Chapter Twenty-Seven
My husband was magnificent. I felt actual chills as he spoke. If I hadn’t wanted him before, this would have changed everything for me. I felt proud to stand next to him.
“Tonight the citizens were calling for him to be their king,” Heliodora said. “I move that we make our official vote now, and my vote is for Prince Alexandros.”
“I second the motion,” Themis said.
Pelias, who looked extremely uncomfortable, took over the vote. “Erisa?”
Defiant, she said, “I vote for Prince Kyros. I will be his regent until he comes of age.”
Stolos and Themis both voted for Xander.
“Zethus?”
“I vote for Prince Alexandros.” While it surprised me, it seemed that Zethus didn’t want to die. He was probably worried it would disrupt his drinking and harassing hetaerae.
That was it. Those were all the votes Xander needed. Four council members had voted for him, and there were only two votes left, one of them being his.
And he voted for himself.
Pelias still had his vote, but it was too late. This was happening and couldn’t be undone. Something he seemed to realize. “My vote is for Prince Alexandros.”
Erisa was so stunned she couldn’t speak.
“I am grateful for your votes, and I accept,” Xander said. “Guards, take Erisa. She and Kyros are to be confined to their rooms and not let out without my permission.”
His stepmother screamed and protested, but the guards did as their king commanded and dragged her out.
“You did it,” I said to Xander, putting my arms around his neck so that I could hug him.
“We did it,” he said, gripping me tightly.
“Let’s go to the throne room and officially crown you,” Themis said, which caused him to take a step back from me. She walked over to a locked cabinet and put in a key, opening it. She pulled out a gold-plated crown of laurel leaves.
I briefly wondered why it was not down in the vault. I supposed that when Erisa had organized her secret meeting to take over, she had brought it upstairs to the council’s chambers.
We went as a group to the throne room. I’d never been in here before. I supposed it made sense—there wasn’t a king, so there wasn’t any reason to enter. It was a smaller room, a fraction of the size of the dining hall.
A throne sat at the top of a dais, with multiple steps leading up to it.
“The high priestess usually crowns the new king,” Heliodora said worriedly to Themis. I wondered how many new kings of Ilion Lysimache had crowned.
“My wife can do it,” Xander said. He walked up the steps and sat on his throne. Looking regal and deadly and dashing and a thousand other things that made my stomach flutter.
Themis handed me the crown and gestured toward the dais. I walked up the stairs, aware that everyone was watching. “I’m not a high priestess,” I told him. “Io should do it. She’s an Ilionian princess.”
“So are you.”
Oh. I supposed in a way that was true.
My father had told me once that, in other lands, coronations were elaborate affairs, with flowery speeches and long rituals. But in Locris, as in Ilion, it was as simple as placing the crown on the person’s head.
Which I did carefully, trying to act with grace. The same crown his father and grandfather had worn. This was a monumental moment, and I wanted it to have the gravitas it deserved.
It fit him perfectly.
“Long live King Alexandros!” Heliodora called out, and the other council members cheered as well.
Including Pelias, who did it while also looking even more miserable than he had earlier.
“Thank you,” Xander said. “My first act as king will be to put together a plan for the upcoming war. I would like the council to meet to decide the best ways to prepare our citizens and channel funding into creating weapons and armor. We will need to help house and feed the Ilionians arriving from different villages and cities to make certain that they’re provided for.
The citizen army will also need to be called up for battle. ”
“It will be done,” Stolos promised.
“My second act will be to break the betrothal between Lykaon, son of Pelias, and Princess Kallisto of Locris.”
He had remembered his promise. I gripped the back of his throne so that I wouldn’t throw myself at him to thank him. He had just saved my older sister from a monster.
Pelias was outraged. “You have no right, no authority to—”
“I have every right,” Xander interrupted him. “And the only authority. I am your king.”
“There are penalties, fines that the Locrian royals will have to pay!”
“That is only if they break the contract, and they have not. I did. If you feel you are owed compensation, write a request and I will consider it,” Xander said.
Pelias looked as if he wanted to continue arguing, but seemed to quickly realize that there was nothing he could do.
Xander looked at the others and said, “I would like for the council to meet immediately to begin work on a plan of action. And for the throne room to be cleared so that I may have a moment alone with my wife.”
Him becoming king had changed everything. The council no longer had any sway over him. They were now subject to him and his decisions.
The power had shifted.
And power looked good on him.
Everyone who had gathered to bear witness to Xander’s coronation filed out of the room. Io was the last to go, and I saw the look of concern on her face. It made my heart twinge but it wasn’t enough to get me to excuse myself and leave.
I wanted to be here with him.
When Io shut the door behind her, he said, “Why did you break your promise to me?”
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “The terawolf?”
“Yes,” he angrily confirmed. When he’d asked to be alone with me, I hadn’t known what to expect, but it hadn’t been him being mad about the terawolf.
“I didn’t go to the docks, so I didn’t break my promise.”
“You knew that I meant for you to stay in the palace!”
“I . . .” I couldn’t lie about this. “I did know that. I’m sorry. But I had to help. And the terawolves were headed for the docks. I was afraid they would hurt people.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “You wanted to help Ilionians?”
