Page 21 of Vows to a King
She settled back into her seat with a nod, but he knew that resolve in her eyes. “This must all feel dreary after…your exciting life.”
“Not sure about excitement but definitely more dangerous,” he said, pulled into the discussion despite his resolve to keep things either polite or sexual between them.
“I’ve always been curious about what pushes you to do all that you do, pitting yourself against nature’s extremes.” When he hesitated, she leaned forward again. “And how is the palace more dangerous than that?”
“Navigating the palace politics is like willingly wading into a lake full of piranhas desperate for a taste of your blood. You know that. While nature, whether jagged mountain cliffs or roaring river rapids, is hard and cruel but not calculating and cunning like people. It doesn’t manipulate you or use you or conspire to harm you. It just stands there, showing neither pity nor mockery when you pit yourself against it. And it doesn’t care whose blood you bear in your veins, or what civilized society considers your flaws. It is constant in its ruthlessness.”
Her eyes wide, she stared at him with an intensity Adonis wasn’t sure he could withstand for too long. And yet, somehow, her curiosity about him was a spark that added fuel to the constant hum of desire in his veins. He wanted to…consume her whole when she looked at him like this. “You’ve never said anything remotely like that in all your interviews.”
“How would you know?”
She colored. “I have watched every bit of media that has ever been released about you. My curiosity about you was a wildfire…even Adamos used to laugh about it.”
A well of longing rose up within Adonis, and not even his brother’s name could curb it. He wanted to tell her the number of times he’d thought of her since their kiss, how he’d been equally fascinated by her. How she had become the ideal woman in his head.
And how, he was realizing, she still could be—a mirage turning into lush curves and keen mind.
But no. He couldn’t give up any more of his secrets to her. While she had wounded him by assuming he was nothing more than his reputation, it had also been a sharp reminder that he couldn’t let anyone close. And definitely not the woman he’d have to live with for the next fifty or so years. He couldn’t bear her disappointment if, no, when he inevitably crushed her hopes or God forbid, hurt her.
“I think you were right—”
“Will you not tell me the reason for the rift between you and the King, Adonis?”
Head jerking up, Adonis stared at her.
She looked half shocked, half startled herself at her daring.
“Do you have a questionnaire from that stuffy aide hidden somewhere, Princess? This is beginning to sound like an interview.”
“Of course not. Like I said—”
This time, he cut her off. “No, Jemima. There is no big hidden secret about our rift. He wanted another perfect son like Adamos. And the last thing I am,” he said, his throat burning as if he were a child again, and all the inadequacy and vulnerability he had felt scratching like thorns again now, “is perfect. By any standard.”
“I want to help with this—”
He laughed and if it was filled with a serrated ache, he didn’t care. “There’s nothing to help me with in this, Jemima. Nothing you can help me see in a new way. But yes, it is a twisted fate that determined that I’m all he and you and Thalassos have now. And if you wish to truly be of use to me, then start working on the things plaguing Thalassos now, instead of worrying that pretty head about my past.”
It was a weight that had become almost unbearable since he returned, this burden of determination and fear, equally driving him. Even reminding himself that only a selfish, power-bloated man like King Aristos could blame an innocent boy for his own mistake, didn’t help rid him of that feeling of unworthiness that was his father’s gift to him.
But damn the whole world if Adonis wouldn’t prove him wrong.
CHAPTER SIX
TWO WEEKS AFTERhis return from Monaco—and two days away from coronation, Adonis sat back in his chair and looked out into the expanse of his study that stretched into an open courtyard.
Beyond it was the sparkling blue waters of the Aegean, meeting the sky in a seamless blend of colors.
In the distance, the rugged cliffs of Thalassos rose majestically, dotted with ancient olive groves that swayed gently in the breeze.
Unlike the large, luxurious study that had been occupied by his father for decades and lately Adamos—an overdecorated oval hall that boxed him in from all sides, with haughty ancestors looking down from every wall—this view calmed Adonis.
White marble columns with intricate carvings of vines and mythical creatures framed the courtyard, creating a sense of both openness and whimsy, with a dash of history thrown in.
The space was the perfect blend of Thalassos’s rich, natural history and its advent into modern times. If he could drag it.
Like his personal suite in a newly renovated wing of the palace, and his set of public office rooms, that he use this space as his private study had been Jemima’s suggestion.
He was nothing like his brother or father, and the idea of being constrained by the same solid walls that had once felt like a prison, made him utterly restless. Even with his own team’s arrival, it had taken him a few days to get used to the constant barrage of demands and details coming straight at him.
