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“How kind of him,” Daphne gritted out. Historically, she wasn’t Dominic or Adrian’s biggest fans. How they—how we all—had treated Rose was a mistake I knew they sat with daily.
Even though Rose had played into her role well, once Daphne had knocked my head on straight, I saw it. How impossible it was that she hurt Pine.
“Now, is that all?” Daphne asked into the silence of the table.
Rose nodded, her gaze sweeping back and forth over Daphne’s form. With that, the rest of dinner passed in brutal niceties. Daphne’s hands were wrapped tightly around her utensils the entire time, while conversation was kept surface level.
Which made me more and more mad with every passing second. Because we weren’t fuckingpolite. Everyone at the table had known each other for their entire lives.
If that was what my future looked like with Daphne, with her sitting there like she was bound to her chair against her will, then maybe reconsidering the engagement was the smart thing.
Because I didn’t want Daphne tied to anything. Unless it was to my bed.
Chapter 4
Daphne
The second dinner ended, I gave Rose a quick hug and fled so fast I left burn marks on the light blue carpet under the table. Lukas barely even looked at me as I left, leaving him with Rose and Dominic.
I couldn’t sit there, hearing about how I’d caused the problems with the catches without doing anything to immediately fix it.
It had been made clear to me as a girl that I wasn’t meant to lead. That there was something in my young demeanor that caused everyone around me to believe that I was unfit to take on the role of Athena.
Over the years, I’d come to realize that it was less about me and more about the panic that had ensued after Adrian was born. Better to choose an arrangement like Lukas and I’s, thrown together under the guise of peace and progress, than to risk me losing to Sabina and bringing shame to my family.
I dealt with it. But the old blame and guilt and doubt crept up at times. Times like now, where it was hard to ignore that I made a decision that was wrong. That hurt people.
So, I’d do what I did best—I made myself needed. Made myself indispensible.
When my mother said I couldn’t be a leader on my own because I wasn’t good enough with people, that I had to hide my intelligence, I read every book I could find on negotiations and social dynamics and making people like youuntil sheneededme to make her and our line look good.
When the University of Athena lost one of their largest donors and their president, claiming they had no intention of staying if Minerva would be in charge, I won them back, drawing on every ounce of strategy I could manage.Then they couldn't say they didn't want me, because who could do away with the person who'd saved them?
So now, I’d do the same. I’d stay and reintegrate into court and force myself around Lukas until I could no longer be to blame.Until he needed me again.
And part of that was the apology tour I had to go on. I considered the whole list, weighing who would be the hardest to speak to and who would have been hurt the most. There was Lukas’s mother, who’d stepped in when my own hadn’t. There was half our fucking court, probably furious that I left. And there was June…
June was up first because she was likely hurt the most. And she would be the easiest to talk to.
After poking around random rooms, maybe—definitely—avoiding going to my old bedroom, I went for it. I walked down the lower hall, listening to my feet click against the floor as the walls moved from the grandeur of the palace to the practical wood of the house. When I got to the back, I looked around, praying no one saw me. I didn’t want an audience for this.
Opening the door and stepping into the artificial air of the outdoors, I ran over to the edge of the land, where the sea took over the air.
I never forgot how much I loved the gardens behind the palace. Seaweed towered around the perimeter in flowing, green stems and flowers and coral dotted the rocks. There were some plants that looked like they traditionally grew on land, sustained in the sea by Lukas's power.
It was beautiful.
As I pushedthrough the stable doors, I was distracted from feeling the switch of my lungs into water by the sound of the hippocampi whining and crying at my presence.
My heart clenched when I recognized a particular whistle, a little sharper than the others and more tired. Zeus help me, I hoped someone was taking care of her.
I walked along the stalls, greeting a few horses I recognized before I went to the far corner. There were two dark green stalls at the very end, well kept and expansive. Fit for a god and their horse. I stepped into view of Lukas’s horse, August, first. His blue-black fur was picking up the specks of moonlight in the water, and reflecting off the lighter scales on his tail.
When he saw me, he blew air out of his nose, sending bubbles around his snout and floating up to the ceiling. A second later, he turned around and swam out of sight, presumably to go back to sleep.
Dismissed. Seemed like he and Lukas agreed that was the treatment I deserved.
I turned and stepped off the wall, finally coming into view of the stall on the other side.
