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He listened to his new wife and stopped hunting down criminals in the night. He met with the police instead, telling them what he knew and, better yet, what he suspected.
Justice was slow, but Madelyn was right. It was better that way. And five years later, Paris Apollo stood in the High Court and watched as his cousin was finally sentenced for his role in the murders of King Aether and Queen Neme.
He expected to feel let down. To think it was too little, too late, or that it no longer mattered, but he didn’t.
It felt good. Right.
And he felt ready to move on with his life now that Konos was getting what he deserved.
Because Paris Apollo certainly had better things to think about than his cousin’s unhinged plots or his own revenge. Like his beautiful wife, his marvelous queen, whose first order of business while taking it easy in the palace had been to finish her degree. Because, she told him with a laugh, she really didn’t like leaving things undone.
She took what courses remained at the University here in the islands, making it impossible for his people to do anything but adore her.
And when she was done, she opened a home for single mothers on every island in Ilonia and an international charity to work on doing the same all over the world. She called it Corrine’s House because—she said at the gala event to open her new endeavor, with her proud husband and beloved aunt standing at her side—everyone deserved to be lucky enough to live in Corrine’s house when they needed it most.
Just as she had.
Another preoccupation of Paris Apollo’s was showing his people who he really was. Not the indolent wastrel. Not the vigilante only some had seen or even suspected. But the man that Madelyn knew he could be.
The man who tried to be good so that he could be a decent king.
And over time, when his people cheered for him, Paris Apollo knew that they meant it. They weren’t giving him a pass. They weren’t hoping he would grow up.
He worked hard to make sure he was the King they deserved.
And when he and Madelyn were not trying their best to live up to their own best expectations of who they could be and what they could achieve, they were focused on their favorite part of their life together.
Their family.
“You’ll have to help me,” Paris Apollo told Troy when they found, to their joy, that Madelyn was pregnant not long after they were married. “You’ve been the man of the house for so long. I have to make sure I live up to your example.”
“It’s a lot of work,” Troy replied very seriously. “But I think you can do it.”
Paris Apollo dedicated himself to the task. He felt the time he’d missed in Troy’s life keenly, so he tried to make up for it. He had his own parents’ example, always, and so he knew it fell to him to make sure that his duties never got in the way of being a good father. And that being a good father meant allowing Troy to be who he was, not who Paris Apollo wished him to be.
And as for the brothers and sisters who followed Troy, all named for glorious cities in antiquity—because they liked a theme—Paris Apollo never took for granted the time he got to croon songs to them while they were still in their mother’s belly. Or to make sure that Madelyn knew that she only became more beautiful to him when she was big and happy with his child. Or sometimes not so happy, which allowed him to dote on her the way she would never permit him to do otherwise.
Troy’s first younger sister was born into Paris Apollo’s hands. He held her after the doctors wrapped her up, then lay her in Madelyn’s arms.
“I almost missed this,” he whispered as the tiny, perfect girl slept in her mother’s arms.
“I climbed that mountain to get you,” Madelyn reminded him. “Twice. I was going to make sure you didn’t miss a thing.”
And when she told him she wanted to make Angelique Silvestri their new daughter’s godmother, Paris Apollo felt the circle come complete within him.
Maybe he couldn’t have his parents, but he had this world that they’d made better and all the people who still loved them.
And those were gifts he did not intend to squander.
As the years passed, and the palace was alive again with a king and a queen and their big, rowdy brood to go with it, Paris Apollo often found himself down on that bench at the farthest edge of the palace gardens.
It was another secret spot that was impossible to see from a distance but where, if he sat and waited, it was almost as if he could see his parents out there amongst stars. Dancing in the moonlight over the waves of the sea the way he’d watched them dance when he was a child.
That was where he sat some nights, after the children were in bed, and talked to his parents the way he wished he had when they were alive. That was where Madelyn would come and join him, sitting beside him so he could wrap her up beneath his arm and breathe in the life they’d made here. The family they’d created.
The love they tended, every day, trimming back the things that didn’t bloom and cherishing the things it did.
And some nights, they would look at each other and one or the other would lift a challenging brow.
Then off they would go to find that secret doorway that allowed them to sneak out into the streets of the island together—but always with a guard who stayed a respectful distance behind them.
Because this wasn’t about recklessness. This wasn’t about revenge.
But to celebrate love, and each other, and these islands he had always loved and Madelyn had come to love with him.
And they would walk, hand in hand, from one lantern to the next, shining brightly in the night.
The way they did everything that mattered.
Together.
