Page 46 of Vows to a King
“I will share when I’m ready,ne? Please, grant me this.”
Adonis wrapped his arms around his brother and squeezed him tight. “Mama… I need to tell her. Please, Adamos, it is cruel to let her think—”
“Only on the condition that she doesn’t ask to see me,” his brother retorted, steel in his tone. Whatever demons haunted his brother, it was clear that he’d rather not share them with his family.
Adonis nodded. “Fine. If you change your mind, know that—”
“Don’t be so ready to give up what is in your heart, Adonis. And what is so right. Thalassos needs your competence, your devotion, you.”
His brother’s words—so similar to what his queen had said, reverberated through Adonis’s mind all through the short flight back to Thalassos.
Regret pricked at him like a thousand needles stuck in his skin as he remembered how casually he had walked away from her, how much pain he might have caused her.
He knew, as he jumped off the chopper onto the terrace of the highest wings of the palace, that laying his heart out for his queen was the biggest risk he could ever take.
And that the pain that would come for him if she didn’t forgive him would be the worst he had ever known.
As she’d so boldly and bravely declared, he would only be half a man without the woman he loved by his side.
* * *
“He is up to something in Ephyra. And if you know what is good for you, you will share it with me, Jemima.”
Her father’s whispered threat reached Jemima on the wings of high winds that played about with the elaborate folds of her evening dress. That he had discovered her hiding spot on one of the highest terraces of the palace—with devastatingly beautiful views of the Aegean and the hills and Thalassos itself, wasn’t a surprise.
While she hadn’t admitted it to Adonis—seemed foolish in retrospect now, she’d been aware that her father’s spies had been watching both her and her husband, for any chinks in their personal armor or their tenuous faith in each other.
“Jemima? You think you’re too good to respond to your father because you’re Queen?”
She sighed and gathered her wits and queenly graces and weapons to herself. This was a confrontation she’d wished wouldn’t come about. For she had no stomach to present her father with the disgusting truth of who he was and worse, what he was becoming.
Also, she was plumb out of truths and wishes and foolish delusions. But whether he was here or not, she would do her duty by her king. It was only the thought of the man she so adored that gave the energy to turn around and face her father.
With a flick of one brow, she dismissed the two personal bodyguards Adonis insisted follow her everywhere. The mess she was about to sort didn’t need any kind of audience.
“I heard you, Papa,” she said, turning around. “I was simply organizing my response to you for there is so much to say.”
“What is he doing in Ephyra?” Her father’s teeth bared in a tacky facsimile of a sneer. “Do you not worry why he visits the young, beautiful queen the moment she summons him? Do you not care that he’s already broken every vow he’s made to you?”
“Enough, Papa,” she said, more tired than angry. “Your cheap tricks to make me doubt myself and my king will not work on me. You aren’t half the man my husband is.” Frost coated her words as she fixed the fracture in her composure. “The King is in Ephyra because there’s an emergency matter he must deal with, himself. You, and the rest of the crown council, have already been notified at his discretion.”
“It was clear to everyone present that whatever little connection was there between you two has already gone up in smoke, Jemima. If you had any sense, you would throw your lot in with me and the crown council, before he publicly humiliates you with a scandal.”
“And if you had any sense,” Jemima snarled, all attempts at courtesy and control disappearing, “you would think twice before engaging in treasonous speech against your king and crown.”
“How dare you speak to me that way?” he said, taking a menacing step in her direction.
Even as fear flooded her—mostly for the babies in her belly, Jemima refused to pull back or step away from him. Never again was she going to be bullied by him. “Careful, Papa, or my bodyguards will throw you in jail for something as silly as encroaching on their queen’s personal space. My husband is a possessive, protective man that doesn’t like even the hair on my head ruffled.”
“You foolish girl! Don’t you see—?”
“She sees better than you or me, old man,” came the voice before the shape of him revealed itself in the darkness. “Only foolish, egotistical men need to be schooled twice on the same matter. For my part, I have learned the lesson to not trifle with Jemima Vasilikos. Not if I don’t want to be pushed into a dark prison.”
Relief and agony came at Jemima like twin gales pulling at her in opposite directions. She wanted to throw her arms around him and cling to him and beg him to never leave her alone again.
Resisting the urge, she donned a cool mask that she’d learned from him. “Good evening, Your Majesty.”
He, it seemed, had no such reservations. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Adonis pulled her to him. In such close quarters, with his delicious scent filling every corner and crevice of her soul, Jemima couldn’t hide the shivers that overtook her.
