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It felt like something he wanted and not for his king or for his country, but for himself.
And it mattered because he didn’t think he could survive without it.
‘Fine,’ he snapped, because he was certain now. He had to find her, talk to her, tell her what he felt. ‘I’ll find her myself.’
He turned on his heel, striding towards the doors.
‘I don’t want you to have what Sophia and I had,’ Adonis said roughly. ‘I didn’t love her, but she loved me and that killed her in the end.’
Sophia, his brother’s queen. Who’d died just before Xerxes had returned, leaving Adonis a widower and their young daughter motherless.
Adonis never spoke of her.
Xerxes stilled.
‘I don’t want that for you,’ Adonis went on, more quietly. ‘You deserve better than that, Xerxes.’
‘I have better than that,’ Xerxes said, staring at the doors ahead of him.
‘Are you so certain? And do you think confronting her will work? That telling her what to do will work?’ The breath went out of him. No, of course it wouldn’t, not with Calista. She was stubborn and strong, meeting his will with her own. Fighting because that was all she’d ever done. Fighting and pushing herself, denying herself. Trying to be something she wasn’t, not at heart. Because the heart of her wasn’t a soldier.
The heart of her was a lover.
Except she didn’t believe that, did she? No, she thought she had to stay strong and keep fighting. She didn’t understand that she didn’t need to do that with him. That he wanted her exactly as she was, the determined soldier and the passionate woman.
And what she needed was something he should have given her days ago: a demonstration of faith, of belief in her. A demonstration without a guarantee and without proof. Without a demand for something in return.
He wouldn’t give her a battle. He would give her love.
‘No,’ he said into the silence. ‘It won’t work. But I have a better idea.’ He swung round and met his brother’s gaze. ‘Will you help me?’
Adonis said nothing for a long moment. Then he nodded. ‘What do you need?’
Calista sat on the terrace of the little stone house in the mountains, looking out over the olive groves that stretched away beneath it. After Adonis had brought her here—one of a number of houses he had scattered around Axios, he’d said—she’d pretty much spent the first couple of days in bed. She’d slept mostly, curled around the ache in her chest and the constant feeling that she was missing something.
After that, she’d forced herself to get up and do things, some gentle exercise, reading books on birth and parenting, watching movies, making herself food to eat. It was boring, but placid. Once, a doctor had visited and checked her out again, making sure she and the baby were healthy. Everything was on track, so she supposed that was something.
But as the days had gone by, the feeling of missing something hadn’t grown any less. If anything, it had only grown stronger and stronger, developing into a pain she couldn’t shake.
Her heart. She was missing her heart. And she suspected she knew where it was.
She’d left it in Xerxes’ strong, capable hands.
But that surely couldn’t be true. She’d been so determined not to care and she was sure she didn’t, so she tried to ignore the feeling, to lose herself in the small, everyday pleasures of existence.
Yet it didn’t work. There was a grief inside her, a loss that wasn’t getting any better.
She’d thought that once she left him, she’d forget him, but she couldn’t forget him. The baby inside her reminded her every day of what she’d given up, as did every time she woke in the middle of the night and reached for a warmth that wasn’t there.
It didn’t matter, though. She’d made her choice. She’d given him up to protect him, so he could have someone better, someone who could love him the way she couldn’t, and that was how it would have to stay.
So it shouldn’t have affected her when she spotted the helicopter flying overhead. It shouldn’t have made her whole body go tight, made tears start in her eyes when she saw the livery on the side of it.
And when it landed with a roar on the lawn beside the house, she shouldn’t have been torn by the simultaneous desires to leap to her feet and run away, and straight towards the figure ducking beneath the rotors and heading for her instead.
But it wasn’t Xerxes. It wasn’t even the king.
The man in royal livery came up to her, handed her an envelope and turned away, heading straight back to the helicopter and getting inside. Then it lifted off and flew away, leaving her sitting there in shock, holding an envelope with her name on it.
