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“The images are quite standard, really,” Orion continued, darkly. “King Max engaged in yet another threesome. But in this case, the photos feature the king and another man focused on particular shared acts. And the woman in question...”
He didn’t finish his sentence.
“No,” Calista whispered.
“The woman in question is my mother,” Orion gritted out, as if it hurt him. And that fury in him was a raw and pulsing thing. “She looks enthusiastic, but also as if that enthusiasm was chemically enhanced. And I can tell you that in the days leading up to her death—which, according to the date stamped on these pictures, was not long after the event—she would drink too much and say a great many things that made no sense. Then. They make more sense now.”
“Orion...”
“She was concerned about gaps in her memory. She was...fragile, and she refused to eat or drink anything she did not prepare herself. I can only assume now that she was given something in her food or drink that was laced with the sort of drugs that create enthusiasm where there is none.”
Calista let that sink in, though it made her stomach lurch. “And you think it was your father...?”
“Does it matter?” His voice was a vicious slap against the wind. “Whether my father slipped her a drug to make her compliant, or merely took advantage of it when he must surely have known better—does it really matter which? Whatdegreeof monster he was? And as I allow my outrage and sickness over this to turn around inside me, I must ask myself why it is that every other photo I’ve ever seen with him in various sexually explicit scenarios, I never questioned the enthusiasm of the participants. Only when it suited me.”
“Because your poor mother...”
“Yes. My poor mother.”
Orion shook his head, looking sick and furious and tired, suddenly. It made the rocks beneath Calista’s feet seem to sway, because this wasOrion. Hewasthe rock, and it had never occurred to her that he could go weary.
It made her want to fight anything that might come at him, even if it was her.
“I’m not even certain that the kingdom would bother to react to yet another explicit photograph of my father,” he said after a moment or two. “But I cannot bear to think of my mother being tarred with the same brush. Not to mention, the fact that there are pictures of one such event would lead to the inevitable speculation that it was not a one-off. And that would lead to questions about parentage. Bloodlines.”
“You can’t have that,” she whispered, flushing with a shame so deep and hot she was surprised she could still stand.
“The truth of the matter, Calista, is that I am sick unto death of the excesses of my father’s reign,” Orion said, and she had never heard him sound so dark. She had never felt that darkness inside her, too. “I felt this way before it affected my direct family and I only feel it more strongly now. And yes, I am willing to marry the daughter of a man who trafficked in those photographs to prevent them ever getting out. I still am. Whatever that makes me.”
Calista thought it made him a hero. Possibly even a saint.
She was afraid to put words to what it made her.
“I wish...” Her tongue felt thick in her mouth. She had no idea what to say, only that everything hurt and she hated herself. And this, because after a lifetime of being certain that she was nothing like her father, she was. She’d proved it. Maybe she had different reasons, but the end result was the same. “I thought I wasn’t tainted by him. But he is like an infection in the blood. It doesn’t go anywhere. It will only twist in you until it wrecks you, over time.”
“That is a choice.” Orion’s voice was clipped and harsh, but his eyes blazed. “Do you think I don’t know the temptation to become just as dark and dissipated as the man who bore me? Do you think I don’t ask myself daily if it would have been easier to follow in his footsteps? It’s achoice, Calista. You have chosen to become your father. That’s on you, not him.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.”
And the most astonishing thing by far was that he shouted that.
As if this was the same thing as what happened to him in that bed they shared.
King Orion Augustus Pax, losing control.
And this time, Calista took no satisfaction from it. This time, he made her shudder and feel like weeping, and not in any kind of delight.
“I—”
His hands were on her shoulders then. His face in hers.
“Do not tell me what you cannot do. Just do it, or do not.” His grip tightened. “I have seen the tension in you from the very start. Did you think I would miss it somehow? You want so badly to be bulletproof. To care as little about the people you come into contact with as your father does. But you’re not him, Calista. You don’t have to do the things he does.”
She felt that everywhere, half indictment, half wish.
She thought it might take her to her knees, but his hands gripped her shoulders, and she stood.
