Chapter 18 #2
Storm-filled eyes snapped up to his. “You couldn’t possibly understand.” The words were intended to cut through to the bone. “But she did. And she chose them anyway.”
This wasn’t petty family bitterness. This was a man who’d wrapped his pain in armor and worn it so long he couldn’t remember what it was like to be without it.
Antonis appeared to relax—a little. “You want to understand? Fine. I’ll give you the truths your mother never did.”
Dimitrios sank into his seat, bracing himself.
“I was a commander for the King’s Army when Minos Vidalatos and I became friends.
We drank, we whored, we woke in places we didn’t recall entering in the first place…
” Antonis paused to laugh, then shook his head.
“We were stupid young men, as all young men are. This was long before I realized our differences, you understand. He spoke of conquest and glory. I spoke of peace like it was wisdom, and he’d laugh. ”
Antonis wagged a finger in the air. “And still, I didn’t truly see him for the man he was. Not until Maria.”
Maria… Dimitrios knew that name. It’d been penned into a page tracking the Vidalatos genealogy. “My grandmother?”
“Before she was queen consort, she and I loved each other—or so I believed.”
“You and Minos loved the same woman?”
A dark laugh burst from his chest. “Love? No. Minos didn’t marry her for love.
He married her to become untouchable. Maria was from a prominent and influential family, with ties that would eventually elevate Perean’s standing in the world.
And because he still imagined himself my friend, he waited until my back was turned to ask her father for her hand.
I’d gone home to mourn my father’s passing and settle his affairs, and they were married before I returned. ”
Antonis waved a hand in Dimitrios’s direction. “No need to look heartbroken on my behalf. I eventually met and married the real love of my life, and we had many good years together.” Something in his gaze hollowed. “I lost her…in childbirth.”
Dimitrios’s heart seized, and he leaned forward to stare into the fire, begging the burst of images to stay behind the barrier he’d erected.
But they were still too strong, and the worst night of his life flashed through his memory, drowning him in the blood and chaos and the small, unmoving body of his son.
Antonis’s voice washed over him like a black, oily shadow. “Yes. We have that in common, if nothing else. I know that pain well. If not for my wife, I might have walked away and retired here on my family’s lands, a bitter, angry man.”
Dimitrios cut his gaze back to the old man. “Bitter and angry? You? I can’t imagine it.”
Antonis lowered his chin and peered past the ridge of his browbone. “Try harder.”
Then, he rose from his chair and paced a slow circle near the fire, one hand trailing the edge of the mantle. “I stayed for my country, if for nothing else. I was a reasonable man—too reasonable to remain a soldier, as it turned out.”
“You left military service?” Dimitrios asked.
“I did. My mind was better suited to foreign policy and diplomacy, and I did something no one else had managed in over a century—I brokered a trade agreement with Soterra, our greatest rival.
“Perean’s harbors were thriving. Castona Bay had become a jewel of the eastern sea—merchants from distant kingdoms arrived with spices, silks, carved ivory, and gems. Our ports bustled.
Our people prospered. All we needed was peace.
With Soterra, we could share resources, open new routes, and stabilize the region for generations. ”
Dimitrios leaned forward. “What happened?”
“Minos happened.” The name cracked from his lips like a whip.
Antonis turned, eyes lit with old fury. “He didn’t want to share borders—he wanted to expand them.
My success was nothing short of a threat to his plans.
The treaty would have shifted the balance of power, given more wealth to the provinces, more voice to the people…
and it would’ve made me the man who brought peace. Not him.”
He spat his next words. “Minos did what small men do when they fear being overshadowed—he sabotaged it. Quietly. Carefully. He spread lies about Soterra’s intentions. Whispered rumors that they meant to use the treaty as a way to take us from within. Called me na?ve. Called me a traitor.”
Dimitrios’s stomach twisted. “He accused you of treason?”
“Worse,” Antonis said bitterly, “he let others do it. He leaked just enough to let the council tear me apart on his behalf. He let their voices damn me while his hands stayed clean.” Antonis’s gaze cut through the flickering shadows.
