Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
Two days of nothing but stifling palace air led Dimitrios to the stables. He might have found solace in the musk of leather tack, manure, hay, and horse, but Nikolas had tagged along and had much to say.
“Are you listening?” Nikolas asked.
Dimitrios, arms folded across the stall’s wooden railing, fought the weight of his head and the sigh building in his lungs.
He just wanted to watch the boy Caius play with the puppies for a while in silence.
He wanted to forget how dozens of his people had been murdered by pirates and that Augustus had slain a man right before his very eyes.
Inside the pen, Caius’s brown hair flopped across his forehead as he tried to control the pups climbing in and out of his lap.
The old stablemaster, Haris, smirked at the scene as he sauntered by. “Have to admit, they’re not terrible-looking mutts.”
Nikolas sighed at the interruption. “We have to discuss Triarius’s execution.”
“This isn’t the time or place to speak of such matters,” Dimitrios said to him, then to Haris, “Do you think we could train the mutts to live inside the palace?”
Caius’s head shot up, eyes and smile wide. “Please!”
The boy had been here every day to visit the hounds, and Dimitrios needed to please at least one person in his life. Besides, he liked the idea of having dogs around. They were loyal, at least, and no one would question them.
“It’s been a while since the palace had pets running around,” Haris said, but shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
Caius jumped to his feet and pumped a fist in the air. “Yes! And I can still visit them?”
Dimitrios chuckled. “You’ll have to name them first.”
“Name who?” Milonia Dardana swept in from behind, her chiton the color of a mint leaf but her scent more like a field of lilacs. A ring of keys jingled from a sash embroidered with laurel leaves.
Caius ran out of the pen. “Momma, he said I can name the puppies!”
The ground shifted beneath his feet. The earth lost its shape, and he stood at the edge of a precipice that had appeared from thin air.
Milonia hugged the boy and kissed the top of his head.
Cruel memory crashed overtop her gentle moment, and he was at Sophia’s bedside, in a room lit by flickering candlelight. The event was chaotic and exciting and he had never been more proud of his wife. Even now, through the pain and exhaustion, flushed and sweaty, she was beautiful and brave.
“We’re going to have a son soon,” she panted, the smile bright on her face. Her eyes alight with the love she already felt for their family.
Dimitrios laughed and squeezed her hand. Her beautiful hand. “A daughter would be welcome, too. She could have your eyes.”
In some distant version of the life he never imagined, Milonia’s dark waves of hair fell forward, several shades darker than Caius’s. They had the same eyes, though. The same slight upturn at the tip of their noses.
But in the past he still clung to with every breath he took, Sophia shook her head. “A son.” Her expression tensed. Another contraction was coming. How much longer could she handle this? “With your hair.” She pushed fingers into his wavy locks. “I love your hair.”
“I love you,” he said and pressed his mouth to her brow, slick with fevered sweat.
She smelled like a soldier in the midst of a bloody battle, but she was still her.
Beneath all this was the crisp sweetness of crushed grapes on her hands, the earthiness of trampled vines on her skin, and the faintest trace of bay laurel and clove in her hair.
The old midwife peered between Sophia’s trembling legs. “It’s almost time.” She motioned for Dimitrios to move. “Get her up. Sit behind her. She needs your support.”
Sophia cried with fresh waves of agony, but she did as instructed. She pushed through the pain wracking her body that now seemed never-ending.
“Again!” the midwife said.
Sophia begged to wait. Dimitrios held her hands and her weight and he implored with her. This was too much. He could see it—he knew when his wife had had too much. She was so tired.
But the old woman refused and promised them it would be over soon. They would have a child. A son or a daughter. They’d be a family.
For this, Sophia bore down through the next wave of pain. She squeezed his hands so hard that his knuckles rubbed together. Then, like a thread pulled to snapping—
Silence.
Stillness.
Sophia went limp against him and she was so so quiet. It was unnatural and strange—he knew that—but her eyes remained open and staring. She was okay. Just tired.
“My love?”
Sophia’s head lolled to the side, off his shoulder to rest against his biceps.
The midwife’s call for help came as if from another world—too distant, too slow, as if the air itself was thickening around him. He knew she was screaming. He knew she was saying something. But all he could hear was silence.
