Chapter 18
The Heir
The entire chamber went silent for a breath
before Anastasia screamed in indignation. “You can’t name your
bastard your heir.”
“I can, I will, and I have.”
“But, he’s a bastard,” she screeched.
His father smiled at Aleksi, who still was
not certain he had heard him right. “Aleksandr is my son, and I may
not have been married to his mother, but I loved her, and she loved
me.”
Aleksi sat back. It was the first time his
father had ever even mentioned his mother. Somehow, hearing that he
was born of love, not mere lust, mended another small part of the
hole in his heart where he had buried his mother.
“And,” his father said as he slowly turned
back around to face Anastasia, “he is the only person in my
immediate family who has acted, as Princess Sahar so succinctly put
it, in an honorable and princely manner.” He pivoted back to
Aleksi, who sat taller with his father’s praise. “Even as a stable
boy, he always made me proud, and will make me more so as a good
and honorable king.”
“King Asad,” Anastasia whined. “How can you
sit there and allow this travesty? Surely you can see that my
father has been touched in the head by his illness?”
“I see a man who loves his son, and a son who
has earned that love and more,” King Asad told her. “I see a king,
a good king, whose entire family, but for this son, has conspired
against him, have tried to murder him, not for the sake of his
kingdom, but for their own vanity and greed.” He gave her a
withering glare. “In truth, when he asked for my opinion on this, I
encouraged him to name Aleksandr successor to his throne.”
Aleksi sat speechless, unable to do more than
nod his appreciation to King Asad, who dipped his head in
acknowledgment.
Anastasia stood, her face the same
pomegranate hue of her gown. “I do not have to stand for this,” she
shrilled. “My mother, your counselors, they will never allow this
aberration.”
“Your mother and her co-conspirators are
already prisoners in my palace,” their father told her. “I sent
word back to my chief counselor days before I arrived here.”
“Well, I, you…”
“You and your mother have lost your palace
coup.” Queen Oona spoke for the first time, her voice as calm and
serene as her face, and no less forbidding because of it. “I
suggest you take your father’s more than generous offer of exile
and pack yourself and your prince off to his city, before his
family hears of your disgrace and disallows your marriage.”
Aleksi couldn’t help but grin as Anastasia
huffed out of the chambers, blowing hot air from her cheeks as she
waited impatiently for Brawn to slide open the bolt. Once she was
gone, Brawn stood sentry at the door and Aleksi’s father stood
before him.
“Do you accept my offer, my son? Will you
return to our home as my heir and successor to be trained in the
art and politics of ruling a kingdom?”
Aleksi glanced at Sahar, who sat beaming at
him. She’d been right about his father, and equally right about
him. He was a stubborn, arrogant ass. But she’d also called him
good, honorable, and princely. He vowed then and there to prove her
right. To prove his father right in choosing him. His heartache of
regret was that Sahar had not chosen him to be her husband. That
she would not be his queen.
He stood and clasped his father’s forearm. “I
accept, Father,” he said. “My only condition is that I remain here
until the matter of a war is settled between King Asad and King
Ox.”
His father clasped his arm tighter. “Of
course, Aleksandr. A king must hold to his alliances.”
Sahar sat in bemusement as everyone in the
chambers, including Brawn, stepped up to congratulate Aleksi and
Maksimillian. She was glad for Aleksi. Thrilled, actually. Proven
right in a way even she hadn’t dreamed of. As for herself, she
would never be more than a memory to him. She had lost her chance
of loving him, of him ever learning to love her. She had chased him
away and into the arms of Ursula, who had been smart enough to
accept his marriage proposal when he was nothing more than a king’s
bastard to the world.
Ursula would make him a good wife, the wife
he wanted, a wife of strong body and easy temper, but she would
never love him as Sahar had, as Sahar did—this she knew down to her
marrow. She knew she loved him, and, she realized, she had almost
from the moment she’d met him. Her pride and stubbornness had kept
her from admitting her love, even to herself.
She’d been so set in her mind that love had
to be a certain way that she had been willfully blind when it came
to her as an arrogant, strutting stallion who teased her,
challenged her, and called her his tigress. She dared not admit it
to him now that he would be king. He would think his change in
fortune was the reason for her accepting him.
She was too late. He was betrothed to
another.
As if reading her thoughts, Aleksi turned to
her, his head cocking slightly. She stood and walked across the
room to him with a shaky smile. “Congratulations, Aleksandr.”
“Thank you, princess.”
