Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
I T TOOK A DONIS nearly two days to clear his schedule of important matters so that he could travel to Ephyra.
That Jemima wasn’t traveling with him—and more importantly, that she wasn’t happy with his plan, had become clear to his and her aides and the palace staff. Not that she turned cold on him in front of so many prying eyes. She simply didn’t have the effusive warmth that she radiated toward him so easily, anymore.
It was akin to sun’s warmth and light not touching his skin for months.
Then there was the fact that the palace PR team hadn’t made an official announcement of the pregnancy yet.
He knew how much the media, and Thalassans themselves who had been deprived of big celebrations, would be overjoyed at the announcement. But he couldn’t postpone it until he figured out how to fix the mess they were in because his sweet wife had already begun showing.
In the end, he’d claimed it was a matter of national security that he travel to Ephyra immediately in front of the crown council, had been thankful that Jemima hadn’t betrayed her misgivings in front of them or his mother, had kissed her soft cheek when she’d been in deep slumber like a thief stealing something that didn’t belong to him.
The idea of her staying behind in Thalassos even if he left…both confused and skewered him. How could she say that, when in the same breath, she claimed to love him?
It was only as he waited for Queen Calista’s attendants to bring his brother into the stark, hospital-like room that Jemima’s words struck him with the force of a hammer hitting the anvil.
A coward , she had called him.
Burying his face in his hands, he groaned. Because she was right and he realized that only now, when he was truly facing the prospect of losing everything he had.
The last three months of his life—ruling Thalassos with her by his side while building a bond together—had been his happiest, his best.
And yet, he had also lived it with the fear that Thalassos or Jem or his happiness weren’t his own and might be snatched from him at any moment. So, being the coward he was, he had decided that he would give it up at the first obstacle instead of facing the pain of losing it all. Instead of fighting for it.
And she was also right that if he left Thalassos behind, he would only be a half man.
But even that wasn’t as ghastly as the idea of returning to his old life without her.
His queen, his wife, his… love .
The quiet acknowledgment flooded him with a rush the likes of which he’d never known. He felt like he was diving from the highest cliff, his heart thundering with life in his throat, his entire body abuzz with the thrill of being alive.
His hands shook as he ran them through his hair, every cell and sinew and bone in him purring with the need to go to her.
Abruptly, he shot to his feet just as Adamos, leaning heavily on a walking stick, walked into the room.
Shock pummeled Adonis at the sight of his older brother, his love for him a suffocating anvil on his chest.
His brother looked… wrecked . Inside out.
Dark bruises shone on his rugged face, each bigger and more colorful than the last. Then there were all the stitches for numerous cuts. One arm in a sling, his stride crooked, his hip bent, he looked like he’d barely survived the crash.
Only his dark eyes—as gray as the stormy sky Adonis had left behind in Thalassos, shone with a forceful intensity that Adonis remembered.
Reaching him, Adonis gingerly hugged his brother.
With a harsh laugh that didn’t sound quite normal, Adamos wrapped a thick, corded arm around his back. “I might look fragile. But I will not break, Adonis, if you squeeze me too tight.”
Fighting the sudden onslaught of prickling tears, Adonis pulled back. “I’ve come with the intention of taking you back to Thalassos. To give you your throne back.”
“Has that intention changed now?” Adamos asked, his thick brows tugging together. Ever the shrewd prince their father had molded him to be. And he knew his younger brother well.
“I have second thoughts now, yes,” Adonis said honestly.
Jemima’s words tickled at the back of his mind, like a song constantly unspooling wonder in him. So many things falling into place finally. All because she’d had the courage to speak the truth for him, to him.
You’re a king no matter who you were born to…
She had seen so clearly, so well. And in return, he hadn’t even acknowledged her admission.
Christos, he wasn’t just a coward but a cruel one at that…
“Also, I realized I should take your wishes into consideration,” Adonis said. He took a deep breath and searched for the right words. “I do not want anything that is rightfully yours, Adamos.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Adamos replied with an impatient huff. “Although it seems you have married the woman who should have been my queen.”
“She is mine,” Adonis said hotly.
Adamos, the cunning bastard, let out laughter that sounded like the boom of a cannon.
“The throne might be yours but you don’t deserve her.”
A flicker of shame danced in his brother’s eyes. “No. I never did.”