Dimitrios focused on Sophia, on laying her down so she could rest. She just needed rest. Blink, my love, he was thinking, squeezing her shoulders, while at the same time, he was staring down at her and recalling a time when he was a boy.
He’d had a dog who had an accident—a broken neck—and he’d laid the animal on the ground.
Its body had been loose like this. Heavy.
Absent resistance and breath. He had not understood, then, that death could be so quiet.
That it didn’t come with a scream, or a last word, or a chance to say goodbye.
Dimitrios screamed.
And screamed and begged and shook her with cruel, desperate hands.
Others were there now, and there was blood and hurried, whispered instructions.
But Sophia only stared and stared.
Then, as if he’d finally blinked, the midwife…she—
The baby was so small. Limp. Soundless. Bloody and gray. Wisps of hair just like his.
Only feet away, Milonia smoothed Caius’s unruly hair.
“You have a son.” The words grated from Dimitrios’s throat like a blade through armor, and he’d meant it as a question. It didn’t sound like one.
Because this wasn’t a woman he might have someday. This was a woman who already belonged to someone else, with a past he could never touch, and a child he could never claim.
Nikolas cleared his throat and flicked a questioning gaze at Dimitrios, but to Milonia, he said, “I didn’t realize you had a husband.”
Milonia hugged Caius to her side. “Septimus was killed many years ago.”
Caius said, “Momma says he was a great soldier.”
Dimitrios barely heard the boy; he was so intent on Milonia’s face. She could hardly meet his eyes.
He wasn’t doing much better. He couldn’t even drum up a simple “I’m sorry to hear that.” Not that the words helped. There wasn’t a word in the entire world capable of erasing a loss like that.
Milonia smiled down at her son. “We must go.”
As she shuffled him toward the exit, the boy shouted back, “I’ll tell you their names tomorrow.”
Dimitrios nodded and forced words past his tight throat. “I look forward to it.”
The stablemaster started off as well. “You made the boy’s day, Your Majesty. That was very generous of you.”
The honorific took him so aback that Dimitrios could only stare at the man’s retreating back.
Once alone, Nikolas whirled on him. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dimitrios strode outside and squinted into the glaring sunlight.
Nikolas jogged ahead to step into his path, and when Dimitrios didn’t stop, the commander walked backward. “You’ve been undressing that woman with your eyes for weeks. Do you want to explain why you just looked ready to vomit all over her pretty little toes?”
Because, for weeks, Dimitrios had been prying open dead eyes.
For the first time in nearly three years, he thought maybe, just maybe, he was ready to move forward.
Had he known Milonia was a mother, he wouldn’t have allowed those ideas to seep into his subconscious.
It was one thing to consider bringing a woman into his life, but another altogether to consider a woman and her child.
“Neither of those things are true,” Dimitrios finally said.
“No one would blame you if you wanted to dabble with the help.”
Dimitrios halted. “Why do you say such things?”
“But if you’re not, can I?”
“No. Move on. I’m done with this topic.”
They walked side-by-side now, Dimitrios cooler on the heels.
“Augustus Liebenus Triarius,” Nikolas said.
Dimitrios groaned. He’d come out here to get away from that particular subject. Or to, at least, devise a way out of executing the man who’d been… Not a friend, exactly. But a man who mattered desperately to Selene. She would never forgive Dimitrios for this.
“He has to hang,” Nikolas said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear—”
“Then don’t say it.”
“If you want everyone to see you as their king, you have to be the king.”
Dimitrios slowed his steps to look his friend in the eye. “What about Selene?”
“What about her?”
One more wrong word, and Dimitrios was going to punch his closest friend.
Selene was important. She mattered. Maybe not to people like Nikolas, but to the Pereans, the regular citizens, she was the sun and the moon.
To Dimitrios, she was the first person who didn’t look at him like a sad, grieving farmer.
She’d taught him how to move through this foreign court and shielded him from political ruin before he’d even learned the rules.
She’d remained at his side this entire time, never doubting his potential.
Selene would fight every battle for him, and now…
She was going to hate him.
There had to be a way around this execution. There wasn’t a man or woman alive who cared more about saving Selene than that fucking pirate.
Blaze had volunteered to go after Selene, and he had a ship. Except, it was too slow and wasn’t built for the battle they’d face if they caught up to Tristan Thorne.