Kairos. And starting tomorrow, and on into eternity, he would be waiting. Waiting for that dangling sword to fall, to tear asunder all that he and Zara had built.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be this year, or the next year. Perhaps it would not be until they’d had children. Children who would also look up to him, idolize him. Love him. Depend on him as he had done with his parents.
Children he wouldn’t deserve. A wife he could never hope to deserve.
He would ruin things. For all of them. And in the years while he waited for the killing blow, he would drive himself crazy. Knowing it would come eventually, but never knowing when.
He was feeble. His spirit so corrupt he knew that he could never be the kind of man that she needed.
He wasn’t Kairos. Who would lay down everything, personal happiness, individual goals, everything, to serve his country. To serve a wife he didn’t even love. Andres could never be that noble. He had never managed to keep the love of another person. Not even his parents. His behavior always ruined it in the end. He had no control. He never had.
The past few weeks had been a game. And he had been indulging himself. But it had to end.
He had to show her now. Because it would be better to destroy everything before the wedding. Better now than years from now. So she knew where things would end. So she knew what to expect.
They had to marry; there was no question of that. But...he could not have her loving him.
He stopped at the edge of the ballroom, scanning the crowd. And then he saw her. A blonde woman in a red dress, her curves barely contained by the tight, silken material. She was exactly the kind of woman he would have put the moves on in the past. Exactly the kind of woman he would choose to spend a few hedonistic hours with once boredom set in at a party like this.
And for the first time in years he let himself remember that last Christmas party. His mother had given him another chance. Had allowed him to come down from his room.
This time as they’d sat at the table, a family, pretending to have unity for all the world to see, his actions had not been beyond his control.
He had been angry. Angry for the years he’d spent locked away. Angry at how long and hard he’d tried only to fail time and time again. To get lost in the endless cycle of trying to please someone who professed to love him and failing at every turn.
So he’d chosen to fail that day. Had thrown his dinner plate on the floor and smashed it to pieces. Had made his mother cry again. It had felt good to accomplish what he’d set out to do. To fail spectacularly on purpose, rather than to try and fall short.
And then she’d left after that. God help him, he’d been relieved. Because after that he’d never had to try again.
He looked up, saw his fiancée sitting at the table, her posture stiff, taking tiny bites of her dessert, trying to enjoy it, trying to listen to the conversation around her. She did not fit in, his Zara. She did not have that cultured manner of those raised in nobility. Did not have the social graces she would have learned had she been raised in the palace life.
She was utterly unique. Utterly her.
He drank in the sight of her. Pale skin, dark hair, in that pink and gold dress that made her look like something out of a fairy tale.
But he wasn’t the sort of man who deserved a fairy tale.
He took a step forward. Then another. Then, he began to make his way toward the blonde. Toward temptation.
He was not going to wait for hell to come up and grab him. He would walk and willingly. And he would do it now.