Font Size:  

CHAPTER NINE

RICARDOARRIVEDONthe island via very noisy helicopter from Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital city, not long after the break of dawn.

He was not welcome, Cairo thought uncharitably as he watched his most loyal subject walk toward him over the otherwise deserted beach, the crisp suit he wore that was so appropriate in Paris looking nothing but out of place here.

It was a stark reminder of how far away Cairo had been from the world this last month—and how much he’d like to remain here forever.

“Was I expecting you?” Cairo asked. He led Ricardo onto the lanai where breakfast was usually served, and nodded toward the carafe of strong, hot coffee he knew the man preferred. “I feel certain I was not.”

It was more of an effort than it should have been to keep his tone light. Lazy and careless, as expected. He’d grown unused to speaking to anyone but Brittany—and he’d thought he’d be able to keep it that way a while longer.

The truth was, he didn’twantto speak to anyone but Brittany. He hadn’t wanted to leave her when the sound of the helicopter had woken them both where they’d drowsed off together beneath the light blanket he’d pulled over them sometime in the middle of the night. He’d had to let her go, and he didn’t like that edgy, pointed sort of feeling that had moved into his chest lately, to go along with that pressure that never really eased.

He didn’t like any of this.

“You have been out of reach for a month, Sire,” Ricardo replied, pressing a mug of coffee to his lips. He took a pull, relaxed his shoulders, then focused on Cairo again. “Completely out of reach. There were rumors that you were dead.”

Cairo waved a hand. “There are always rumors.”

“These were more convincing, given the absence of the usual photographic evidence to the contrary.”

“I would never die in so obscure a fashion,” Cairo murmured, and some part of him was dismayed at how easy it was to pick up his role again. To slip back into that second skin of his and treat it like it was the only one he knew. “Especially not so tragically young. I would make certain to die theatrically in a major city, the better to leverage good media coverage of my pageant of a funeral.”

“Sire.” Ricardo’s expression was...not grim, exactly.Solemn, Cairo thought. And something rather more likeexpectant.“General Estes suffered a massive heart attack a few days ago. He collapsed in the palace and was rushed to the hospital, where, after many attempts to revive him, he died.” He watched Cairo’s face as if he expected a reaction. When Cairo only stared, he cleared his throat. “His ministers have stepped in and are trying to maintain the peace, but they have never been anything but puppets. You know this. And, Sire. The people...” Ricardo made no attempt to hide the gleam in his gaze when he trained it on Cairo. The fervor, the belief. “Sire, the people are ready.”

Time seemed to spread out. To flatten.

Cairo remembered his father’s hand, heavy on his shoulder as they’d walked together through a foggy British morning on a remote estate, years ago now.

“What if we never go home?” Cairo had asked. He could not have been more than eight years old. His father, then the exiled king to Cairo’s crown prince, had seemed so old to him then. So wise and aged, when in truth he’d been an athletic man midway through his forties.

“It is your duty to carry Santa Domini within you wherever you go, whether we return home or not,” his father had said. “You must serve the kingdom in all you do and say. All you are. Every step and every action, Cairo. That is your calling. Your destiny.”

He’d never forgotten it. Not when they’d come to get him out of his history classroom that rainy winter day, bundling him off to a room where grim strangers frowned at him and pretended to be concerned for him. Not when they’d told him everyone he loved was dead and his world was forever altered. Not when he’d realized that he must be next on the general’s assassination list, no matter that the man’s involvement was never officially confirmed, and no matter how many people told him that it had been an accident.

Not when he’d wondered, in his grief, if he should let the general exterminate him, too. It would have been so much easier than fighting.

He’d thought of the kingdom then.

“There’s only the prince now,” the woman had said on the news. She’d been a village woman from one of the most remote spots in the kingdom. He’d watched her from a guarded hotel room somewhere outside of Boston, while the authorities investigated his family’s death. He hadn’t been permitted to attend their funerals, but he’d watched his people mourn. “He’s all that we have left of our history.”

He’d served the kingdom then, and lived. Santa Domini’s history—but ever unfit to lead. He’d made sure of it.

He thought of the kingdom now.

He thought of the general, dead at last with all the blood of Cairo’s family still there on his hands. And the things that roared in him then had sharp claws. They left deep marks that he knew, from experience, would never go away.

He thought of the woman who had called him magic, who had seen him as no one else in all the world had ever seen him. And no one else ever would. He told himself he didn’t understand what it was that tugged so hard and so insistently at his heart then, leaving him bleak.

He had made himself unfit to be a king. He could not undo that now. He could not erase the things he’d done, nor allow the man who’d done them—the man his father would have loathed—to sit upon that throne.

Cairo had no choice but to gaze back at Ricardo blandly.

“Ready for what?” he asked, and, oh, what it cost him to sound so bored. So disengaged. “The funeral? I’m sure the general’s men will give him a good show.” He paused, as if something occurred to him. “You must knowIcannot set foot on Santa Dominian soil, Ricardo. Not even all these years later, when no one could possibly care either way.”

He saw the incredulity on his man’s face, followed by a flash of something as close to pure rage as he’d ever seen a servant show in his presence. And if that made him feel sick, if he loathed himself as much as his father might have had he lived to see what his son had become, that was neither here nor there.

This wasn’t about him. It never had been.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like