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“All this grace that you bestowed upon me. This unmerited, unearned, unasked-for favor... It is like salvation, and I was too afraid to admit that I needed it. But I was in the darkness without you.”
“Hercules... I...I have loved you from the moment we met, but I’m sure that you loved me since then as well. I know you have.”
“I have,” I said, my voice rough. “I have loved you. It took hold of me that first day, and I didn’t recognize it, because I didn’t know a connection with women that was about something other than lust. What we had grew into lust, after we had a friendship, and I’d never experienced anything like that. Someone who loved me after they knew me. Someone I wanted to speak to and sleep with in equal measure.”
“You feel like your mother abandoned you,” she said softly. “That’s why it hurt you so much when you thought I’d left.”
“I thought you cared about me. And I never put the two things together, because I did not think about my mother and her own fault in what had happened to me, because I could not bear to hate them both... But... Yes. That is why. Because I finally thought that someone cared for me again and then... And then that.”
“I would never have left you,” she said. “Believe that. And I won’t now. No matter what. What we have is real. And it’s worth fighting for. It’s worth clinging to. Even if neither of us are perfect. Especially if neither of us are perfect. Because this was never about perfect. I grew up thinking that I had to be perfect. That I had to try to live up to this impossible thing. But my father left out grace. He left out joy. He left out love. And we’ll fill our lives with that, surround ourselves with it.”
“I never knew what it was, not really,” I said, my voice rough. “But I would very much like to have a lifetime of discovering it with you.”
“So would I,” she said. “I knew that I found something special the first day I met you. And it scared me. Because I also knew that it would change everything. That you could ruin all of me. But I needed to be ruined. That old me, she needed to be ruined, so that I could be made whole.”
“We will be whole together,” I said. “I know that I told you I didn’t believe in souls. That I didn’t believe in things I could not see. But I see you. I see you, Marissa. And I feel that you love me. And I feel... I love you too. I have, from the beginning. I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Neither did I,” she said. “And I could never have known that we would end here. What a road that we walked. Separate for a while, but I’m ready to be together.”
“And you know... With my father dead, we don’t have to stay married. I have the throne. I have made Lily legitimate.”
“You’re not suggesting that we...get divorced.”
“Never,” I said. “But what I do want you to understand is that I’m not staying married to you for the bloodline. I’m not bound by anything. My country is not in peril. You are free to go, and I’m free to ask you to leave. But I won’t ask that. I hope that you’ll stay.”
“You know I will,” she said, scooting closer to me and grabbing hold of my face. “You know I will forever.”
“I love you,” I said.
And it was the first time I could ever remember saying those words to another person. “I love you,” I said again. “And I love Lily.” Suddenly, desperation filled my chest. “I need to go tell her.”
She laughed. “No, you don’t. It can wait until morning.”
“It doesn’t feel like it can. Everything feels desperate. So... I’ve never felt like this before. I love you. I love you so much.”
“If it feels desperate, then perhaps we should explore that. Together.”
And this time when she took me into her arms, and took me into her bed, it was not merely as lustful young people on a beach, not merely as husband and wife, but as a man and woman who were desperately in love.
And I knew that we would be that forever.
“I pledge myself to you,” I said. “And I pledge to love you above all else.”
“But you must love the country,” she said.
“Everything good that I am comes from my love for you. My love for Lily stems from that, and what you taught me. My desire to be a good king in a richer, deeper sense than what my father was comes from loving you. I will love you above all others, above all else, for as long as I shall live.”
“And I shall do the same.”
EPILOGUE
Marissa
IT WAS A wonderful blessing, watching Hercules gaze at our son in the private nursing wing the day I gave birth. Lily was thrilled to have a little brother, and her excitement was difficult to contain. My mother had finally taken her home a few hours ago, exhausted. And that left Hercules and myself.
“I’m very glad that you got to see this. That you were part of it this time.”
“So am I,” he said, his voice rough as he gazed down at Leonidas.
Such a big name for such a tiny creature.
“You have a son.”
“And a daughter,” he said. “And I will protect both of them with every breath left in me. They will never question my love for them.”
“No,” I agreed, “they won’t.”
Our lives had been filled with love that no one on earth could ever question these past months. Hercules was the best King, the best husband, the best father. I was blissfully happy in a way I hadn’t known it was possible to be. And it all seemed to just keep expanding.
That was the beautiful thing we were both discovering about love. It had no limits.
I looked at him, and I was cast back.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw Prince Hercules, standing there on a beach.
Hercules, who was now King. Who bore a name fit for a god but who, blessedly for me, was a man. A man I loved.
And I never could have guessed that it would lead here, to a maternity ward in a hospital halfway across the world, to me being a queen, us being married, us being so blissfully in love neither of us could see straight.
I had been so certain he was my downfall. But in the end, I hadn’t fallen. I had grown wings strong enough to fly. And now we flew together, my King and I.
It would be easy to call it fate, and perhaps whatever had brought us together was fate. But what kept us together was love. A love more powerful than all the pain the world had given to us.
And it was love that would sustain us.
Always.
* * *
Lost in the magic of Crowned for My Royal Baby?
Why not explore these other Maisey Yates stories?
The Spaniard’s Stolen Bride
His Forbidden Pregnant Princess
The Queen’s Baby Scandal
Crowning His Convenient Princess
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Greek’s Penniless Cinderella by Julia James.
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The Greek's Penniless Cinderella
by Julia James
PROLOGUE
XANDROS LAKARIS TURNED ABRUPTLY, winged brows snapping together over his dark eyes, deepening the lines around his well-shaped mouth.
‘Dammit! Just what do you suggest I do? Storm after her and drag her to the altar?’ he demanded rhetorically.
The man he’d addressed, Stavros Coustakis, sat back in his chair, eyeing his visitor impassively. He had grey-green eyes, unusual for a Greek—but then—unlike Xandros, with his long and illustrious family history—Stavros Coustakis knew little
about his antecedents.
‘I’m a nobody,’ he’d readily admitted, with the worldly cynicism Xandros was well used to in this man whose daughter he’d been engaged to marry, ‘but I’ve made myself a very, very rich one.’
Those grey-green eyes hardened now at Xandros’s outburst.
‘No,’ he retorted. ‘It would do you no good. She has defied me and is therefore no longer my daughter.’
Xandros looked at him askance, his frown deepening. He knew Stavros was ruthless—a man few, if any, cared for—yet to hear him disown his daughter so casually was chilling. But he also knew that his own reaction to his former fiancée’s flight was, in fact, predominantly relief.
