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CHAPTER TEN
THEFLIGHTBACKto the island was terrifying at first, as the pilot fought the winter weather to get them aloft. But once out of the mountains, everything was smooth. And, to Nina’s mind, almost frighteningly quiet the rest of the way until they landed in the bright sun and soft breezes of Theosia.
The moment they returned to the palace, Zeus stalked away, surrounded by his aides. And looking more alone than she had ever seen him.
Nina found herself left to her own devices. Standing in the middle of a palace that was now hushed in dreadful anticipation.
And she’d spent her life mourning her parents’ deaths. She had no idea how a personpreparedfor such a thing.
She walked, not sure where she was headed, in and out of the glossy, exquisite rooms that seemed to glisten with their own history. And it was perhaps unsurprising that she eventually found her way into the gallery of family portraits. The Kings and Queens of Theosia, stretching back into antiquity.
Nina looked at all of them, starting as far back in time as the pictures reached. Slowly, slowly she advanced through the ages until she found her way to the small collection of portraits on the farthest, emptiest wall.
She recognized Zeus immediately. Only a small child in the painting, but undeniably him. The same green eyes. A smile made more of mischief than of studied wickedness, but his all the same. His hair more blond than dark, and the hint of all that austere bronze yet to come.
Then she studied the painting of King Cronos, who she had never met. He had been too ill the whole time she was here. Yet she could see Zeus in the face of the proud man she gazed at now, dressed in all his finery. The same forbidding features. The same hard, sensual mouth.
Beside them hung two very different portraits. One was of a dark-haired woman with eyes of violet and a reserved curve to her lips. Next to her hung a young blonde with emerald eyes and the biggest smile yet in this room full of portraits.
And Nina’s heart hurt.
For all of them. But mostly for Zeus. For the little boy with such a big name in the portrait in front of her and the man she’d sat with so early this morning, feeling the clatter of his heart against her back. Hearing each and every betraying scratch in his voice.
She didn’t know how long she stood there before she gradually became aware that she wasn’t alone. When she turned to look, she saw Thaddeus, Zeus’s sniffy butler who had so disdained her on sight.
“Madam,” he intoned by way of greeting.
Nina sighed. Maybe it was time for more sad antechambers. “Have you come to encourage me to leave the portrait gallery to my betters?”
But even as she asked the question, she saw that his gaze was on the portrait of Cronos’s first Queen, not on her.
“Did you know her?” she asked.
Thaddeus looked surprised for a moment, then something like resigned. He put his hands behind his back and stood taller. “Which ‘her’ do you mean?”
Nina looked back at the portraits. The reserve in one, the irrepressible life in the other. And the portrait of the King, looking young and mighty. “Either one of them.”
“It was my very great honor to have served them both in some small capacity,” Thaddeus replied in reliably frosty tones.
Nina smiled at him. Winningly, she hoped. “What were they like?”
“Madam. Of all days, this day cannot be the appropriate—” He stopped himself, but not until Nina had seen what looked like genuine emotion in his gaze. He looked down at once. “I beg your pardon.”
“One day my portrait will hang on this wall,” Nina said quietly, looking at all the space on this white wall. And trying to imagine her contribution to this long line of people who didn’t seem like people any longer, not once they were captured in oil and framed. “And I would hope that if anyone asked, you or someone like you would tell them who I was.”
Thaddeus drew himself up. “I would never dream of attempting such an impertinence.”
“I’m sure I’ll look suitably grand, like everyone else,” Nina said, looking over at the rest of the gallery. “But a portrait can’t show the truth of things. That I showed up at the palace gates six months pregnant with snacks in my purse. My hair in a mess, and no apparent decency at all. Wouldn’t it be a shame if there was no one here to tellthatstory, Thaddeus?”
If she wasn’t mistaken, she saw the faintest hint of a thaw in the old man’s bearing. Only a hint.
But eventually, the butler cleared his throat and indicated the first Queen.
“Queen Zaria was a childhood friend of His Royal Majesty,” Thaddeus said. “They grew up together here on the island and were promised to each other when they were very young. No more than five, as I understand it, and from that time they were always together. By the time they married, it was very clear that they were not only great friends, but very much in love.”
Love stories, Nina thought, her heart clutching in her chest. They always ended badly. It was only fairy tales that ended well.How do people survive these love stories?
How was she planning to survive the one she was currently living, for that matter? She looked down at her ring, adjusting the way it sat on her finger, and admitted to herself that she just didn’t know. Maybe she wouldn’t. Not in one piece.
