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The minister gazed back at her. “Is it true?”
“I don’t know how it was phrased. Or how this news was delivered to you. But I was not consulted.” She held the older woman’s gaze. “I do not agree.”
And then held her breath because there was no telling how the other woman would respond.
It took a moment. Another. Then Angelique’s poker face cracked, just enough to allow the faintest curve of her lips. “Splendid.”
“No one seems to know where he is,” Madelyn said then, though she felt significantly lighter, suddenly.
“He’s gone back to the Hermitage,” Angelique replied. In a mild tone that only got milder as she went on. “He is not to be disturbed by anyone. And, most specifically, you are not to follow him.”
Madelyn took that in. It shouldn’t hurt, because she had already been hurt enough... But it turned out there was always more hurt to be had. She straightened her shoulders. “I would prefer not to follow those instructions.”
Angelique stood from her desk, looking smooth and unwrinkled. “I quite agree.” She paused then. For a long moment. “I am the King’s godmother, as perhaps you know.”
“I didn’t know.” Madelyn studied her. “But that makes sense. I don’t think anyone else would have kept tabs on Troy and me for so long without interfering otherwise.”
“Queen Neme was my dearest friend,” Angelique said quietly, for once sounding nothing at all like the dragon lady who had appeared on Corrine’s doorstep and changed all their lives. “It was a surprise to everyone when she caught King Aether’s eye. To everyone but me, that is. It is not an exaggeration to say that she made everyone around her better, simply because of who she was. She was that joyful. She was thatgood. Every day, I wish she was still here.”
“I wish I could have met her. I wish my son could have.”
Angelique looked away, and Madelyn followed her gaze to the framed photograph that stood alone on her mantel. It was of two girls, one laughing as if she was made of sunshine. And the other gazing into the camera, looking far more serious, with hints of the fearsome minister she would become one day already there in her youthful face.
“Neme and the King loved each other very much,” Angelique continued, her voice softer. “But when years had passed and she had suffered more losses than anyone should have to bear, she decided that she would leave the King.”
Madelyn, who should have been itching to get away herself, to go find Paris Apollo, instead found that she was deeply invested in this story. Her hand crept over the place where her heart should have been. “Why?”
“Because he was the King of Ilonia. He needed an heir.” Angelique sighed. “She loved him so much that she was willing to give him up so that he could fulfill his duty to his country.”
But Madelyn knew the Queen hadn’t left the King. And that a version of this story was how the palace was selling the years she and Paris Apollo had been apart, so she smiled. “And I take it he loved her enough to tell her that there was no point in his duties, or anything else, unless she was with him.”
Angelique’s eyes gleamed then. She nodded, slowly, and in those two small gestures, Madelyn could see the old King and Queen in a new way. As more, somehow, than the stories so many people had told her about them. As people in their own right. Who had loved here and lost too much but chose love again.
As if she could read Madelyn’s mind, Angelique crossed the room, then stopped beside her.
“Love is always the answer,” the older woman said. “And you can take it from me that no matter what my godson might have said to you to break off this wedding, I tracked him. His parents did not wish to know the details of his wild days, but I did. And I know who he loved, Madelyn.” She reached over and took Madelyn’s hand, squeezing it once, hard. “Who he loves.”
Madelyn felt that stinging at the back of her eyes again. There was a lump in her throat. “Good,” she replied. “Because so do I.”
And this time, she and Angelique Silvestri smiled together, finally in perfect accord.
Madelyn didn’t need to be urged out of the SUV when it drove her off the ferry that Angelique had commandeered, then brought her to that little parking area halfway up the lonely mountain. She thanked the driver, then charged up the narrow path cut into the side of the mountain as if she had something to prove.
Because she did.
And it was probably wiser to get as much of her jagged, furious energy out before she reached the Hermitage.
Only because she didn’t think that it would serve anyone if she went in there after him, guns blazing.
She already knew where that would lead. And she needed this to be different. She had to find some way to make thisdifferentfrom what had come before.
Once she got to the Hermitage’s gates, she worried that it was entirely possible Paris Apollo might have locked her out. If he’d had the slightest suspicion that she would come up here after him.
But when she reached the door, a simple push opened it up, and she found herself in that stone court once more.
This time, he did not come out to greet her.
Madelyn made her way inside, finding nothing but stone and memories of her first night here. When she had been so overwhelmed by Paris Apollo and unable to believe she was actually seeing him again. In the flesh.
