“I appreciate the advice, Your Majesty, but while I will respect your wishes and go back to House Bane as needed, I will not be leaving Addie. I will take up the role of her personal guard, and protect her with my life as I vowed to long ago. I’ve already been gone for far too long.”
“As you wish. As long as, Dante has no issue with this, then let it be so,” Kellan says.
I see Dante’s whole neck tighten. Yes, he has an issue with it. He has a big issue with it. He’s jealous and threatened as hell, and I’m grateful to see it. The way he’s been carrying on, all noble and self-sacrificing has led me to question whether Dante cares for me as much as he says he does.
“Xander is one of the very best warriors we have,” Dante says, tightly. “I would like Addie to be under the care of the best.”
“Good, well that’s settled then,” Kellan says. He looks tired, and I can’t say I blame him. He’s been left to deal with the fall out of this on his own, along with the issues from my mother disappearing in the middle of the night.
“Dante,” he says honing his attention down. “Would you mind walking me to the meeting. There are things I should further like to discuss with you.”
I watch after them as they leave and as soon as the doors close behind them, the atmosphere in the room shifts again. I am alone with Xander.
“Do you love him?” He asks.
I close my eyes against the question. He has no right to ask that – and besides, I don’t have an answer, certainly one that he wants to hear. My demon is stirring at the sound of his voice, and I know I should have spent more time trying to learn how to control it, but I had more important things to deal with. Like surviving.
I feel a hand curl around the back of my neck as the heat of his body envelopes me. So hot. Like the sun. I breathe him in. Xander. I never thought I’d feel him like this again, breath him in as I do now. I thought he was lost to me, but he’s here. Found. And now that he is, I don’t know what to do. His arrival at our wedding, yesterday – hell, was it only yesterday? – had filled me with something like happiness, but it had also brought with it so much sadness on its wake.
Now, while I am happy he is alive, there’s only one thing I really want to know. Why the hell did he fake his own death?
I put my hand on his chest and push him away, standing tall.
“Look,” he says, looking so deep into my eyes that I think I might dissolve, “I know I owe you an answer, and promise me, I wish I could tell you everything – but I can’t, Addie. I really can’t, and I know that is making you livid as a hell cat, and it probably makes you hate me a little bit more than you already do – “
“—I don’t hate you,” I begin to protest, but even to my ears, it sounds like a lie.
He puts his finger against my lips and the pressure is almost unbearable. The urge to kiss his flesh so strong that it takes every ounce of my resolve not to engage.
“But, Addie, you have to trust me when I say that everything I did, I did because I love you, and I wanted to protect you. There’s such darkness around the corner.”
“It wasn’t your right to protect me,” I snap.
He smiles sadly. “It was my duty and my right as your husband to protect you in whatever way I could, even if that meant losing you.”
“We were not married.”
Xander shakes his head slowly. “No, it wasn’t written on a piece of paper, but it was carved here,” he says, taking my hand and placing it against his chest. “I made vows to the heavens and earth. I made vows to you, Addie. And so, we may not be married in the eyes of that fuddy duddy Fae Council through there, but in my soul, we are married – and I think it’s the same for you, too.”
I can’t cope with this right now. My head is spinning. All I want to do is break away. I can’t breathe.
“Now is not the time, Xander,” I say – the bite of my words sharper than I intended, but a true reflection of the hurricane of feelings inside me.
I leave the room ahead of him. While I’ve missed him like crazy, I have spent my time mourning him; I’ve started to move on with my life. Will I need to sacrifice all I have gained if Kellan is able to undo my union with Dante? What will the people of the kingdom think of their princess when they see how fickle and unkind I have been?
Xander is right to think that I am mad as hell about him keeping me in the dark about his disappearance – and he’s still yet to give me an explanation that I can get my head around. How does he expect to reconcile with me if he won’t be honest with me? How are we meant to move forward from that? At this point, I’m not even sure we can.
And as for the rest of them, scheming and plotting behind my back – I don’t know who I can trust anymore. As I walk to my rooms, I seriously consider packing my bag and sneaking out in the middle of the night – leaving all this shit behind me. They can sort it out amongst themselves. My desire to run is strong – but then I think of Dante, and I can’t do that to him. He’s suffering enough. And unlike me, he wouldn’t even think to run away from the situation. No, he’ll face it like the royal he is – and there’s a lot I can learn from him. He’s already taught me so much.
And, if I run away, I’m not going to find out what happened – and I assure you, I am going to damn well find out exactly what has been going on behind my back whether Xander wants me to know or not.
Chapter Two
Xander
I watch her walk away from me again and let out the breath trapped in my lungs. She’s right to be angry. Every right in the world. I can only imagine the pain that I have put her through. I’m just about to leave the throne room when I Dante’s voice breaks me from my reverie.
“She never stopped loving you, you know,” he declares.
He’s staring at me with a mix of pity and caring awash his face. I’m trying very hard to dislike him – and I do, but I also respect him. He’s a gentleman in a way that I can never be. Refined. Honest. He has integrity and spirit. He has a quiet strength that is firm and dependable. I can see why Addie would choose him – especially after me. Dante and I are the opposite in almost every way, and that is why, although I like him, I can’t tolerate him being near Addie. My jealousy just won’t allow it.
