by Millie Adams
He thought of his own fiancée. Wide-eyed, determined, and no less tortured than he was.
His sisters had brought with them a sense that the world could be right. And they had given it to those men that cared for them so.
He could bring nothing of the kind to Annick. And she would hold no magic elixir of healing for him.
They had seen too many dark things. They knew too many hideous truths about the world.
“Well, it’s good to see all of you,” Maximus said, working to put his mask in place. He wouldn’t have to explain that to Annick, which was a blessing. Because Annick understood. Annick knew.
He felt a ripple go through his family, and he turned. Annick was standing in the doorway, wearing her crown and a silver gown that wrapped around her curves.
Annick had taken this dressing-for-how-she-wanted-to-appear thing to heart. Intensely. She was nothing if not blatantly over-the-top at every opportunity.
“Hello,” she said.
“Your Majesty.” His mother curtsied.
“Your Highness,” came from his father.
Minerva curtsied and Dante inclined his head. Javier and Violet stepped forward, shaking Annick’s hand. “Your Highnesses,” Annick said. “It is good of you to come and grace my country.”
“A pleasure,” Javier said. “For I know full well how good it is to be able to share your country with the world after many years of it being on the brink of devastation. My own brother has just reformed our native land of Monte Blanco to a glorious state. And you are more than welcome to come for a visit.”
“I should like that,” Annick said. “I should love to speak to you about all the things that you have done to fix the...atrocities that were visited upon your people. I am working diligently to try and make right what has happened to mine. But it is not so simple always.”
“It never is.”
“Indeed not,” Violet chimed in. “Sometimes they must kidnap someone to accomplish their ends.”
“It makes for an interesting story at parties,” Annick said. “A slightly more interesting story about how we met than many others have, don’t you think?”
Violet laughed, and the rest of his family too. Clearly utterly charmed by this rather serene version of Annick that stood before them.
It was not a part she was playing. And yet she was also not the urchin he’d held in his arms the night before, who had told him dirty jokes, then happily ate pastries in bed and wiped her buttery fingers against his bare chest.
It was all of her, fused into one formidable being.
And it was a sight to behold.
“That is true.” Violet shrugged. “And I have the added bonus of being able to tell people that I was kidnapped specifically so that I could marry his brother. And ended up marrying him myself.”
“We’re interesting if nothing else,” Javier said.
“Quite,” Annick agreed.
“We shall have dinner,” Maximus said. “First, you may all find your bedrooms and put your things away.”
“Will you come with me?” Violet said, smiling. “It’s just that I have packed so many things, and I would hate to inconvenience your staff.”
“What about your husband?”
“Oh, I’ll inconvenience him plenty. It’s only that I still need more arms than that.”
Leave it to Violet to have packed an entire castle.
He followed his sister back out to the front of the palace, and she rounded on him.
“Are you in trouble? Blink twice if you need to leave.”
“It was my idea,” he said.
“Marriage was your idea?”
“Yes,” he said. “It was. She needs help. I’m not marrying her under sufferance.”
“Well, you can leave. We’ll get you diplomatic immunity. Whatever you need.”
“Whatever you need,” Javier agreed.
“I don’t need anything. I promise. Anyway, it’s entirely possible Annick is pregnant with my child. So I should probably stick around.” He knew the act he put on contributed to his family’s response to this. Had they truly known him, they wouldn’t have been half so worried.
“Oh, good God,” Violet said. “You are such a man whore that you had to have sex with the woman who kidnapped you?”
He looked pointedly at his sister’s baby bump. “What kind of person would do such a thing?”
“It’s different,” Violet said. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked at his sister. “No.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“I don’t need to be in love, Violet. I don’t want to be.”
“Is this because of Stella?”
He knew his sister couldn’t remember Stella well. She’d been too young. But Violet knew that their father wasn’t perfect. He’d sold her in marriage, after all. But she didn’t know about this. And he wasn’t going to explain.
“That was sixteen years ago. And things have changed. I am who I am.”
“So you’re going to marry that beautiful creature and never love her?”
That stung. But this wasn’t the moment to worry about Annick’s emotions. He was here to protect her. He was marrying her to protect her. That was it.
“Annick has a life to get to living. I’m not going to hold her back. Not when it’s her chance to be free.”
“And your chance to maintain the status quo. Congratulations.”
He rounded on his sister. “And what do you mean by that exactly?”
“I think you know. You found yourself a stunning woman who isn’t going to demand fidelity of you. And you get to be a King. Must be fun. And the bonus is that you get to rehab the image of the country. But what about you? Do you ever get deeper than image?”
“And where exactly is all this coming from?” he asked.
“It just seems to me that you found yourself a sort of ideal situation.”
