Page 248 of Between Two Kings

She had tried to do the right thing. And she had failed. “I’m so sorry, Leo.”

He closed his eyes as if to block her out. “I don’t need an apology.”

“Then what do you need?” She shouldn’t have asked. Because she already knew the answer.

“You.”

The strands of Tem’s morality had been fraying for a long time. They were breaking now.

Leo’s body called to her. She saw his pulse beating in his neck—the way his fingers flexed around his whiskey glass, accentuating his veins. She had resisted him too long. Tem had thought she could come up with a solution to their problem, that if she bought them enough time, she could solve it. But now, standing here with the object of her crest, she knew she had reached her limit.

Leo opened his eyes. “Tell me not to marry her.”

Time stopped as they stared at each other.

Tem wanted nothing more than to tell him not to marry Evelyn. But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. If she told Leo not to marry Evelyn, the crest would force him to obey. Tem was done making choices for Leo—done trying to dictate his future. The more she did it, the more pain she caused.

Tem shook her head. “It’s your choice to marry her, Leo. I gave you two orders, remember?”

She remembered, even if Leo didn’t. She remembered the two commands she’d given him on the stage at their wedding: I want you to find Evelyn. I want you to choose your future.

“I told you to find her,” Tem whispered. “Anything beyond that was your choice.”

Leo only shook his head. “You sent me away, Tem. Bring me back now. Bring me back to you.”

Tears were forming. She couldn’t stop them. “I can’t make your choices for you anymore, Leo. I just can’t.”

“Then tell me something else, anything, that will make it easier to choose.”

There was only one thing Tem could tell him. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them: “Your father paid Evelyn to leave you.”

Leo froze, his whiskey halfway to his mouth. For a long moment, he simply stood there. Then he whispered, “What?”

“I can’t tell you not to marry her,” Tem said. “But I can tell you that Maximus offered her money, and she took it. It’s why she left in the first place, and it’s why she stayed away.”

Leo stood motionless, stunned into silence.

Tem didn’t dare break it.

It pained her to see Leo hurting. She had just confirmed the very thing he knew in his heart but didn’t want to believe. Tem’s heart broke for him. To know that his partner had left him for money was a horrible, awful truth. She wanted to fix it—to patch the wound and stop the bleeding.

“At least she came back,” Tem whispered.

“She didn’t.”

“Of course she did.”

Leo looked at her, his eyes finally focusing. “She didn’t come back for me, Tem. She came back for this.” He threw his arms wide, encapsulating the room.

Tem understood what he meant—that Evelyn had only returned when it was clear she was returning to the newly crowned king. Little did she know the state of the kingdom and the status of the bloodletting. No one could have predicted that.

“She wants the bloodletting to continue. It’s all she cares about.”

Tem opened her mouth, but Leo wasn’t done.

“I knew.” He shook his head. “I knew a long time ago—when I saw how she acted after I told her I freed the basilisks.”

“How did she act?”