Page 116 of 2 Books in One Bundle
The book she had been attempting to read for distraction lay discarded on the coffee table. Instead, she stared out of the window with a cup of coffee warming her hands despite the heat of the day. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Once she’d been alone, she hadn’t been able to stop them, and they still wouldn’t abate. As if this pain was infinite. It had had a beginning, but there was certainly no end. She mourned the loss of Vasili. She’d loved him fiercely. She still did. She knew it had been a risk to fall in love with him. To show him that love without once telling him. But maybe now he would find the right person to share the burden of rule with. Someone he could keep at arm’s length that his advisors would approve of.
The thought sent a fresh wave of tears down her face. It hurt more than she could bear to picture him with someone else.
But she had seen them. Those women who were his equals.
They’d been at the banquet. Tall and polished in a way she would never manage. Maybe one of them would wear his ring...
She looked down at her finger, at the ring she still wore. At first it had been an oversight. In her hurry to leave, she hadn’t even thought of it. But now, alone in this cabin, she couldn’t bring herself to take it off. The last link to Vasili. She would have to return it eventually, but for now she curled her hand into her chest, replaying all the memories with him she held so close.
It would take a lifetime to get over Vasili—if she ever did. But she had to try. Because she couldn’t be alone for the rest of her life. She had come to realise that she wanted children. She wanted love. And Vasili simply could not give that to her.
Helia spent that first week vacillating between hurt and anger. Vasili was one of the few people who could understand loneliness, but he was blind to hers. And now she had nothing. Not someone with whom to share a laugh or a knowing smile. She had lost everything. Her love, the career that she had worked so hard for, and her mission—although that had been achieved.
It was only in her second week of being holed up alone in the cabin that she felt she could breathe a little. As if she could pick herself up enough to restart her life. Could think through the pain. She needed to get her career back on track, but it couldn’t be in Thalonia. Not when she had briefly been its queen. She would have to find a new home.
Her heart broke for yet another reason. This love had indeed cost her everything—including her home.
Hollow. That was what Vasili was. What his days were. Robotic. Mechanical. Vasili went through the motions every day. Eat. Barely sleep. Work.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks of hell. Two weeks of feeling bereft. Broken. The palace seemed even colder since Helia left. Emptier. Everyone avoided him when they could. He didn’t have it in him to make small talk or exchange pleasantries. There was nothing to be pleasant about. So he threw himself into his duties instead. Or tried to.
As Vasili sat behind his desk he heard the door open, followed by the sound of Andreas taking his seat for their meeting. But he couldn’t concentrate on the task at hand. There wasn’t anything in his life that didn’t remind him of Helia. Of her words before she left.
She was right—she deserved more than a life of loneliness. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Why he had tried to be in her corner? Because he knew loneliness. Except now it was dawning on him that maybe it was his own fear that had allowed his loneliness to persevere. It was his fear of being hurt that had had him erecting barriers around himself.
For a shining moment on their honeymoon he had known what it felt like to have someone care about him. To have support at his back. And what had he done? He’d pushed Helia away the night she’d offered to give him the space to grieve.
And he’d kept pushing her away.
Every single day he’d enjoyed being around her. Wanted her and cared for her. Every day he’d enjoyed her wit and affection and consideration. And in return he’d given her nothing but empty touches.
Except they hadn’t really been empty, had they? He’d had to fight his feelings for her. He’d made that rule not to be intimate to protect himself.
Vasili had had to fight hard to ensure he didn’t grow attached to his wife. The last time he’d trusted his heart to someone in any kind of bond he’d been fifteen, and Sophia had been forced to leave. When he and Leander had finally been free to nurture a brotherly bond, he’d been killed.
When he had allowed himself to be with Helia she’d got under his skin, but he had feared that it would only be a matter of time before she too found a reason to leave.
Vasili had been happy to have sex with Helia, for them to appear as a king and queen should, but he had refused to love her—and didn’t that make him like his parents?
A throat was cleared. ‘Your Majesty...?’
Vasili didn’t register the interruption. Not now he’d realised how much fear had ruled his life.
He’d walled off his heart for fear of being hurt like he had been by his parents. He’d kept Helia away when he was grieving his brother because it had hurt to lose Leander. How could he let in another person who would hurt him? That was all he’d known.
But with Helia he had been happy. Relaxed. Less alone. Helia had taken his grief and made it bearable.
He thought back to that morning on the beach, when he’d seen her grief. While he’d taught her to swim, it hadn’t been just lust burning through his veins—it had been so much more. It had been finding someone who understood.
‘I hope one day you will find it in you to let someone in past your walls.’
He already had. But he hadn’t had to let her in—she’d burrowed through with her love and care. She had seen him. Vasili. Not a royal or a son who wasn’t worthy.
‘Sir...’ Andreas said as he quietly closed the binder on Vasili’s desk. ‘Go to her. Bring her back.’
‘I can’t do that, Andreas.’