“Nor I her,” I growl lowly. “But I fear this time I have pushed her too far. She’s changed,” I say, unable to hide the accusation in my voice.
“Maybe, or maybe you just need to show her that what you two share is worth fighting for. Isn’t that what got you both into trouble time and time again?”
His wise words make me smile.
“She is more trouble than I have known in many lifetimes – and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Then perhaps you should tell her that,” he offers.
I scrutinise his face. I don’t understand him, and increasingly, I don’t trust him – however, I know that is more my problem than anything to do with Dante. It’s the jealousy whispering in my ear again. I shake my head as if it might straighten out the jumble of thoughts in it. What kind of guy stands by and lets another man try and claim his wife?
“And you would stand aside and let me win her heart again?” I ask, shocked. I cannot say if our roles were reversed I would give Addie up so easily. Actually there is no freaking way I’d let him even within the Palace gates.
“She never loved me,” he says. “At least not in the way she loves you. I understand what it is to lose true love. It’s what bonded us; a mutual respect for the fact that our hearts were already buried along with our mates.”
“So you don’t love her either?” I ask incredulously. “How can you marry her knowing that? Addie deserves somebody who worships the ground she walks on, who would die to save her, who would burn without her,” I say, my passion rising.
“Addie deserves what Addie wants,” Dante says. “And you’re mistaking lust, desire and infatuation for something more meaningful. Maybe what you say is true for the bonding of soul mates, but it isn’t true for marriage. Marriage is some
thing else entirely – especially for royals. And don’t think for one minute that I don’t worship the ground Addie walks on. I respect her. I value her. I admire her. I want to be worthy of her. I would die for her in a heartbeat – but we are both older and wiser to know that all this wailing, burning with desire, perishing without touching crap is just that.”
As much as I hate to admit it, Dante has a point – a very good point and it makes me hate him just a little more and myself even more so. Now I feel like the stupid adolescent with some kind of crush on a woman. There is also something else in his declaration, respect, value, admire – if I’m honest with myself, how much of that have I shown to her over our time together?
“Addie is a good soul and has a pure heart –”
I scoff thinking prince charming doesn’t have a clue about the darkness that nestles in Addie. He’s put her on a pedestal. But he remains undeterred.
“I know that if the situation was in reverse, would free me from any vow I had made, so I will do the same for her.”
I ring my face in my hands. I don’t understand what is between them. It’s not a version of love that I can translate. I don’t know what it means to be selfless like that. I was wrong to accuse him of not loving her earlier – he does. He loves her in an entirely different way to the way I do, but it’s love nevertheless.
“You do love her?” I say.
He shrugs but there is a blush on his cheeks. “Not as much as she deserves. Both of us were too broken to fall in love with each deeply – we’re both still healing. But I know that in the future, our love would have grown, become strong, knitting us together. We would have been happy. Now, all I want is for Addie to be happy. If that means stepping aside, then that’s what I will do.”
I nod my head in thanks and leave with the hope of catching up with Addie. I need to make her understand that all I did, I did for her. I know she will say she could have known the reasons behind what I did, but she was the biggest risk factor. For anyone else to believe I was dead, she had to believe it. Her grief was not something she could simply act.
It was the same with my brother. Coming back from the dead and having to face my brother was hard, knowing all he had sacrificed, knowing how he also loved my Addie, and knowing how much my death hurt him. I know it changed him. At first, I thought he might kill me at the sight of me. I learnt from my mistakes with him, and I won’t make the same with Addie.
They are both wrong if they think I didn’t care enough about them to trust them – it was precisely because I care about them so much that I had to protect them. Kaden has been by my side since I have returned, but I know that harm has been done to our brotherhood; it’s a harm I’m not sure can be rectified. My lack of faith in him, or at least, what he believes was my lack of faith has put a wedge between us.
No, with Addie it must be different. I need her to understand she really could not know, that I did it to keep her safe.
I had to track the Seven and eliminate any forces that might try to take her again. We could never rest until they were obliterated. We could never move on until they no longer posed a threat. We could never marry until… I thought I could trust Eolande to keep her word, how utterly wrong I was.
I stop mid stride when I hear Addie’s laughter. It’s followed by the delighted squeals of a child, who I assume must be Sophie. I walk out of the corridor and look out to the grounds where I see them playing together. Sophie is on Addie’s back and they’re pretending to jump and catch the lightning bugs, which hang in the dark night air.
Leaning against the doorway, I watch them, and my heart lightens. This child brings a new side out in the woman I love. It’s a side I have not seen before. Fun. Carefree. Playful. I realise then that all our times together were marred by a darkness hovering over us – that is why I had to destroy the Seven. To give her this. To give her peace. And it looks like it has cost me dearly. However, it’s a price I would pay a thousand times over now I see her cheeks flushing, and her eyes full of tender love and happiness. The unconditional love she has for the child shines out brighter than the moon. I am glad that from all of the darkness surrounding her, she found some light.
