CHAPTER FIFTEEN
VASILISQUINTEDAWAKE. Bright sunlight fell across his bed through the open curtains, nearly blinding him. He rolled over, his hands on the cool sheets beside him. He had slept in his old room to give Helia space. Space that he’d hoped she would use to rethink her decision. She wanted to leave, and yet the days leading up to the coronation banquet had been perfect.
They’d kept to the agreement.
But now that very agreement might have cost him his queen.
She wouldn’t have left in the night, he reasoned. Not with so many people in the palace. Perhaps he would be able to speak to Helia. Find a workable solution.
Throwing the covers off, he got out of bed and went about readying himself for this conversation. He didn’t feel prepared for it, but it had to be done.
The palace was quiet when he stepped out of the room. So vastly different from the night before, with all the people, the music, the bright lights. It was as if a sombre hush had descended—but maybe that was a reflection of his own mood.
‘Helia?’ he called, knocking on the door to the room he had left her in the night before, but no answer came.
So he stepped inside and found everything exactly in its place.
Unease crept down his spine.
He opened the bedroom door and found the same. A bed that hadn’t been slept in. There was no sign of her in the bathroom either. He rushed out of the room, moving towards the interconnecting door. Maybe she had needed to sleep elsewhere, just as he had. But again he found nothing in the sitting area. The only evidence of her was her discarded dress and the jewels on the bed.
Vasili rushed to the room she had used before she became Queen, feeling more desperate, more frantic with every passing second. And when he found no sign of life at all in that room, he pulled out his phone and called her.
‘Damn it, Helia, pick up!’
But it went straight to voicemail.
It was obvious what had happened. He could feel it in his bones. In the silence.
Helia had left. She had said goodbye, and now she was gone.
He dropped onto the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees, head hanging. If she didn’t want to be reached he had to respect that, but it didn’t stop the worry that was breaking him.
Was she okay? What if something happened to her?
She was the Queen. If anything had happened he would know. He told himself to hang on to that thought.
When she was ready, they would talk. When she was ready, he would lay out the terms of a new agreement.
Except he couldn’t. He refused to be dictated to, but this time Helia had seized control. This time Helia had decided the terms, just as he had been doing before.
He curled his hands into fists. Of course she was unhappy. He had made her that way.
Vasili felt numb. Dead inside. As if a black hole had opened inside him, sucking away all the joy, all the happiness, leaving him empty. With a pounding headache.
‘What have I done?’ he whispered to the empty room.
Helia looked out of the window of the small mountain cabin. Filtered green-hued light poured into the modest lounge. Tall, lush trees stood on all sides of the little dwelling. There wasn’t another person in sight. She was alone. As she had been for days.
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.’
Vasili closed his own folders. He couldn’t see anything in them anyway.
‘You know, there have been many things I have disagreed with you on,’ said Andreas. ‘But throughout your rebellions and your disregard of our traditions, none of your sins has been as egregious as this.’
‘Watch yourself, Andreas. I’m willing to take your advice, but you are very close to overstepping,’ Vasili growled.
‘I may have my own thoughts on your queen, but neither of you deserves this—and the Kingdom doesn’t deserve a king lost in misery.’
‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you miss her,’ said Vasili.
‘Perhaps I do.’ Andreas stopped at the door. ‘I am a traditionalist, but my concern had always been for what is best for the throne. And in the end, even if we disagreed, Queen Helia proved those concerns unwarranted. You’re not the only one who’s had time to think.’
Vasili scrubbed his hands down his face when the door softly clicked shut. Yanking on his desk drawer, to store away the files on his table, he saw an envelope slide forward.
His father’s letter.
He picked it up and closed the drawer, turning it over in his hand. He was already in torment—what was a little more? If there was ever a time to read the words of a man who had never cared for much, it was now.
Vasili pulled the letter free and unfolded it, seeing the familiar scrawl. He could almost picture his father with his black fountain pen in hand.
He began to read...
My dearest Vasili,
How I wish you’d never have to read this letter...
Of course he had—because if everything had gone to plan, Leander would have been in this chair.
...I know you will read those words and think I have written this because I never wished for you to be King, and that is my own fault, but the truth is that I wish you still had your brother. That you did not have to be alone.
I mentioned this in my previous letter, but I fear, even as I write that you may not have read the words and that is undoubtedly my fault.
I have many regrets in life, Vasili, but perhaps you are my greatest. I regret that I put the crown before you. I saw every day what my choice did to you. You see, I was deluded into thinking that this throne was the most important thing. That everything else was secondary. Including my family. Including anything as frivolous as happiness. That withholding affection and raising you both to put duty first would create strong leaders. Kings.
I don’t want you to make the same mistakes, Vasili. Learn from mine. Do not repeat them and become like me, an old man on his deathbed seeing with clarity for the first time and filled with regret.
You are strong, son. Perhaps the strongest of us all. You stood up for yourself, for what you wanted and believed in. As much as it irritated me, I admired you for it so much more. This is how I know you will be a strong king. A good king.
This throne is a lonely place, son, so find yourself a queen who will not just be what Thalonia needs, but what you need first.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this enough, and I’m sorry it comes in two letters, but I love you, Vasili. I would stand over your crib every night and marvel at just how much it was possible to love something so little and so precious.
I know it is too late to say all of this, but I am sorry, son.
I love you and believe in you.
With regret for destroying the first letter his father had left him roiling in his belly, Vasili read through this one to his father’s signed-off scrawl and then tossed it aside. He propped his elbows on the table, resting his forehead against his laced fingers.
He could have read those words that he’d so wanted to hear a year ago. Could have known he had been loved. And it was his own fault that he hadn’t, because he’d been so hurt and angry.
There was so much hurt in his family. That was their true legacy. Vasili couldn’t even find it in himself to be angry any more. A letter did not make up for twenty-nine years of rejection, but it did show him a man lost in his misery. In the wrong choices.
Just as he had made the wrong choices.
Vasili had the perfect queen and he realised that he loved her with a viciousness. She was exactly what he needed. She had been from the start.
So now he sat at a crossroads. He could wallow in all that he had lost and wall his heart off permanently—because no one would touch it as Helia had—and then he would become yet another soulless king. Or he could fight the fear. Find the bravery he had been blessed with to rebel, but use it to go after the woman he loved. The woman who loved him back. Who had changed his life.
And just like at the start of all this madness, there was no real choice. Because the only right answer was to choose Helia.