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As the evening came to a close, she thought it might be difficult to slip away without him noticing, but apparently the king had meant it when he’d said he’d help her, because some palace staff came up to Xerxes as they prepared to leave the ballroom, drawing him away in conversation.
Calista took her opportunity. She slipped silently out of the ballroom to find one of the king’s guard waiting for her, and without a word followed him down a long corridor and through a series of interconnecting rooms.
The king was waiting for her in what looked like a study, still dressed formally in his uniform. ‘Have you made a decision?’ he asked neutrally.
‘Yes.’ Calista lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders and shoved away the sudden, tearing pain. She pulled on the cracked remains of her armour, the iron discipline of the soldier. ‘Please take me away, Your Majesty.’
CHAPTER TEN
XERXESSTRODEINTOhis brother’s office and slammed his hands down on Adonis’ desk. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded, the room echoing with the sound of his fury. ‘What have you done with her?’
Adonis looked up from his computer screen, expressionless. ‘Who?’
‘You know who I’m talking about,’ Xerxes snarled. ‘Calista.’
‘What makes you think I know where she is?’
‘Because she’s not in the palace. And I know because I’ve torn the place apart looking for her.’
He’d been detained a good quarter of an hour by some palace protocol nonsense, and then by a last-minute well-wisher who’d pulled him aside to talk to him about the condition of the Itheus sewerage system, of all things, and how it needed upgrading urgently. By the time he’d got rid of the man, another half an hour had passed, and he wanted to see where Calista was.
The strange conversation out on the terrace earlier had bothered him for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, and he wanted to talk to her about it.
But he couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in her bedroom, or his. Or anywhere else where she potentially might have been. And after he’d rounded up the entire contingent of palace guards and ordered them to find her, it soon became clear that she wasn’t in the palace at all.
Given the level of security, it was impossible for her to have been kidnapped by outside forces, which meant that someone on the inside had taken her.
Either that or she’d escaped herself. But even then she’d have needed help.
And there was only one person who had the power to help her disappear so thoroughly: his brother.
He’d interrupted something before the engagement party, that had been clear, but Calista had shrugged it off. There had been some distress in her eyes, but he hadn’t had time to push her about it, deciding he’d do it after the party.
He’d known the whole week since arriving back from the coast that something hadn’t been right with her. She’d seemed quiet and withdrawn, and, due to all the things he’d had to organise and deal with, he hadn’t spent the time with her that he ought.
A mistake now, he could see that.
Adonis leaned back in his chair and stared at him. His brother’s blue eyes were glacial, his expression rigid. Not that he ever had any other expression that Xerxes could remember. Adonis had taken their father’s lessons in detachment and elevated it into an art form.
‘Does it matter where she’s gone?’ he asked coldly.
Xerxes had never wanted to punch him so badly in his entire life. ‘Of course it matters, damn it! She’s my fiancée and the mother of my child!’
‘Language,’ Adonis said. ‘You’re not in the barracks now.’
Xerxes bit out an even fouler curse. ‘What have you done with her? Answer me!’
His brother was silent for a long moment, staring at him. He’d once been a playful boy and a caring older brother, but that had been before their mother had died and Xenophon had turned into a rigid, hard, emotionless father whose prime concern was turning both his sons into rigid, hard, emotionless versions of himself.
Xerxes had once wanted to be exactly like that. To be the kind of prince his father had wanted him to be. To be that kind of man.
But looking at Adonis now, at the ice in his eyes and the granite in his heart, Xerxes knew with a sudden burst of realisation that he didn’t want that for himself. That maybe he’d chased it for a while in Europe, had tried to turn himself into something similar after he’d returned to Axios. But the basic truth was that he’d never wanted it.
He wanted the passion he’d found in Calista’s arms. The heat in her eyes. The fiercely proud expression on her face as she’d looked at him, as if the way he’d broken under his father’s torture and his failure to end his own life weren’t flaws, but signs of strength. Of courage. Of endurance.
He wanted the fire that lit his heart whenever he thought of her. Whenever he looked at her. Whenever he held her.
He just wanted her.