“And yet you don’t sound happy for me.”
“Well, no. Because actually... I hoped for better for you.”
“You don’t know me, Violet. Not as well as you think.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“It wasn’t an accusation,” he said. “Merely an observation.”
His sister produced a purple velvet trunk, which he picked up off the ground and slung over his shoulder, walking back toward the palace. He didn’t need lectures from Violet on how he might proceed with his life. She didn’t know the half of it. Didn’t know the half of him. He strolled back into the palace and saw Annick standing there. Their eyes met. Annick was the only person who did know. His whole family, the people he had grown up with. His parents who had raised him... They didn’t know. Only this woman knew. This woman he had known for a couple of weeks. He didn’t quite know what to do with that realization. So he simply walked on. Tonight, they would have dinner. Tomorrow, they would be married. And it didn’t matter what Violet had to say about it. It was set in stone. It would not change.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNICK FELT STRANGE, sitting there with his family. Knowing what she did about his father, and that no one else knew it. And just...being around the family. It was a strange and layered thing. Shot through with moments of exhilaration and happiness and deep, unsettling grief. She felt quite unlike herself.
Unable to find a retreat inside of herself to go to as she normally did. Unable to protect herself against the sheer domesticity of what was happening in the palace.
A palace that had not seen such a thing since the death of her family.
“Violet and Maximus have always been the excessive ones,” Min was saying. “And I was the one that everyone overlooked.”
“Not everyone, cara.”
Minerva laughed at her husband. �
�Oh, you most of all. Don’t try to rewrite history now, Dante. Anyway, if you would have noticed me a moment before it was appropriate, my father would’ve had you killed.”
“Unless I did it first,” Maximus said, smiling that charming grin that she knew was fake. What was real was the threat underlying his words. She knew that he wasn’t lying. Or exaggerating. Except that... He would’ve done it himself. If a man had done anything to harm one of his sisters, she had full confidence that Maximus would be the one to handle the insults all on his own.
“It’s good you have Maximus here with you, Annick,” Robert King said. “He’s always been brilliant. Since you’re trying to accomplish reform here in the country, I know he’ll do right by you and your people.”
Annick studied him closely. He did seem a very nice man, as Maximus had said he was. He was of indeterminate age, obviously old enough to have Maximus as a son, but still difficult to pinpoint. His wife even more so, her face dramatically lacking in lines. They were a beautiful family. Violet stunning, Minerva an understated mourning dove. Elizabeth King the sort of blonde beauty that all celebrities aspired to.
She could see how Maximus had felt like he lived a charmed life. And how badly it would’ve hurt to have had that challenged. To have lost that in any regard.
“Yes,” Annick said, looking directly at the older man. “He’s quite brilliant. And I think...much more than anyone realizes.” She could feel his warning glare burning into the side of her face. “I’m quite lucky to have him.”
“Anyone would be,” Robert King agreed.
Dinner was served then, a basket of pastries coming out before the meal. Annick smiled.
“Is this a tradition here?” Minerva asked.
“No,” Annick said happily. “Well, I suppose it will be.”
By the end of it all, the tension she felt toward even his father was forgotten, because she felt surrounded by this love that she had not been near for years.
And she wanted so desperately to be part of it. She wanted so desperately to belong to someone. Wanted so much to be...
She cut that thought off. It did no good to dwell on the things she did not have control over. It did no good to wish for the clock to reverse. To wish for life to be different. She had done it hundreds of times. She knew it did no good.
She had lived the life she did. That was all.
Tomorrow she would marry into this family. Something that she could never have foreseen. Something entirely different to the life she had imagined loomed ahead of her. Tomorrow, things would change.
When dinner was done, she excused herself, and she didn’t even wait for Maximus. She found herself wandering away from the bedrooms. Away from the ballroom. Away from every civilized part of the castle, to a place that she hadn’t been back to since the day that she had been set free.
Her heart constricted in her chest as she made her way down the dark, narrow steps. As she descended down a level, and then another. All the way to the lower dungeon.
This place was a reminder. Of where she had come from. Of what really mattered. It wasn’t her feelings or his family or...
Her dungeon lay untouched since she’d been freed.
It needed to stand. As it was. At least, it felt to her it did.
It was not a grimy jail cell. It was a room. With a bed in the corner. No windows. It was dingy, not clean. Atop her small nightstand a copy of the Bible and Anne of Green Gables sat there still, the two books that she had read the most during her isolation, as they were the only ones perennially left behind by her tutor. There was a small desk in the corner, which had also been there since the beginning. And nothing more. She felt small here. That trembling sensation that she’d always battled in her chest loomed large.
“What are you doing down here?”
“I...I might ask you the same thing?”