He dipped his head, and that shock of
sun-kissed hair fell over his forehead. She started to reach out
and push it up, and then stopped her hand in midair. His brown eyes
darkened to earthy loam and he took her hand in his and kissed the
backs of her fingers.
“Thank you for what you said to my father,”
he told her, still holding her hand in his. His big, strong hand
that knew her body more intimately than she did.
“I spoke the truth,” she said, slowly pulling
her hand from his.
He dropped his hand and flexed his fingers.
“It gladdens me that you think so.” His voice was low and
caressing…and confusing.
“Ursula has chosen well for her husband,” she
said.
He cocked his head. “Yes,” he agreed, and
managed to say it without gloating. “She has chosen the best of
men.”
Sahar swallowed past the lump in her throat.
“You will both do well, as a king and a wife,” she said, her voice
cracking.
Aleksi quirked his brows. “We will both do
our best, I’m certain.” He reached out and tucked a stray curl
behind her ear. “Sahar, I…”
She started to lean her cheek into his palm,
and then she stepped back, away from his touch. He may not want
Ursula the way he wanted Sahar, but she was not going to play the
wanton.
“I must go,” she told him, though she had
nowhere she needed to be other than alone with her tears and
regrets. He would marry Ursula. Sahar’s own stubborn idiocy had
kept her from seeing what was right in front of her, had kept her
from deserving his hand in marriage, and what she wanted most in
this world, his love.
She took another step back, and that was when
she realized that every person there had been watching them and
listening to them. She turned on her heels and fled the
chambers.
Aleksi’s first instinct was to go after
Sahar, to chase her down and shake her, or kiss her, until she told
him what was going on in that beautiful, maddening head of hers. He
ran a hand back through his hair, his throat catching as he
recalled how she had started to reach up to push his hair back, and
then stopped.
She had started to say and do several things
before fleeing the chambers that had him wracking his brain and
shaking his head, including her congratulations on Ursula’s and
Pyotr’s betrothal, which had not been officially announced yet, but
he wasn’t surprised she knew. News traveled fast in a palace.
He wondered how long it would take for news
of his change in status to be common knowledge, and figured the
odds of it staying a secret until the feast tomorrow eve were slim
to none. In fact, he would wager every gold piece in his purse that
Anastasia was even now spreading her venomous version of what had
transpired in King Asad’s council chambers. Another new reality of
his changed life was that winning or losing those eighty and two
gold pieces would neither make nor break him, not anymore. As a
wealthy prince, he was on even footing with Sahar now. Whether that
would make a difference to her seemed to be out of his hands, and
he wasn’t certain he’d want it to.
“Aleksandr.”
Aleksi turned from the closed door he had
been staring at, the door she had practically run out of, to King
Asad.
“Stay,” the king said. “Our allies’
emissaries will be joining us soon. If you are to learn to be a
king, you should stay for the war council.”
“Of course.” Aleksi took the seat offered by
his father’s side.
Asad’s son, Asim, stayed in his seat as his
mother, Queen Oona, stood and kissed her husband on his cheek.
Aleksi didn’t miss how the king held onto his queen’s hand until
their fingers slipped apart as she moved away from the table, or
the look of pure adoration on his face as he watched the graceful
sway of her skirts disappear through the door. The king grinned,
unabashed and unapologetic as he leaned back on his seat, and
Aleksi felt a stab of jealousy pierce his chest. To be able to love
a woman so openly, so freely, so completely.
And to have her love you back.
The door opened, and Brawn escorted ten and
six men, all in richly embroidered robes denoting their importance,
into the chambers. Aleksi’s father introduced him to the group,
who, one by one explained who they represented and why they had
allied with Asad over the Ox. Each emissary informed the council of
any new developments and discussed what was to be done.
“The Ox knows how outnumbered he is by now,”
the emissary to the Oryx said. “He would be a fool to insist on
waging a war he can’t win.”
“True enough,” Asad agreed. “But my
experience with the Ox has proved him to be a fool of the greatest
order. This war of his is nothing more than a grudge match over
twenty years in the making. I don’t believe he cares how many
others would die, as long as he could cause me and my queen
pain.”
“What if this grudge match could be settled
without a war?” Aleksi offered. “What if the Wolf and I finished
our fight, which the Ox is using as an excuse to wage his war, and
settled it between us, man to man?”
“No.” His father was adamant. “You can’t.
You’re to be my successor. You can’t put yourself in such
danger.”