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Queen Sofia was looking at her hands but Evie could tell that tears had gathered in her eyes, because they had gathered in her own. Sofia placed her hand over her husband’s, where he had rested it on her shoulder. And when the Queen met her eyes, she understood. For just a moment, she’d had her father returned to her. A proud, powerful, eloquent man, who had fought to give something to his granddaughter, more precious than any treasure: hope and possibility.
But it was what Evie saw passing between Queen Sofia and her husband that made her realise what she wanted. It was support, it was companionship. It waslove. And no matter how much she wanted to have that with Mateo, if he didn’t, couldn’t, be that for her, then it wasn’t love at all.
The clench of her fingers reminded her of the last thing he had given her.
‘I might not have proof that would stand up to any real investigation, but I do have this.’
She held out the ring and realised the moment they lost the King. He stared at it blankly and then a broad smile split his features. ‘A sweet. No, a...uhm...a treat...no.’
Alize laughed, ‘Silly Grandpère. But I know where we can find some sweets,’ she confided and started to lead him from the room. Theo pressed a kiss to his wife’s head and followed his daughter out along with the neatly dressed man in the corner who appeared to be some kind of medical professional.
Queen Sofia sighed and set her shoulders to look down at the ring in Evie’s hand. ‘I know what that is. It’s Isabella’s coming-out ring. We all have one, the women of this family.’ A small laugh escaped as if she didn’t believe her own eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said, finally. ‘Thank you for bringing her back to us.’
And beneath that Evie heard the unspoken words the Queen of Iondorra intimated.
Thank you for bringing him back to us.
‘You’re welcome,’ Evie replied, and wondered if she would ever feel the same. Whether, perhaps, there was a future in which she might finally try to find her birth parents.
‘Ms Edwards, I know that you are currently employed, but we have a few openings in Iondorra that might interest you.’
Evie couldn’t help but smile. Ever since she’d first come to Iondorra she’d been taken by the beauty of it. In her mind, somehow, it had become a country from her very own fairy tale. But the last few days had rocked her sense of self a little and she knew that she needed to regroup.
Mateo really had been wrong. It wasn’t that she had been so desperate for the scraps that Iondorra had thrown her way. What had been driving her was her desire to know the past. Only, Evie was beginning to suspect it wasn’t Isabella’s past she wanted to know, but her own.
‘I’m sure they would interest me, very much. But I think I need some time to think through my next steps,’ she replied.
‘Of course. Please know that if you would like to take that time here in Callier, we will provide a suite for you and open a line of credit for you too.’
‘That is too kind, Your Majesty.’
‘No. It really isn’t. I am deeply sorry for how you were treated by your peers and regret very much that the palace wasn’t—and isn’t—able to change that. Yet.’
Evie held the gaze of a queen and accepted an apology that was her due. ‘Thank you.’
Mateo had intended to return home. He had. He’d arranged for his car to be waiting for him when he landed and there it was on the runway, waiting for him to drive it the short distance to his villa.
He’d blocked out two days for the rescheduled meeting with Léi Chen, but this time it was Chen who’d had to cancel due to a family emergency. So, he’d got in his car and started to drive.
He was nearly three hours in when he realised his unconscious destination. He both wanted it and feared it. Feared it because of the emotions coursing through his veins. His heart hadn’t beat normally since Evie had disembarked from the plane. Who was he kidding? It’d practically been arrhythmic since he’d first met her. An hour later and the muscle memory that had brought him here a thousand times had him turning off at the junction for Almería and he stopped fighting the fact that he was going to see his mother.
She was standing in the doorway, wiping her hands on a cloth when he pulled into the parking bay in front of her villa. He wondered for a moment if she’d somehow known he was coming, an instinct he previously would have dismissed, but after everything he’d seen, everything he’d discovered, he really wasn’t that sure any more.
He exited the car and she opened her arms, and for the first time in what felt like forever he let his mother embrace him like a child. He was shamed by the anger and frustration that escaped from the box he’d tried to stuff them in, through the tears that pressed desperately against his eyelids, and he tried to pull away to hide them, but his mother held on tight, refusing to let go. And finally, he gave up the fight and sank into his mother’s arms.
An hour later he was in the kitchen with a coffee and a plate full of crumbs, his mother refusing to hear a word until he’d eaten the sandwich he’d denied needing but had consumed in less than thirty seconds.
She looked at him knowingly and he smiled. For a moment it had reminded him of Evie. And then the knife twisted again.
‘Speak and don’t leave anything out.’
He didn’t know where to start...there were things he’d have liked to leave out—the hurtful words he’d delivered, embarrassment and shame hot, crawling things with spikes that sank into his skin—but his mother also deserved to know that her husband’s theories had not been pure fantasy, but reality.
He started at the beginning and took the slaps to the back of his head with grace, knowing they were delivered by a mother who had raised her son better than that.
There was a wistful smile on his mother’s face when he finished.
‘That would have meant so much to your father. That you and she were the ones to find the treasure and the proof.’
