Page 24 of King's Heir of Hate

But it had been followed by that slow-dawning understanding that, once again, he was going to pretend none of it had happened. He was going to pretend it had been a forgettable drunken night.

He was going to carry on exactly as he always had.

Esme had been forced to go through the painful process of finally—finally—accepting that her life with him was over. That there was no future. That no matter how many times he’d once told her he loved her, safe across an ocean from here, or how often she thought that really, he still did, it didn’t matter.

He didn’t want to. And he would act as if he didn’t into the grave.

She’d finally accepted that she really and truly couldn’t change him. That this was a doomed enterprise, it was time to cut her losses, and she’d be better off out there without him.

Esme had started imagining what that might look like. She’d been, if notexcited, ready.

But now, sitting in his bedchamber all alone, Esme understood that she’d been lying to herself. She didn’t simplycareabout Tadeo. She hadn’t really accepted that he didn’t love her the way she wanted him to—she’d simply accepted the fact that it was going to end and there was nothing she could do about it.

She had been head over heels in love with him since the moment she’d laid eyes on him in that Boston restaurant ten years ago.

Nothing had ever changed that love. Not the way he’d ripped her heart out of her chest a year after that first meeting. Not the way he stomped on what was left of it repeatedly during theiragonizingly public—and so deeply fake—courtship. Not the way he’d broken the remaining pieces beyond repair at their cold, heartless wedding.

Not the past seven years of cold duty and quiet exile.

Not even her own acceptance that it was far past time to stop pretending that it could ever be something he wouldn’t allow it to become.

Not even now, pregnant with his child, naked in his bed, alone.

Esme had loved him all along. She loved him still.

A big breath seemed to come from deep inside her then, not sure if it was a sigh or a sob. She took that as a sign to go. She got up from the bed and looked around for her chemise, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

The palace was not the place to be wandering around naked—that was surely against protocol—so she pulled the coverlet from his bed, wrapped it around herself, then made her way back through the antechamber that happily did not contain a mistress and into her own bedroom. It was set up very much like his was, though her four-poster had a canopy and her fireplace had a mantel festooned with lovely objects that she could tell at a glance were priceless.

She went and sat in front of the fire, though it wasn’t lit. She stared into the cold hearth.

“I love him,” she whispered into the uncaring bedchamber around her that must have heard too many confessions to count. Maybe she’d accepted that she always would, but she wasn’t sure if she’d really understood, until this moment, that she had never really intended to divorce him no matter what daydreams she’d let herself have about other lives without him.

Because surely she could have divorced him herself at any time if she’d truly been ready to leave him. In fact, she couldhave changed the course of their relationship at any time, but she never had.

She could have declined his courtship. Her parents would not have forced her. Esme liked to bang on about responsibility, pandering to her people, and giving them what they wanted. But was that really what she’d done?

Or was this what she’d wanted all along—to be near him, no matter how?

Because she might not have him the way she wanted him, but she had him just the same.

Esme knew he hadn’t touched another woman in the time they’d been married. He’d told her that much, drunkenly, the night of his father’s funeral.

Now, all she could think was that it was a shame. All those years of celibacy for both of them, and for what?

When they could have been doing this the whole time. Though he wouldn’t want that, she knew. Because Tadeo liked to play his games, but he couldn’t keep his distance from her when sex was involved.

He’d proved that back in Boston in that house of his in Beacon Hill.

The truth was that it had never beensexbetween them. It had never been as simple as arelease, ora little bit of fun, or whatever people liked to claim sex was—or should be—these days. These were conversations that made Esme think the people having them had never had the kind of sex that she and Tadeo did.

Life-altering. Earth-shattering. Absolutely catastrophic in all the best ways, and maybe in some not-so-great ways, too.

But there was no pretending that the things they did to each other didn’t change them both. Even Tadeo had never denied that.I love you, he would whisper while he was deep inside her, his hands in her hair and his mouth against her cheek, her neck,her mouth.I love you, Esme, he would murmur as they drifted off to sleep, fused together like some kind of Gordian knot. He had denied he’d said those things, but never the passion that had prompted him to say them. His contention was always that the kind of passion that ignited between them was a liability and he could not allow it to derail his monarchy.

She blew out a breath and pulled that coverlet tight around her. As she did, she accepted another truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to sit with.

Esme didn’t want to divorce him. She didn’t want to raise their baby in this environment of cold distance and responsibility and no love.