Page 38 of King's Heir of Hate

“What complaints can you possibly have to make?” he demanded. He had dressed in an identical suit to the one he’d worn when he’d jumped into the lake, she noticed. His uniform. Always elegantly subdued, contained. “No one is cruel to you. I maintain you in the finest style. I am endlessly courteous to you in public, and recently, in private, we—”

It was possible, Esme thought then, that she was less in control of her emotions than she’d thought.

“First of all,” she said, getting to her feet and scowling right back at him, “you seem to have forgotten who I am. It’s not simply a case of you not knowing me well, it’s that you seem to be laboring under the misconception that you picked me up at a roadside stand on the way to the Cape.”

That muscle in his jaw flexed. “I have no such misconception.”

“Do you not? Are you sure?” She drew herself up to her full height and gazed at him with all the centuries of her ancestors in her bones. “I am Princess Esme, of Clarebonne, only child and heir to my father’s throne. You cannot keep me in style or at all. I keep myself.” She shook her head at him. “I neverneededyou, Tadeo. Ichoseyou. Even when you told me that you would court me coldly and marry me bleakly, I still chose you. I’m choosing you today as well.”

And maybe she’d needed to remind herself of that, too.

“I do not understand why you insist on making all of this an amateur theatrical hour,” Tadeo threw at her darkly.

But his blue eyes were wild and stormy, she could see. Filled with what she knew were feelings, though she was certain he would deny that if she pointed it out.

“I do it to wound you,” she told him sweetly. “That could be my only aim, of course. I’m certain that between the two of us, with all our education and life experience, we couldn’t possibly come up with another reason why a woman would choose a man.”

“And how dare you suggest that I don’t know who you are,” he continued, and Esme wasn’t sure if he was pretending she hadn’t spoken or he really hadn’t heard her. Another indication that he was not the ice floe he pretended he was. “I have been handed dossiers prepared about you since you were a child. I know that your favorite color is pink. That you apparently like to paint, but only on historic walls. I know that you create relationships with every single person you meet.” His eyes blazed blue fire. “And you think that makes you better than other people.”

“Not better,” Esme corrected him, though her pulse had picked up. “Just open to other people. It’s not the same thing.”

“You are caring, compassionate, and kind,” he told her in the same tone, but he did not sound particularly complimentary as he thundered this at her from across his office. “These are all reasons that I chose you to be my queen even after the debacle of Boston.”

“Was the debacle with us that whole year?” she mused. “Or did it come back with you after you went home that summer?”

Tadeo looked like he wanted to answer that, but didn’t. He pushed on. “I’m fully aware of who you are. I simply do not need nor want to immerse myself in the things that you think are necessary for a relationship. I don’t even know why you insist upon it. I watched you build relationships with every staff member you’ve ever had. You treat them like family. What do you need with me?”

Esme blew out a breath, suddenly less interested in this fight. Because it was always a fight, and she always lost. Every time, she lost.

“I don’t know how else to tell you that I love you,” she said quietly. “Just as I don’t know why that’s meaningless to you.”

Once again, he looked as if he was coming apart at the seams. As if she was piercing his flesh with knives instead of standing across from him and keeping her hands to herself.

“It’s not meaningless at all,” he bit out, and he sounded…furious, she thought. She was taken aback. He sounded something likelivid. “I just find it psychotic.”

“Psychotic,” she repeated, stunned.

“Look at what love has wrought in this kingdom alone,” he seethed at her, not quite shouting. Not quite, but close. “My mother claimed to love my father. So deeply, so desperately, that she then shared that love with every man she encountered. My father claimed he loved her too, so very much so that he enmeshed his kingdom in the dirt and grime of her exploits, tainting our family name.”

“Just because they loved badly doesn’t make love, itself, bad,” she managed to get out, though her throat felt tight.

“What use is love?” he demanded, and he was definitely louder then. “We have something far more enduring. The legacy of both of our kingdoms and how we will usher them into the next era. Why must you always push for more than that?”

“We arepeople, Tadeo. Human beings. We are made of flesh and bone, we bleed, we cry.” Even he cried, she thought, though she doubted he would admit it. “Why shouldn’t we feel what everyone else feels?”

“I don’t want to feel any of this,” Tadeo told her starkly then, with all of that stormy fury and an undercurrent of something a lot like grief beneath it. “I tried to tell you this in Boston.”

“You were lying,” Esme threw at him.

But he only shook his head, and she saw there was something grim in his gaze. “I wasn’t lying. I was coming to my senses. As I’m doing now, too.”

She remembered this part. That tone. That distance in his eyes.

It took everything she had not to start shaking, right there, the way she had then.

“Don’t you see?” Esme realized that she was pleading with him, but she was unable to stop herself. She wasn’t sure she reallywantedto stop herself. “Your parents’ relationship isn’t you. It doesn’t have to beus. We can make whatever we want out of our life. Out of this reign of ours.” She blew out a breath and took a step closer to him. “You remember what it was like. I know you do. When we would lie in bed, drunk on feeling, imagining how beautiful we could make this life we got to share?”

“I do remember it,” he told her, ice and fury. “And I want no part of it.”