Adonis gave voice to the deepest desire he had hidden away. “But I will not leave Thalassos if you come back either. Until you recover fully, we can keep you and your condition under wraps. When you’re ready to take back the throne, I’ll help the transition and stay. Whatever role you give me, I’d like to continue to serve the crown and Thalassos to my best.”
“I’ve been awake only a few hours but Her Highness of Ephyra,” his brother said, a snappy anger touching his words at the mention of Queen Calista, “has made sure I understood all the things you’ve achieved already in three months.” His brother’s gray gaze pinned Adonis’s, as if they were still boys. As if it were he seeking protection now instead of the other way around. “It is clear, for all of our father’s ramblings, that you’re a far better king that I ever could be, Adonis. And I’m not sure if I have the right to ask this of you but…keep the throne, won’t you? And grant me freedom from the shackles of it.”
Adonis stared at his brother, shock suffusing every inch. “I don’t understand, Adamos.”
“I can’t explain now,” his brother said, massaging his right hip. Pain etched onto his features, distorting them with its cruel fingers. “I’m of no use to myself in my current condition, much less Thalassos. And even before the crash, I began to hate the palace and the crown for all that it stole from me. I…didn’t want it then, and I definitely don’t want it now, Adonis.”
“Is that why Mama summoned me?”
“Yes. She knows her sons well, it seems. She knew you would take up the mantle if I gave it up. She even told me you would make a better king than I ever could.”
“That’s not true,” Adonis said, even as his heart thrummed with joy at the conviction his mother showed him.
“She’s right,” Adamos said, without a flicker of doubt. “I know I have no right to ask this of you, but, Adonis, give me my life back. Even when I make myself known to the world again, there are any number of clauses that we can use to declare me incompetent for the crown.”
“I don’t understand,” Adonis began but Adamos cut him off.
“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.
Uncaring of their avidly watching audience, he pressed his mouth to her temple. When her own shivers abated, she recognized the stiffness in his lean body.
Thoughts pummeled her. What had happened with Adamos? What did it mean that Adonis had arrived alone? And when push came to shove, could she really walk away from the man she loved with every breath?
“Jemima might still hold some misguided affection for you, Aziz, but I do not have the slightest bit of tolerance for you or any man who would threaten her.” Pure steel reverberated in Adonis’s voice. “This is my last official warning to you. If you care at all about the power and wealth you have amassed at Thalassos’s feet, you will respect my queen and my rule. Or I will make sure you’re locked up in some dank, dark prison for treason.”
Her father left, without even a glance in her direction.
The moment he was out of earshot, Jemima jerked away from the man whose arms would bind her, despite her best resistance. Neither did she have the energy to engage in another heartbreaking argument with him. “I’m tired,” she said, walking away from him.
“Not curious about why I return without him, Jem?”
“No,” Jemima said, hardening her heart against the naked want she spied in his eyes. “You left for Ephyra against my wishes, against my advice. Why you return now, alone or otherwise, is not my concern either.”
Hurt reverberated through each word she said but she seemed to have no control over that. It seemed that, after decades of constantly suppressing her every emotion and wish and desire, that particular ability was not in her toolkit anymore.
Neither could she will herself to stop loving him, to stop seeing him as who he truly was.
Walking around her, Adonis planted himself in front of her, his arms coming to clasp her shoulders. While he kept his grip loose, the tension that radiated from him was nearly painful to bear. “Not even if I were to tell you that you were right about everything?” he said. “I do know how much you pride yourself on your wisdom, Jem.”
She raised her gaze to his and begged her composure to stay intact. “At what time during our short relationship have I ever given you the impression that I cared about being right?”
“You were also right that I was being a coward, that I have loved Thalassos with all my heart for so long. But I denied the truth to myself. It was easier that way than to wish for things to be different.”
“And I understand your pain better than anyone, Adonis. But it seems foolish to me to continue the delusion when it doesn’t have to be true, to keep giving yourself that pain when it’s not necessary anymore. When instead, you could choose happiness.”
“Call it a stubborn fool clinging to the past, Jemima. Until now, until you pushed me to see it, I didn’t even recognize the taste of my own happiness. I didn’t recognize the fact that everything I had never wished for, not even in my wildest dreams, was already mine. You are right that if I left Thalassos, I would leave my heart here. But even more than the kingdom, it is you who owns me, Jemima. You own my heart. You claimed it without even asking. Maybe even on that first night when you asked me with such honesty to save Thalassos.”
