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“Miss Floros,” Diamandis snapped, taking her by the arm and beginning to pull her toward the exit. “You will cease—”
“First, clearing his parents’ name,” she continued, even as Diamandis pulled her away. She simply turned her head to keep facing Alexandra and spoke louder. “Protecting you—”
“Katerina!” The king almost had her to a door that led somewhere Alexandra had never been.
Still, the brave woman shouted over Diamandis’s attempts to silence her. “And not telling you.”
He slammed the door on her. Then stood, back to Alexandra, as the words landed. Nonsensical words, of course.
“Diamandis, I don’t understand. Is it true?”
Diamandis sighed heavily as he turned to face her. “I had to meet all three demands to keep him from enacting his little revenge, Zandra. If you know, then I have not kept up my end of the bargain.”
She shook her head. There would be no revenge. Not now. Not ever. “I shall keep it for you.” Because Lysias had changed course, yes, but more than that, he’d ensured her protection and wanted that kept from her?
Perhaps it was warped, but she knew him. She understood him. It meant he loved her. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be afraid. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have changed his twenty-year revenge plot. Only love could have done that.
Only love. The thing he was so afraid of. Afraid enough that the powerful, determined, proud Lysias had run away. Like the hurting boy he was on the inside.
She supposed she could sit around and wait for him to realize it. He would eventually. He was too...enduring not to.
But she didn’t want to wait around. She too had endured, and she wanted more. And to not waste a moment of that more.
“I must go to Athens, Diamandis. But I will be back. Mark my words, we’ll both be back.”
“You will be welcome. Him?”
“He will also be welcome,” she replied firmly. “Because I love him, and I am the princess.” Still such an odd thing to say, to be real. But she wanted to hold on to it for dear life. It and Lysias. “For all his faults, he is a good man at heart. I think you must be able to understand where his struggles come from. How hard it is to believe in good when it was so cruelly stripped from you so young.”
Diamandis grunted. “You need only ask Michelis. His office is in the front hall. He has been instructed to take you wherever you want,” he grumbled.
Alexandra turned to move, but Diamandis stood in her way. “I know we do not truly know each other, but I am your brother. And the king of Kalyva. No matter what happens, know you always have a place here. And I will always be a safe place to land.” He looked so kind in the moment, so vulnerable, Alexandra followed her impulse.
She wrapped her arms around him and held on to him tightly, blinking back the tears. “Thank you. I may never remember those first four years...” She pulled back and looked up at him. “But we have whatever years ahead of us to make up for the ones we lost.”
Because she believed in possibilities. In joys and futures and in love.
Now she had to track down her fearsome fiancé and convince him that he could too.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LYSIASSTAREDDOWNat Athens from his office window. He was in a foul temper and had instructed his staff that no one bother him. They had listened.
He couldn’t seem to concentrate on work. His mind was still back in Kalyva. In the palace. With Alexandra.
PrincessZandra.
Surrounded by all he’d amassed—his position, his money—it was hard to hold on to the idea he was somehow not worthy of someone with her title. It was hard not to acknowledge that the way he felt inferior was born of a system he’d understood only from the eyes of a boy.
Now he was a man. And what he was not worthy of washer. Her determination. Her love. Her courage.
He scowled. How had she come to mean so much? How had she crawled into his life and turned it inside out? It had only been a day since the ball, and still hegrievedthat she was not here. That he could not walk down the hall and see her. Not catch a glimpse of her or sleep next to her in his bed.
His life had always felt busy before. Work had filled his days, and revenge had filled everything else. He’d thought that was something.
But Alexandra had shown him it was nothing. She had even ruined his revenge for him. He had not taken Diamandis down a peg, but clearing his parents’ name had eased some of the dark guilt that had twisted him up. Some of the injured rage that had kept him going for so long.
He still missed them. Still loved them. Still grieved everything that happened to them and him in the tragedy. But the blinding anger had ceded. All from one simple action by a man he’d been hating as a symbol for twenty years.