“Then he manufactured a border skirmish—a patrol incident. Blood was spilled. The treaty collapsed. And I became the fool who’d trusted the enemy. ”
He paused, nostrils flared. “My reputation, my life's work, crumbled overnight. Decades of service, gone.”
Silence stretched thick.
Finally, Antonis muttered, low and rough, “He crushed my life’s work not because it was wrong, but because it was mine.”
Rena had warned Dimitrios about this hatred for the Vidalatos name, and he’d been prepared to defend his bloodline. However, doing so would be in defense of a ghost who robbed Antonis of his legacy. A king who discredited his own friend, not for their shared love of country, but for ego.
For such hatred to stretch into every generation, what could he possibly say to heal this wound?
Antonis continued as if lost in memory. “He took my voice, my influence, and my future…and the world applauded him for it.” He met Dimitrios’s stare.
“Now you understand why I can’t trust him or any that come after.
Vidalatos isn’t merely a name”—he fisted the air between them—“it’s power at any cost. Stolen glory. ”
Dimitrios shook his head. “I can understand your hatred for Minos, and given Orestis’s machinations, I have no love for him either… But, Mihail? He wasn’t like them. He wanted to unite our lands.”
Antonis’s face reddened in the next heartbeat and was Dimitrios’s only warning. “He took Pandora from me! He hid her away like some prize. Is that not hoarded power? Was that not control?”
He didn’t know, did he? After all these months of gossip and meetings and revelations, Antonis Nicolea didn’t know the full truth.
Dimitrios rose, careful to remain non-threatening. “My father endured thirty-eight years of torture. He died for her. For me. Not one scream, not one word to give us away. Does that sound like a selfish man to you?”
Antonis stared for one heartbeat.
Two.
Three.
“A bedtime story,” the old man muttered.
“The bloody table and torture chamber I tore apart would disagree.” He ignored Antonis’s flinch.
“Your enemy isn’t wearing the Vidalatos name anymore.
He’s across our borders, quietly whispering to our lords.
The only reason he hasn’t outright attacked us is because he knows that we know he was just as complicit in patricide as Orestis was.
An overt war would expose his secret and burn him politically—he’ll lose every ally he’s managed to gain. ”
Antonis stiffened. “Say I believe you…that doesn’t forgive Pandora’s secret. She married the crown prince and said nothing. She became pregnant, and her solution was to run away. She should have come home where she belonged.”
Pain shot through Dimitrios’s jaw as he gnashed his teeth together. “Maybe she would have, had she believed you’d see her as a daughter, not a disappointment.”
The old man’s nostrils flared.
Dimitrios was beyond keeping the peace, and unlocked the cage that held back every word he’d swallowed before.
“Hold my blood against me; that’s fine. Honestly, I’d rather the world see me as my father’s son.
I know what loyalty looks like. Sacrifice.
What it costs to choose love over power.
He bled for my mother. He died for her. And you— You lecture me about family. ”
Dimitrios bowed his head—not in deference, but in parting. “For my mother’s sake, I’ve stayed my tongue. But I am done apologizing for the blood I carry. I’m done begging for scraps of respect from men who never earned mine.”
He turned for the door. Got halfway there. Then, softly—without facing back, he said, “And for what it’s worth, Lord Nicolea...if I become king, and you ever need help—” He paused. “It’s because I am my mother’s son that I’ll already be on my way. Whether you like it or not.”
Then he walked out, shoulders squared, the weight of entire generations off his shoulders.
The following evening, he was barely off his horse when a squire handed him a folded parchment, sealed with the Nicolean sigil. There was no greeting, no signature, but he knew who had penned the missive. Antonis Nicolea wanted the last word and had used a raven to do it.
The inquisitor’s ruling isn’t the only way to your crown.
By law and with a majority vote from the provinces, you can take your rightful place.
Call Court back to the palace if you must, but know one thing before you do: they will pick Alexandra.
She’s spent years winning them over. You’re nothing but an outsider.
Earn my vote, and maybe I’ll help you earn the others.
Dimitrios read and reread the words until they were imprinted in his mind, then folded the parchment.
Then, to no one at all, he said, “One down.”