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“It doesn’t have to be the same thing. I still understand. That’s called empathy—but I know they don’t teach much of it in prince school.”
“Nina.”
The broken way he said her name pulled at her, but she pushed on anyway. “I learned some things about your father today. That he loved his first wife. Probably all of his life. And that she died, taking his unborn heir with him.”
“Everybody knows this story,” Zeus gritted out. “I learned it as a child.”
“But you are only paying attention to thestory, Zeus. I want to talk to you about a man.” Nina shook her head when he began to speak again. “To you, he’s larger than life. Your father. Your King. The man you blame—and possibly rightly—for making your mother’s life so very difficult. All I am asking you to remember is that at the end of the day, he’s just a person. And people are complicated. Good and bad. Kind and vicious. They can be all things. And your mother died so young herself, when you were just a child. It’s only natural that you hated the person you felt was responsible.”
“Because he is responsible. He could have stopped it.” He looked ravaged then, but he sounded worse. “He could havehelpedher.”
Nina went and took his hand again. She held it between hers, close to her heart.
“Do you have any idea what I would give for a single hour with my father?” she asked, holding his gaze no matter that the look in his eyes was painful. “With either one of my parents? I spent a lifetime wishing I could have another moment. Just one more moment, just enough, so I could tell them the only thing that really matters.”
He said something, and she thought it was her name, but the wind stole it away.
“That I love them,” Nina whispered. “That I will always love them. That no matter what happened to me, no matter what the years without them were like, I could never let that be what little I have of them. I would regret it forever.”
He shook his head, as if warding her off.
“Zeus,” she said, low and urgent. “Don’t do something you’ll regret forever.”
“And what if I’m not the man you think I am at all?” he demanded, bringing his face in close, torn apart with emotion. No bronze mask. Just...him. All of him. “What if I am, instead, the creature I have always played? No regrets. No compassion. No love. What then, Nina?”
She reached up so she could hold his beloved face between her hands. And she gazed up at him, only dimly aware of the tears that wet her cheeks.
“Then I will regret it all for you,” she promised him. “Your commoner queen, who will love you anyway, no matter how little you love yourself.”
And for a moment, he only stood there, as if caught in his own storm. Nina thought she heard the ominous roll of thunder.
Then, as if it caused him physical pain, he pulled away from her. He staggered back, his green gaze locked on hers.
It felt like a lifetime.
But then Zeus turned away and left her behind on that beach.
Nina wrapped her arms around their baby, promised it all the love neither she nor Zeus had known, and stayed there.
Until her tears were gone.
