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Galen gritted his teeth, the edges of the ring box digging into his hand. ‘I have. But this is a secret that threatens national security. I don’t know what more I can say.’
‘You could be honest with me,’ she said in the same relentless tone. ‘And I’m not talking about whatever your secret is. I’m talking about all the other things you avoid. You know everything about me, Galen. Everything. I didn’t want to tell you about my postnatal depression, but I did. I didn’t want to tell you about any of the other things either, how I wanted to be a lawyer, all those pipe dreams I had. Yet I did.’ The silver in her eyes glittered. ‘But I know nothing about you, except you were once a hell-raiser at university.’
‘You know about me,’ he argued. ‘Everything you could want to know is on the Web—’
‘I know all about the King. But nothing about the man.’
He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to go into his cold, lonely childhood and all the things he’d done wrong that his father had never let him forget. Little things that had become big things, because the older he’d got, the more he’d realised that nothing he did would ever change Alexandros’s opinion of him.
So, whatever he’d been told to do, he’d done the opposite, until Alexandros, disgusted with him, had sent him to Oxford. A mistake. Because there he’d found like minds in Augustine and Khalil, and there he’d allowed his anger and pain free rein in the form of drunken parties that had turned into orgies, endless nights in the clubs in London, too much alcohol and too much of other things. Getting into trouble with the police on the odd occasion, because he just hadn’t been able to stop himself from pushing all the boundaries. And the more the press had made sensations out of everything the ‘Wicked Princes’ had done, the more he’d wanted to do them.
He’d been a selfish young man back then. Everything he’d done in a mindless knee-jerk reaction to Alexandros’s active loathing. Goading him, pushing him, seeing how far he could take it before Alexandros finally repudiated him.
And then that party at one of his friends’ houses in London had happened. There had been too much alcohol involved, too many party drugs, and when the police had finally broken it up, they’d discovered a whole lot of underage girls. The girls hadn’t been invited, they’d sneaked in, and Galen hadn’t known how old they were at the time. He hadn’t had anything to do with them, but, as far as the press went, it had been the story of the year.
Alexandros’s stroke had had nothing to with the media storm that had broken afterwards, or at least that was what the doctors had told Galen, but that had been the last straw as far as Alexandros had been concerned.
‘You are not my son,’ he’d said. ‘And I will not have you on the throne. You are unfit to be King and you always have been.’
No, he did not want to tell Solace that. Not any of it.
Yet he had to give her something. He’d promised her a life, and he wanted her in his bed. He wanted her at his side as Leo’s mother. She had to marry him and if she was going to then he wanted her to be happy. He did not want to repeat his parents’ marriage.
‘Very well,’ he said flatly. ‘My mother died when I was born, and my father was a cold and distant man. My childhood was unpleasant—I was rather a handful, and he didn’t know how to deal with me, so when he sent me away to Oxford, it was a relief. I was called back to Kalithera after he had a stroke and when he died soon after, I ascended the throne. Is that what you wanted to know?’
She frowned, her silver gaze searching. ‘What do you mean “unpleasant”?’
Galen found he was squeezing the ring box even tighter, a familiar hot fury coiling in his gut. A fury he’d been trying to deny for years without success, which didn’t make sense. It had been years—years—since Alexandros had died and he had proved himself. He should not still be so angry with him.
‘Alexandros was very strict,’ he said. ‘There was a level of behaviour expected and he punished me when I didn’t meet those expectations. And I didn’t meet those expectations very often. I was...rebellious and headstrong, and he was...exacting. He...did not like me.’
A look of fleeting shock passed over Solace’s face and she took a step towards him, then stopped. ‘But he was your father. Why would he not like you?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Because nothing I did was good enough for him, nothing was right. And he always made it very clear that I wasn’t the son he wanted.’ The shock had gone from her expression now, leaving behind it a concern that felt like a needle sliding beneath his skin. ‘It was years ago,’ he went on roughly. ‘There’s no need to look at me like that. It wasn’t as if I was starving on the streets.’
She took another step towards him. ‘It doesn’t matter. That’s a terrible way to handle a child. And I should know. I had plenty of foster parents who treated me that way.’ She gave him another of those direct, searching looks. ‘Why did he do that to you? Who did he want you to be?’
He couldn’t tell her the truth. That it didn’t matter that Galen might actually be his son, what Alexandros wanted was for Galen not to exist.
‘I don’t know. Someone else.’
‘But—’ Solace began.
But nothing. He was done with this conversation. The more they talked about himself, the closer they got to the truth and he wasn’t going to tell her. He couldn’t.
‘I think that’s enough about me for one day.’ He pulled out the ring box once again. ‘Here. I need to give you this.’
But she didn’t look at the box. She kept her direct grey gaze on him instead. ‘You’re very angry with him, aren’t you?’
He could feel a muscle twitch in his jaw. ‘My father is dead. I am his son, and I am the King now.’ He flicked open the box. ‘Hold out your hand.’
She didn’t move. ‘No.’
His impatience rose and along with it, his frustration. ‘Your hand, Solace.’
The look in her eyes was sharp as a blade and there was no escape. ‘You told me that I could trust you and yet you won’t trust me.’
‘It is not a matter of trust. I can’t—’