I nodded. “And you.”
His anger quickly receded. He tried to be stern. “No more hunting terawolves.”
“We won’t. I think we killed them all.”
“You what?”
I quickly told him the story, and despite him being upset that I’d left the safety of the palace, I saw the admiration and respect in his eyes. It completely thrilled me.
And he didn’t yell at me for involving Io in it.
Progress.
But it also caused me to move away from him, putting some distance between us, because seeing him on his throne with his crown was doing something inexplicable to me. He exuded authority and a masculine energy that made me weak-kneed.
“You finally have everything you wanted,” I said.
“Not everything.”
I wanted his words to be about me, but I couldn’t be that self-centered. There were probably many other things that he was speaking about. I wouldn’t allow myself to ask him to clarify and instead found a more neutral topic to speak about.
“I think Pelias regrets voting for you. He wanted two thrones for his children and now he will get none,” I said.
Xander’s gaze followed me as I slowly walked around the room. “His vote wouldn’t have mattered either way. But it was politically smarter of him to throw his lot in with mine.”
I went around a column, tracing it with my hand. “It also backfired spectacularly for Erisa.”
“Yes, I don’t think that was what she thought would happen.”
“She tried to organize a secret council meeting to get them to vote for Kyros before you could return. I’m glad that you arrived as quickly as you did,” I said.
“I was already on my way back when Rokh found me. Then I sent him off to retrieve Thrax and the prisoner.”
“Speaking of . . . now that you have proof, what are you going to do with Erisa?”
He watched me like a bird of prey, aware of my every movement. I found his attention intoxicating.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. Exile seems like the best option. But I’m not going to cast her out of the city with an army on the way.”
I went slowly around another column while looking at him over my shoulder. “Perhaps you should. Let her run into Artemisia. Maybe they would take each other out.”
He smiled, the first I’d seen since he’d dragged in those Carian soldiers. “That would be convenient.”
It seemed like he enjoyed watching me. Despite the fact that nothing could happen, I found myself wishing that I knew how to be beguiling.
“Where will your queen’s throne go?” I asked. There was only one throne in the room.
“When my father was alive, Erisa had a chair down on the bottom step.”
I glanced at where he pointed. That must have infuriated her. “And what will you do?”
“Depends on the queen.” His eyes darkened. “If you were my queen, I would have them build your throne next to mine. We would rule as equals. Make the changes that Ilion needs, together.”
“You would do that?” My heart beat so fast I worried it might give out.
“Yes.”
But I couldn’t be his queen. Even if I survived everything to come, him being made king put an end to any hope of a relationship between us. He was now their ruler. He would never be able to leave Ilion.
And I couldn’t stay. I had to return to Locris when this was all over.
“Are you going to send me away?” I asked. I wasn’t able to make eye contact and hoped he couldn’t hear the worry and fear that I was feeling.
“Why do you think I’d send you away?”
It aggravated me when he did that. Answered my question with a question. I looked at him as I said, “You’re the king. Our contract has ended.”
A smile played at the edges of his mouth. “Does this mean I’m going to have to assign a bodyguard to Thrax?”
“No. Because Quynh would kill me. And she’d do it slowly and make sure I suffered.”
He laughed and I wanted to sigh. I loved that sound.
“Why would I ever send you away?” he asked. “Who else would I talk to about murdering my beloved brother? And what kind of king would I be if I kicked my pregnant queen out of the palace?”
When he called me his queen . . . I had to stop for a moment to absorb that. I was as much his queen as I was pregnant.
But oh, I wanted to believe.
“You could go home if you wanted.” He made his offer carefully, his tone neutral.
“You would let me go?” Why did that feel disappointing?
“If that was your wish. I offered that to you in the beginning.”
He was talking about when I’d first joined the temple. On more than one occasion, he had told me that if I wanted it, he would help me get on a boat back to Locris.
Why would he have done that if he knew who I was?
“And before you start in on me, I didn’t know who you were at the time.” It was uncanny how well he could read me, how he always seemed to know what I was thinking.
Dolion had already told me that wasn’t true, and I had believed him. But with his recent confession to me . . . what if Dolion was the one who had been lying? Because of the feelings he had for me? I had so easily accepted his words as truth.
What if I had made a grave mistake?
“If I had known your true identity, I would have marched you off the Nikos when we landed and made you marry me then. I never would have let you be in that kind of danger.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Because it didn’t. “I would have done the same thing if our positions were reversed.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that if I had to seduce you to secure the throne of my country and save my people, I would have done it.”
“Oh?” He raised a single eyebrow at me. “And how would that have gone?”
“What?”
“You seducing me.”
How was it possible to feel aroused and embarrassed at the same time? “I assume it would be incredibly easy.”
“You do?”
I nodded, hoping my cheeks hadn’t turned pink. “Yes. I think all I’d have to do is remove my clothing and I would get my way.”
His eyes sparkled in the low light. “I think I might be a harder sell than that.”
My pulse pounded at his challenge.
I didn’t understand all the rules of this game, but I knew I wanted to play.