Tears filled her eyes and flowed down her cheeks. “I was only saving myself. Do not attribute nobility to me that I don’t possess, Adonis. It is only through you and your eyes and your vision that I have come to love Thalassos too.” A hiccup escaped her, all her composure a thing of the past. “When I told you that I loved you, it made no difference to you. You simply walked away, crushing me in the process.”
He pulled her to him then, and her sobs broke through the dam of her control.
She was aware that he had lifted her, again as if she were nothing but a feather made of dreams and wishes, that he was going down a steep set of steps, to a small tower that was used for stargazing, but she couldn’t stop her tears.
By the time he settled down onto a settee with her in his lap, she had soaked his shirt through.
His rough hands clasped her cheeks, forcing her to meet his eyes. “Shh… agapi mou . That’s enough. I told you; your tears unman me like nothing else could. And that they come because of my cowardice, because of my own refusal to see what was right in front of me…it wrecks me through and through. Jemima, please, will you not forgive me? Will you not give me another chance?”
With a gasping breath, Jemima sought control over her tears. “You should not have doubted me or yourself for an instant. When have I ever told you anything but the truth?”
He smiled, but it lacked warmth. “My foolishness had nothing to do with you, Jem. It was all me. I suffused my entire being with rejection and pain, and when happiness danced in front of me, I was blind to it. But now… I will never again make that mistake.”
Sliding her off his lap to the couch, to which she gave a loud protest, he went to his knees in front of her, just like he had done once in front of his mother and the crown council.
He took her hands in his, and kissed each knuckle with such thorough leisure that each press of his lips battered away the fear that had filled her for the last few days. Only his tender touch made her believe this was real, that he was real. And he seemed to know that too.
When he raised his face to her, his blue, blue eyes glittered with emotion that she finally recognized, and craved like air itself.
“I love you with all my heart, my queen. And there is no one I’d rather rule with by my side than you. Your trust, your honesty, your expertise, everything you give me,” he raised her knuckles to his eyes, and Jemima felt her heart flutter about her chest like a bird finally free, “is a benediction that I didn’t know I needed. Be my wife, the mother of my children and my queen, Jem, and I will worship at your feet for the rest of our lives.”
She laughed through the tears blurring her vision again. Smacking him on the shoulder, she slid off the settee into his waiting arms. Ignored his warning growl to be careful. Needing to be enveloped by his warm, muscled strength.
Nothing could stop her from reaching him and touching him to her heart’s content.
“I only wish to be loved by you, Adonis. I want nothing more; you know that, right? Not the crown, not the queendom, not all the riches in the palace. Only you.”
He pulled her close and took her mouth finally. The kiss was slow, even tentative, for a man who punched headlong into deep canyons and terrifying river gorges with nary a thought.
Pushing him onto the thick rug, Jemima straddled his lean hips and stared down at him. “Adamos…how is he?”
Cupping her hips, Adonis stared up at her. “In pain. He begged to be free of the crown, Jem. Insisted that I was the better option for Thalassos.”
“Then Adamos is a better man than I gave him credit for,” she said with a bold imperiousness she had learned from him.
Adonis grinned, his palm stroking her from her neck to her thighs in mesmerizing touches. “Such a harsh queen you are, agapi mou ! I’m afraid to see how I will fare with you.”
Leaning down, she rubbed her breasts against his chest, and kissed his lower lip. “I’m sure you will come up to scratch, Your Majesty, since you have the rest of our lives to prove yourself to me.”
“I will never again give you reason to doubt my love for you, yineka mou . That is a vow this king makes to his queen.”
There was no more to be said after that. Nor did she have enough sense left to. For her king ordered her to impale herself on his thick shaft and Jemima was nothing if not an obedient queen.
Raising the billowing skirts of her dress, she did as he ordered her to. Fingers laced, eyes held, they moved together to a desperate, wanton rhythm, the shimmering future laid out ahead of them imbuing the moment with a rich depth. Head thrown back, Jemima gave herself over to the climb, knowing that she would never be alone ever again.
“Come for me, Queen,” Adonis murmured huskily, his hands stroking every inch of her, his hips pumping away at her as if their connection was the very air he needed.
And soon, he took her to the heights of passion and tumbled her from it. Making sure he caught her in his arms. Over and over again.