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A hush rippled through the room as he strode back up the aisle and out the doors. “Livia,” he shouted.
“Livia.”
Then he walked to the room where she had been readying herself, only to find it...empty.
Her bouquet was sitting there on the vanity. But there was no note.
But of course, Livia wouldn’t leave a note. She would simply do what she had always done.
And it was as if all the blood within him ran free of his body.
He wrenched his tie free and ran from the chapel, making his way toward the palace. Because she couldn’t have gone. He would have been notified by the rest of the staff. There was no way she could’ve simply slipped away.
And when he entered the palace, he met her at the exit. She was wearing black. Her gold spectacles were back on her face. Her hair laughably formal for the attire she was currently garbed in.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it is for the best.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t love me.”
“I cannot love anyone. You know that.”
“No. It’s a lie, and I know it is. And if you cannot love me, then it will be someone else, but I will not do us this disservice. I will not do you this disservice.” She put her hands on his face. “I love you,” she said with ferocity. “I love you.” Her chest pitched in a sob, and it caught in his own. “I will never love another. But we deserve to share that. We do. We deserve everything. And we would give ourselves such a small portion of it. I cannot heal you. I tried to remove the thorn. The wound remains, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Healing has to come from you. Please... Please understand. I have always wanted too much. My mother told me so. And that used to make me feel terrible. It’s something I’ve been awash in these last weeks. I do want everything. It’s not about being Queen, it’s not about having nice dresses. It’s about being loved. Don’t I deserve it? Don’t you deserve it.”
“Livia,”he said, his voice filled with torture.
“Matteo, please do not come after me for your pride.”
“I do not give in,” he said as she began to walk away from him.
“I know you don’t.”
“No. I will not be manipulated. Torture does not work on me.”
“I’m not the one torturing you.”
And as she took a step away from him, a sound rose in his chest that reminded him of a dying animal, guttural and filled with pain. The embodiment of everything he had ever been terrified to let out when his father had physically destroyed him.
“Do not leave me,” he said.
“Can you give me what I want?”
Tears fell down her face, and he felt nothing but a blinding, stabbing pain.
“No,” he said.
And then she was gone. One of his members of staff ran up to him. “Should we stop her? Shall we stop flights?”
“No,” Matteo said. “No.”
She was not his. And she never had been. She was hers. And unless he could give her even a fraction of what she was giving to him how could he...
Yes, his pride would be left in tatters by this. A second bride failing to actually follow through with the wedding, and this one in such a public way. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was Livia. What an awful time to consider the feelings of another before his own for the very first time in his entire life.
But she was right.
She deserved everything. And his hands were empty.
He could offer her gowns and a castle, the world on a platter, but he did not know how to reach his own heart.
He could buy her anything she wished. He could buy himself anything he wished, for that matter, but he could not buy her. Could not make her stay.
And for the first time since he was a boy, King Matteo de la Cruz felt utterly powerless.
