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“Yes.”
I climbed out my window that night and met him there at our spot, in the darkness. He had a blanket and a bottle of wine, and I had never tried alcohol before. I declined the wine, but I got drunk on his mouth, on his touch. And before I knew it, things had gone much further than I had intended.
It went on like that over the weeks, until I didn’t care anymore what was supposed to be right. The only thing that felt right was being in his arms. And when I gave him my virginity, I gave it easily, joyously. And he showed me what pleasure meant, and why people jumped into ruin with careless abandon and joy in their hearts.
It was the night he left that it happened.
He had to go. He couldn’t stay away from home any longer.
He didn’t ask me to go with him.
I told myself he couldn’t.
He and I forgot everything. We made love on a blanket in the sand until neither of us could breathe, and it wasn’t until later that I realized he’d forgotten protection of any kind.
He was gone the next day.
And three weeks later I knew my life had changed forever.
I had no idea how to begin contacting the palace.
But that wasn’t even what worried me, not right at first. It was telling my parents. But I knew that I had to call Hercules first.
I knew you couldn’t just call up a palace. Still, I had to try.
I called the palace directory. I left a message. I heard nothing.
I called again. Again and again.
Finally, in my desperation I told the person on the other end of the line that I had to get in touch with Prince Hercules, since I was having his baby.
The next day, men in suits came to the coffeehouse.
They whisked me into the manager’s office, and they told me that I was never to reach out to Hercules again. And that if I agreed to sign stacks of thick legal documents and never reveal the paternity of my child, I would be given enough money to live more than comfortably forever.
My heart shattered into pieces. Desperate, enraged, I threw the papers and ran. I ran all the way back home.
My secret burst out of me. Flowing like the tears that were pouring down my face. I admitted to my parents that I was pregnant.
My father’s face turned to stone. He asked if I intended to marry the father of my child, and quickly. I told him I could not, because he had abandoned me.
He didn’t have to say anything. His face said it all. He had warned me. He had told me. And I had failed. I was wicked, just like the rest of them. And that was when he told me he would have to wash his hands of me. Because there was no way that he could have his daughter wandering into Sunday service visibly fallen as I was.
I stumbled out of the house on numb feet, trembling.
And the men in suits were there.
They opened the door to the limousine and bade me to get inside. I obeyed, because I had reverted to being obedient again, there at the center of my grand demolition.
“What does the paperwork demand of me?” I asked.
The men looked at me, hard, neither of them sympathetic at all. “You must stay away from here for a period of five years at least. You must never attempt to contact Prince Hercules. You must never come to the country. If you do that, the sum of money will be yours.”
He pointed to a figure outlined on the contract, and my vision blurred. I would never have to work again. My child would want for nothing. And given that I was currently homeless, that was important.
But I could only think of one thing.
“How many times have you had to do this for him?”
“All these things are a matter of private palace business. Will you sign or not?”
And I knew that I’d been had. My virginity taken by a careless seducer of women. He hadn’t waited for me because he cared; he had simply waited until it was legal. And then he had sent strangers to do this to me. To dehumanize me, to take what had been a beautiful gift on my part and turn it into something tawdry and worse than common.
“I’ll sign.”
And so I had. Because what other choice did I have?
Yes, I remembered the first time I saw Hercules Xenakis.
It had been the beginning of the utter destruction of my life as I knew it.
But I rebuilt it into something beautiful. Something that centered around our daughter. My daughter.
And I did not violate that agreement. Not in that whole time. Except...
Except I had come back to Medland for the first time, at the end of my five-year exile. And there had been rumors he would be here in the lead-up to his wedding.
I’d told myself I was going for a walk.
But that walk ended at a place I knew I was likely to find him.
There he was on a balcony at the country club, overlooking the ocean below. With a woman standing next to him, a giant ring glittering on her fourth finger. I knew who she was—I wasn’t a fool. I didn’t avoid headlines about him. I didn’t seek them out either. I refused to let him become a sickness for me, ever again.
But I knew he was getting married.
A part of me had to wonder if I was here out of a true desire to reconcile with my mother, now that my father was gone, or if I had really come in the hope of this.
Because of course he still came here. This site of my ruin. The site of his betrayal.
And he was with her.
There had been many hers over the years.
I’d forced myself to look at them all and imagine what lies he told them.
But seeing them in person...
It made my whole body ache. I suddenly wished that I had Lily with me. Because at least then I could’ve turned to her, used her as some sort of distraction.
No.
I would never, ever allow Lily to be exposed to him.
He didn’t want her. He didn’t want her, and he didn’t deserve to see her. Did not deserve to set eyes on the miracle that we had created. The only good and beautiful thing that I had in my life. He had rejected her, and he never, ever deserved to have even a moment of that pure love that she possessed.
But then he turned, as if an invisible force had tapped him on the shoulder. And his eyes caught mine.
And the expression I saw there was one of pure hatred.
CHAPTER TWO
Hercules
MARISSA. HER NAME echoed inside me, as it always had. And for one moment I was stopped utterly and completely. For one moment I was transported back in time. To the strangest, most unaccountable three years of my life.
Three summers spent obsessed with a dowdy brunette who hadn’t even known who I was upon our first meeting.
That was what had intrigued me at first. Women tried all kinds of things to get close to me. To get into my sphere and seize whatever power they thought they might have. But not her.
Oh, I hadn’t believed her doe-eyed innocence at first. I had been waiting for her to show her hand at some point, the whole summer that first time we met. But there was never a hand to show.
We never exchanged names, and if she knew that I was Hercules Xenakis, Prince of Pelion, she did not let on.
I talked to her. And I could not remember a time when I had ever talked to another person the way that I did her. And even now, years later, I could not quite account for why.
At first, it had felt like a game. I was one of the most recognizable men in the world and had been from the day of my birth, so the novelty of being anonymous was one that amused me greatly.
But there came a point where I began avoiding any and all others on Sunday afternoons so that I could go and meet the pastor’s daughter, who had somehow captured my attention.
She became a sickness.
I was obsessed with her smile. Her eyes. The way the sunlight caught her hair and
created a halo of gold around her. Like she was an angel. The kind who shouldn’t associate with a devil like me.
It has never been my habit to question my motivations. An entire staff of hundreds exists, and always has, to see to my every whim. I’ve never had to put much thought into why I do anything. If I want something, it appears.
And so I didn’t put any thought into why my little fascination had a hold of me the way that she did. It was innocent, that first summer.
But things changed.
The way that she looked at me, with that hunger in her eyes. And I knew that she didn’t understand what was burning between us, which should have been my first warning to stay away.
