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He looked at her skeptically but slowed. “Is something amiss?”
Everything. Everything.
“I need air,” she managed to say, throwing herself from the car. She strode down to the water, the flowing skirts tangling around her legs as the tang of sea met her nostrils. She slipped out of her shoes and left them where they laid as she continued toward the water.
She had the strangest impulse to run right into the sea. To swim far away, as far as she could go, and just see what happened. A wave splashed against her toes, cool against the heat of the afternoon, and it reminded her there was nowhere to go.
She wanted to fall to her knees and cry, but she did not. She simply stopped her forward movement and found some comfort in the maternal rocking of the waves. She sucked in a deep breath and calmed herself.
Like she’d done so many times before when she’d narrowly escaped danger in her old life. Her old life that seemed so far away. So behind her, even though it was all she’d known a week ago.
She felt Lysias come stand beside her, but she could not look at him. Not while such emotions warred within her. Her complicated identity, the holes in her memory, her connection to the palace. Tohim.
His hand curled over hers, but she knew this was not forher. She could tell in the stiff way he held himself. In the fact he did not murmur her name or call her his star as he so often did.
No, this was for the cameras. She stepped away from his grasp.
“Mind the cameras, Alexandra,” he warned coolly.
She wanted to throw a grand tantrumfor the cameras, but she didn’t. It wouldn’t get her anything she wanted anyway. But when she spoke, she spoke with clear honesty even if she didn’t throw him angry looks. “I don’t care about the stupid cameras. I need a moment to breathe. To...be myself. To not have to be someoneelse.” She felt as if her lungs had been tied in knots. Why couldn’t she breathe?
“You lived as a boy for decades, and suddenly you need to be yourself?” he replied with his usual distant sarcasm.
“Yes. A boy. A nameless, unimportant boy. Not a real-life person.” She turned to face him then because she could not argue with the implacable sea. Might as well argue with the implacable man standing next to her. “Not aprincesswho people actually knew. Who’s probably dead, and if she is not...”
She might be me.
That picture... Ithadbeen her. Real or fake, she didn’t know, but it rattled her to the bone.
It terrified her to believe it possible, but the signs kept piling up, and she could only deny so much for so long. What if shewasZandra? What then?
She was almost too embarrassed to voice that to Lysias. He thought it was impossible, and it should be. Itshouldbe.
But what if...
She should not ask. She knew, deep in her bones, his response would only hurt her. It wouldn’t be what she wanted. And yet there was some tiny sliver of hope that what had come to pass between them might changesomething. “Lysias,” she said, taking the hand she’d stepped away from only seconds earlier. She gripped it in some kind of desperation as she looked up at him, tears sliding over her cheeks. “Lysias...what if I am her?”
His expression and voiced hardened. “You’re not.”
“I didn’t ask if I was,” she replied, still clutching his hand, though he held himself stiff and closed off. Even as he looked away. Out to sea. “I saidwhat if?”
“It would be of no matter,” he said, clearly not knowing or caring the words shattered her heart to pieces. He kept his gaze on the waves. “Nothing would change. My plan, my revenge, it remains the same regardless of who you are or ever were.”
“Because I am unimportant?” she asked, ragged. A glutton for punishment, apparently.
He looked at her now, and there wasnothingin his golden gaze. No heat, no hurt, none of the fear or confusion she’d seen flash there. “You’re an important tool, but you are only a tool.”
She knew this. Or had known it. She had been naive, apparently. She would forgive herself for that at some point, but for now, she had to set it aside. Survive this. Survive him. “Then I could stay. After your revenge is enacted, I could stay, because I belong here. If I am her.”
“It would not be safe for you to stay.”
“You mean it would not be safe foryou. Because I might tell the truth. Because someone might find outyouwere behind the vote of no confidence. But if I’m not here, you can blame it on me.”
He did not flinch. No guilt lurked in his eyes. He was blank. Perhaps down to his soul. Perhaps he had no soul left. “There will be no need for anyone to blame. And trust me, Diamandis will know it was me. I will make sure of it. This was never about you, Alexandra.”
A stab through the heart, but only fair. Of course it wasn’t. Nothing ever had been.
She suddenly felt exhausted. So tired she couldn’t hold herself up. “I want to go...” She’d almost saidhome. But she had no home. Not a hovel in Athens, not Lysias’s house outside the city, not the palace here.
