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“What was he doing in Carnelia?”
“The facts are thin at the moment. There was an argument of some sort over a woman. Prince Athamos and Crown Prince Kostas of Carnelia decided to settle it with a car race through the mountains, the same route the ancient horse race used to take.” His aide paused. “An onlooker said Prince Athamos took a curve too steeply. His car plunged off the cliff and into the ocean.”
An argument? Over a woman? His brother was as levelheaded as Nik was passionate and reckless. And yet he had gotten into his car and raced his arch nemesis through the suicidal cliffs of Carnelia? His enemy’s domain? A man known to have as much fire in his veins as his hotheaded, tyrannical father...
He worked to free his throat from the paralysis that claimed it. “Are they sure...?”
“That he is dead?” Abram nodded. “I’m sorry, sir. Witnesses say there is no possibility a man could have emerged alive from that drop. They are working to recover his body now.”
“And Kostas,” Nik grated. “He survived?”
Abram nodded. “He was a car length behind. He saw the whole thing happen.”
A red rage blurred his vision, mixing with the agony that gripped his insides to form a deadly, potent storm. He got up and walked blindly to the windows, the spectacular skyline of Manhattan unfolding in front of him.
All he could see was red.
The clink of crystal sounded behind him. Abram came to stand beside him and pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand. Nik raised it to his mouth and took a long swig. When he had emptied half the glass, his aide cleared his throat. “There is more.”
More? How could there be more?
“Your father took the news of the accident badly. He has suffered a severe heart attack. The doctors are holding out hope he will survive, but it’s touch and go.”
A complete sense of unreality enveloped him. His fingers gripped the glass tighter. “What is his condition?”
“He is in surgery now. We’ll know more in a few hours.”
He lifted the tumbler to his lips with a jerky movement and downed another long swallow. The fire the potent liquor lit in his insides wasn’t enough to make the reality of losing both his father and his brother in one day in any way conceivable. His father was too strong, too vigorous to let such a thing fell him. It could not happen. Not when their estrangement ate at his insides like a slow-moving disease.
He flicked a look at his aide. “The jet is ready?”
Abram nodded. “Carlos is waiting downstairs to drive you to the airfield. I thought you might want to gather some things. I will stay behind and take care of the outstanding details, cancel your commitments, then join you in Akathinia.”
Nik nodded. Abram melted into the shadows.
Alone at the window, Nik looked out at Manhattan sprawled in front of him, his brother’s voice, crystal clear on the phone the night before, filling his head. Athamos had sounded vital, belligerent. Alive. Despite the different philosophical viewpoints he and his brother had held, despite the wedges that had been driven between them in the past few years as Athamos had prepared to take over from his father as king, they had loved each other deeply.
It was inconceivable he was dead.
The sense of unreality blanketing him thickened into a dark fog with only one thought breaking through. He was now heir to the throne. He would be king.
It was a role he had never expected to have, never wanted. He had been happy to allow Athamos to take the spotlight while he did his part in New York to make Akathinia the thriving, successful nation that it was. Happy to keep his distance from the wounds of the past.
But fate had other plans for him and his brother...
Sorrow and rage gripped his heart, engulfing him like the inescapable gale force winds of the meltemia that ravaged the Akathinian shores without warning or mercy. His hand tightened around the glass as the storm swept over him, immersing him in its turbulent fury until all he could see was red.
Abram’s horrified gasp split the air. He followed his aide’s gaze down to his bleeding hand, the shattered remains of the glass strewn across the carpet. The dark splatter that seeped into the plush cream carpet seemed like the stain on his heart that would never be removed.
* * *
Nik reached his father’s bedside at noon the following day. Exhausted from an overnight trip during which he hadn’t slept, worry for his father consuming him, he pulled a chair up to the king’s bedside in the sterilized white hospital room and closed the fingers of his unbandaged hand around his father’s gnarled, wrinkled one.