“I followed you.”
“I did not give you permission to do so.”
“Since when have I needed your permission for anything?”
“This is not to share.” Tears filled her eyes. “I want you to go away.”
“Is this where they kept you?”
“It is not your...”
“Is this where they kept you, Annick? In this room like a...like a patient at a mental ward?”
“Yes,” she said.
“This is...disgusting.”
“It is,” she agreed.
“I would go back and kill them all over again if I had not already done so,” he said, his tone black as night. “How dare they do this to you.”
“It is so. They did it. I suppose it does not matter how.”
“It matters to me.”
“I felt so different sitting around your family, I thought perhaps I would come down here and see if I was. But I’m the same. I tremble standing here. Afraid that I will not be able to choose to leave.” She turned around. “But the bars are not there. You are.” He filled the doorway, his large frame taking up all that space once occupied by the locking door.
“How did you survive it?”
“The way we all survive such things. We go to whatever place inside of ourselves we can find that will protect us. Keep us safe. You have this place. This place you go to when you smile with charm to your parents. Or maybe it is the place you go when you pick up your gun to kill the men who you imagine are the ones who killed Stella. It is what you do, yes? Every time. That man becomes the man who killed her.”
“This is not about me.”
“It is about those of us who live on. When we sometimes wish we had not. That is what this is. We are not so different, Maximus King.”
“This prison cell is a damn horror,” he said, looking around.
“My life was a ‘damn horror,’ as you say. And yet somehow I am here. As are you.”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
“We are to be married tomorrow. And I am Queen.” Unexpectedly, a tear slid down her cheek. “I did not ever think I would live to see this day. A wedding day. The day that I wore the crown. It is all hitting me now. After all these years of hiding. All these years of feeling nothing. It is all hitting me now. All these feelings that were locked away here. How can you even have feelings in here?”
“You can’t,” he said. “This place is torture all on its own.”
“Yes. It is so. But it is a torture I survived. To come out of this place. To this moment.” She looked at him and her heart ached. It felt too heavy. Much too heavy. And suddenly, she wanted to run from him as badly as she wanted to run from the cell. Because... What she really wanted, standing there, raw from that dinner she had just shared with his family, she could admit wounded her just as much.
She wished that she could be loved. It was a terrible thing that Maximus grieved Stella so much. But... But what a wonderful thing to be grieved. What a wonderful thing to have someone love you quite so much that they turned their life inside out, that they became a mythical beast on your behalf, attempting to rid the world of injustice just so you might be avenged.
She had no idea what that sort of love must be like.
Years. She had spent years in this room. With captors who were utterly and completely dispassionate about her. Captors who didn’t care if she lived or died. Who trotted her out when it was necessary. Who used her to support their great and terrible acts. Who only educated her, even just the slightest, so that she could put on a performance of being cared for.
She was so hungry for love. There were so many things to grieve about the loss of her family, but the deepest one, the deepest one that she had not wanted to acknowledge for all this time, was that when she lost them she had also lost the only people who cared about her.
The only people in the world who loved her.
And she had him, this dark avenging angel, but he was not her dark avenging angel.
He
was avenging the wrongs committed against another. And he was using her as a token for that, but it still wasn’t the same.
It still wasn’t...love.
“I am tired,” she said. “And I must ready myself for our wedding. I should not like to be a hideous bride.”
“You could never be hideous,” he said.
“I am, I think, cursed with faint praise, eh?”
“You will be nothing but beautiful,” he said, his voice too smooth, his smile too easy. He was playing a part again.
Why? Because all of this was too real for him?
He ran, when things were intense. When they shared. Even if his body was here, his soul was running and she knew it.
“Says Maximus King? Or the King?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ah, the Playboy. How nice for me. I will meet him again at the altar tomorrow. And he had better look exceptionally sharp. Had better do me proud. In my country.”
“As trophy husbands go, you have a very good one.”
“And one who could ward off the threat without so much as breaking a sweat. I am quite fortunate, I think.”
“You look angry.”
“I am angry. All the time. Aren’t you?”
And tired. Just so damn tired.
“I’ll see you in the morning. My very angry bride.”
“See you then.”
But when she went to sleep, she no longer felt filled with that momentary joy she’d experienced. That sense of wonder that she was getting more than she had ever imagined she might. Now she felt overwhelmed by the realization that what she wanted was the love of the man who had no heart left to give. The love of a man who did not even know who he was.
And wanting Maximus’s love was as impossible as wanting the love of her parents.
For when he said that his love, his heart, was gone, she believed it.
So she wrapped herself up in a blanket on her bed and then wrapped herself even deeper in a blanket of impossibility and futility, and she would not allow herself to weep.