I watch them until the moon hangs high in the night sky before retreating back to her quarters to wait for her to return. There was no way I was going to interrupt her joy. I’ve done enough of that lately. I try to gather my thoughts; go over it all in my head on repeat. I try to think of the best things to say. How I can explain it to make her see. I really never meant to hurt her.
When I decided on this crazy scheme, I genuinely thought Kaden and Eolande would keep her safe for me. That they would make sure the Fae world didn’t catch up with her too quickly. It was clear that Eolande had different ideas – she was only too quick to bring her errant daughter back into the fold, to make her a full Fae princess and to destroy what we had together. There was no way that Eolande would ever have blessed a union between her daughter and a fallen. I know this now and I could kick myself for such foolishness. I have no idea why Eolande hates the fallen so much, or why she would risk her life to betray us both in such a way – I can’t believe this is just about bloodlines. Nobody is that bigoted, that full of hatred, that they would risk their own life – are they? But one thing for certain, I intend to find Eolande and have it out with her. I deserve an explanation to my face – and so does Addie.
I know Kaden and Dimitri are already working with the Fae and the wolves to track the Queen, she needs to be brought to justice.
In the time that I have been gone, I was entirely focused on finding the Seven, making sure that Cole really was gone from this world and the next. It was this focus that protected me from the pain of leaving Addie. If it slipped for more than a second, my heartache was excruciating – but I always had the belief that it was all for some greater good.
“Xander,” I turn as I hear her speak my name. She doesn’t look particularly happy to see me.
“Addie, can we talk? Please?” I plead, hoping she can see past the hurt she feels to let me properly explain everything. “I think you deserve an explanation.”
“Yes,” she sighs. “Come on in,” she says, breezing past me into the room. It feels strange how much distance is between us, even though she's stood right in front of me. I watch as she sends Sophie off to get ready for bed. The child looks at me with big suspicious eyes. I can tell that I frighten her a little. I can also tell that she is fiercely protective of Addie. She glances to Addie looking for reassurance and then looks back to me.
“Off you go, sweetie. I’ll be along in a minute or two to read you a story.
“This is weird,” she breathes, sitting down on the bed. “I missed you so much, and now you’re here in front of me, it feels like I don’t really know you at all. Seeing you filled me with relief and happiness, the overwhelming knowledge that you are alive.” I can see she is fighting back the tears. I don’t want her to cry. It breaks my heart when she cries.
“But?” I ask, not able to meet her eyes. I’m afraid. Me. The fearless warrior, the man who is frightened of nothing – except losing her. The weight of everything weighs heavily on me.
“But,” she begins, “Since then, all I’ve felt is a storm of confliction.”
“I am so sorry, Addie,” I say, kneeling in front of her. “I never wanted for us to be in this position.”
“So tell me exactly what happened. I need to know. Did you plan this all along?”
I shake my head. I can’t believe she could think me so callous. “I didn’t plan anything. I really did die, Addie – I just didn't stay dead. I still can’t explain why, or how I’m here. I’ve spent hours trying to work it all out, but I can’t. I wish I could and then maybe I could explain it to you and you would understand. You would be able to forgive me more easily. All I know is, I went home to Addatria. It was just as I remembered. It was beautiful. The colours seemed so much more vivid, the trees heavy with blossom, the sounds of the animals as they roamed freely to
live at peace with us. The meadows full of flowers, and the sounds of children playing, happy and free. My mother and father were there, and I felt peace. The most peace I’ve felt in a thousand years. There was rain in the night, thundering against the windows, and amongst the noise of the torrential downpour, I thought I heard your voice through the darkness. You were calling out to me from a distance – it’s hard to explain. The next thing I knew, I was back in Kas’ compound and I was alone, wrapped in darkness.”
“So, you died, and you came back?” she says, pinching her eyebrows together as she tries to take in the information. “Then if you came back, why didn't you come back to me? Why didn’t you rescue me from the hell I’ve been through?”
“I wish I had, but you need to understand, I had no idea why I was back. What brought me back. I didn’t know… I didn’t know if I would do you more harm than good. I was frightened – not just for me, but for you. I didn’t know what I was. In truth, I’m still not sure. Kas found me and brought in Dimitri.”
She snorts at the sound of the others’ names. I can tell she feels that we have all conspired against her – and I guess she has a point.
“We honestly thought it would be best that I stayed hidden until we knew what had happened. But during that time, I also saw an opportunity for me to be able create a new life for us. Any enemies I may have had, thought I was dead. Can you see the power in that situation? Do you see how I could use that to clear the way for us to be safe – to be happy? I wanted to make sure any threats to you were nullified, so that when it was time, we could be together, in peace with no threats.”
“And did you?” she asks sharply. “Did you banish the dangers you thought would get between us?”
I nod. “I did. Cole is gone. I hunted down the Seven and I exterminated them. I even made a deal with your mother to make sure you would be protected while I had to do all of this.”
Rapture (The Immortal Chronicles Book 4) Page 3
