Page 31 of King's Heir of Hate

“I will tell you this,” her mother said. “The Marisol I knew was a bright light. She was always happy while the rest of us liked to waft about complaining of our boredom and disaffection, as you do. She could make the most tedious afternoon a delight, simply by her presence. And when she fell in love with Hugo of Bellaza, it seemed at first that he made her the happiest she’d ever been.”

Esme looked at her in surprise and her mother nodded. “It was not long after their engagement, I think, that she started to change. She grew quieter. More careful. After a while, there was no sign of the childhood friend I’d known for so long. She had become Queen Marisol.” Luisa looked at Esme then. “And Queen Marisol was the saddest woman I have ever known.”

Esme felt something like an earthquake deep inside her.

“Mother,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m having his baby—”

Luisa’s eyes flashed. “And you owe that babyyou, Esme. My daughter is a bright light herself. Yet every time I see you, the light grows darker and darker in your gaze. Is this what you wish to pass on to your child?” She made a soft noise. “I would tell you that Marisol most assuredly didnotwant that. Yet that is where she ended up. And if I’m not mistaken, the child she loved to distraction takes after his father. Not her. Not the parent who loved him because he was hers, not because he would one day be king.”

Then the music changed and they were interrupted by distant cousins. Luisa squeezed Esme’s arm with her own, kissed her on the cheek, then let her go.

And Esme found herself thinking of nothing else but what her mother had said for the rest of the evening. She kept her professional smile in place. She applauded the bride, who looked like she thought she’d won the Cinderella lottery. She smiled atthe groom, who looked very pleased with himself. She danced more than once with her husband, who she’d once thought would be her own fairy tale, and tried her best to get the sadness out of her eyes.

Whatever her mother had seen. Whatever that meant.

That night, they stayed in a fine old house near the palace, and made love to each other with a ferocity and a depth that made Esme think she might actually weep.

Particularly afterward, where she laid curled up beside him, and had to accept that whatever she thought was happening, it was a certainty thathedid not think making love as part of what they were doing.Hecould be telling himself anything.

He might not even find all of this as beautiful and transformative as she did.

“Are you all right?” he asked in the dark, the two of them so close on the new bed. “You seem…”

But he didn’t finish what he’d been about to say. He kissed her instead. He threw them straight back into that fire of theirs.

Hadn’t he made it clear? He didn’twantto hear the things she had to say. He didn’twantto listen to her, because when he did, he had tofeel.

Esme couldn’t seem to get that out of her head. They flew back to Bellaza and she told herself that her spirits should have been lifted as they descended down into the kingdom. The valley was bursting with wildflowers, all preening beneath that bright spring sun overhead. The lakes and the fields glittered with light and color, and the mountains that ringed the small country were whitecapped and gleaming.

A perfect picture, she thought.Too bad that there’s nothing real beneath it.

At the palace, she felt out of sorts and waved off the hovering staff as she took herself out into the gardens.

The palace gardens were nothing like hers had been at the manor house. They were deliberately and ruthlessly orderly. They stayed in their straight lines and even the happy colors of the spring flowers were very carefully arranged and controlled so that noexuberancecould infect the grounds.

Walking out along the tidy paths made her feel as if her ribs were closing in on her. As if she was being pressed to death on all sides.

Like these gardens were a prison. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

Esme made her way down to the lake at the far edge of the gardens. It was full and deeply blue now that March was coming to an end, gleaming beneath a sun that seemed to think it was already summer. On the far side of the lake, she could see the city skyline, all those lovely old houses mixed in with newer buildings, all of them arranged along the lakefront.

It wouldn’t be long now before there were boats out on the water. Landscape photographers would spend days trying to get the perfect shot to capture the lake and careful gardens with the palace above. It was part of the kingdom’s allure. This fairy-tale palace. Stacked above a high mountain lake with its beautiful gardens spread out beneath an endlessly blue sky.

She didn’t know why the very idea of that perfect image made her want to cry today.

“You were supposed to be in my office a half hour ago to conduct a postmortem on that wedding and any conversations that came out of it,” came Tadeo’s voice from behind her, jolting her out of whatever daydream had claimed her. She’d moved along the lakefront, she realized, and had wandered her way out onto one of the docks. It was clear that he must have done the same, though she hadn’t heard his footfall on the wooden planks.

“As you can see, I have missed that appointment,” was all she said in reply.

What she wanted to say was that she found it rich that when women reported what they’d said and heard at a party it was considered gossip, yet when a man did it, it wasintel. But she suspected he would find that churlish. And emotional.

She was both, but she wasn’t sure she had it in her to fence words the way they usually did.

“Are you all right?” he asked again, the way he had last night, sounding… She wouldn’t sayworried. Or evenconcerned. That was all far too emotional for Tadeo, who liked all the images of his kingdom and his marriage to be aspirational and lovely and had no intention whatsoever of putting the work in on the other side.

“I’m not all right.” She turned to look at him. “I’m tired of your rules, Tadeo. I know why you felt you had to set them up, but it’s just one more way of distancing ourselves from what was actually going on here. What’s been going on here forever.”

He frowned. “The rules are the rules.”