Page 26 of Her Red Hot Secret Royal Fling

“Sure, but you wouldn’t foist this on them.”

He looked at her in surprise.

“Sorry,” she clasped a hand over her mouth, then shook her head. “I know you see it as a great honour to rule, yada yada yada, but it’s still an imposition, and a huge pressure, right? So, you wouldn’t inflict that on a younger sibling unless it was unavoidable.”

He clamped his lips together and a muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw as he seemed to be weighing up whether or not to answer. “No,” he said, finally.

She expelled a breath.

“I’ll be the one who carries on the line.”

“By marrying and having children.”

His eyes met hers and he nodded, once. A tight, curt nod.

She could understand why he was reluctant to get into this. Less than two months ago, he’d been dumped by the woman he probably had lined up for the job. The woman he’d loved, and seemingly still did.

A familiar sense of emptiness seemed to whip through Sofia, as she imagined Ares and the kind of woman he might have loved and chosen to marry.

She looked away, losing herself in the depths of the forest, glad for the hectic quantity of tree trunks she could focus on while trying to rally her thoughts and quell her racing heart.

“The problem is,” he said, slowly. “I’m not sure I want to inflict that on anyone.”

She whipped around to face him. “What?”

“Marrying into this,” he gestured to the city, but she knew he meant his royalness. “It’s a completely different lifestyle. The pressures, expectations, the sense that you no longer belong to yourself, but rather to every man, woman, child, and dog in the country.” He smiled but it lacked humour. “Who’d want that?”

She furrowed her brow. “Isn’t it some kind of girlish fantasy to grow up and become a princess?”

He made a thick sound, almost a laugh. “The fantasy isn’t borne out by reality.”

“Are you unhappy?”

He looked genuinely surprised.

“Me?”

She nodded.

“This is my life.”

“It wasn’t always, though.”

“No.”

She contemplated that. “What do you think you’d have done, were it not…”

“For the accident?” he asked, with a tone in his voice she perfectly understood. ‘Accident’ was such a misnomer. When people you love died, and in awful, premature ways, it is a tragedy of inexplicable proportions. She felt that grief every day—not in a settled, dull ache kind of way, but like a still raw, festering wound.

Ares continued regardless of whether he felt that same way. “Believe it or not, I wanted this.” His voice was gruff, and there was something in his eyes that showed shame. Guilt. She said nothing, aware that he was taking stock, before continuing.

“From when I was a very young boy, I used to follow my father around, always learning, listening, and before too long, weighing in on decisions.” His smile was laced with self-mockery. “He was patient with me.”

Something dried out her mouth, making it hard to speak. Her father had been like that too. Endlessly patient, kind, loving, and fun. She laughed so much in the first nine years of her life, and not a lot thereafter.

“What about your brother?” Sofia asked gently.

“Apollo was thirteen months older. I idolised him. I have no doubt that had he lived, he would have been an excellent King.”

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