“I was a commander for the King’s Army when Minos Vidalatos and I became friends. We drank, we whored, we woke in places we didn’t recall entering in the first place…” Antonis paused to laugh, then shook his head. “We were stupid young men, as all young men are. This was long before I realized our differences, you understand. He spoke of conquest and glory. I spoke of peace like it was wisdom, and he’d laugh.”
Antonis wagged a finger in the air. “And still, I didn’t truly see him for the man he was. Not until Maria.”
Maria… Dimitrios knew that name. It’d been penned into a page tracking the Vidalatos genealogy. “My grandmother?”
“Before she was queen consort, she and I loved each other—or so I believed.”
“You and Minos loved the same woman?”
A dark laugh burst from his chest. “Love? No. Minos didn’t marry her forlove. He married her to become untouchable. Maria was from a prominent and influential family, with ties that would eventually elevate Perean’s standing in the world. And because he still imagined himself my friend, he waited until my back was turned to ask her father for her hand. I’d gone home to mourn my father’s passing and settle his affairs, and they were married before I returned.”
Antonis waved a hand in Dimitrios’s direction. “No need to look heartbroken on my behalf. I eventually met and married the real love of my life, and we had many good years together.” Something in his gaze hollowed. “I lost her…in childbirth.”
Dimitrios’s heart seized, and he leaned forward to stare into the fire, begging the burst of images to stay behind the barrier he’d erected. But they were still too strong, and the worst night of his life flashed through his memory, drowning him in the blood and chaos and the small, unmoving body of his son.
Antonis’s voice washed over him like a black, oily shadow. “Yes. We have that in common, if nothing else. I know that pain well. If not for my wife, I might have walked away and retired here on my family’s lands, a bitter, angry man.”
Dimitrios cut his gaze back to the old man. “Bitter and angry? You? I can’t imagine it.”
Antonis lowered his chin and peered past the ridge of his browbone. “Try harder.”
Then, he rose from his chair and paced a slow circle near the fire, one hand trailing the edge of the mantle. “I stayed for my country, if for nothing else. I was a reasonable man—too reasonable to remain a soldier, as itturned out.”
“You left military service?” Dimitrios asked.
“I did. My mind was better suited to foreign policy and diplomacy, and I did something no one else had managed in over a century—I brokered a trade agreement with Soterra, our greatest rival.
“Perean’s harbors were thriving. Castona Bay had become a jewel of the eastern sea—merchants from distant kingdoms arrived with spices, silks, carved ivory, and gems. Our ports bustled. Our people prospered. All we needed was peace. With Soterra, we could share resources, open new routes, and stabilize the region for generations.”
Dimitrios leaned forward. “What happened?”
“Minos happened.” The name cracked from his lips like a whip. Antonis turned, eyes lit with old fury. “He didn’t want to share borders—he wanted to expand them. My success was nothing short of a threat to his plans. The treaty would have shifted the balance of power, given more wealth to the provinces, more voice to the people…and it would’ve made me the man who brought peace. Not him.”
He spat his next words. “Minos did what small men do when they fear being overshadowed—he sabotaged it. Quietly. Carefully. He spread lies about Soterra’s intentions. Whispered rumors that they meant to use the treaty as a way to take us from within. Called me naïve. Called me a traitor.”
Dimitrios’s stomach twisted. “He accused you of treason?”
“Worse,” Antonis said bitterly, “he let others do it. He leaked just enough to let the council tear me apart on his behalf. He let their voices damn me while his hands stayed clean.” Antonis’s gaze cut through the flickering shadows. “Then he manufactured a border skirmish—a patrol incident. Blood was spilled. The treaty collapsed. And I became the fool who’d trusted the enemy.”
He paused, nostrils flared. “My reputation, my life's work, crumbled overnight. Decades of service, gone.”
Silence stretched thick.
Finally, Antonis muttered, low and rough, “He crushed my life’s work not because it was wrong, but because it was mine.”
Rena had warned Dimitrios about this hatred for the Vidalatos name, and he’d been prepared to defend his bloodline. However, doing so would be in defense of a ghost who robbed Antonis of his legacy. A king who discredited his own friend, not for their shared love of country, but for ego.
For such hatred to stretch into every generation, what could he possibly say to heal this wound?
Antonis continued as if lost in memory. “He took my voice, my influence, and my future…and the world applauded him for it.” He met Dimitrios’s stare. “Now you understand why I can’t trust him or any that come after. Vidalatos isn’t merely a name”—he fisted the air between them—“it’s power at any cost. Stolen glory.”
Dimitrios shook his head. “I can understand your hatred for Minos, and given Orestis’s machinations, I have no love for him either… But, Mihail? He wasn’t like them. He wanted to unite our lands.”
Antonis’s face reddened in the next heartbeat and was Dimitrios’s only warning. “He took Pandora from me! He hid her away like some prize. Is that not hoarded power? Was that not control?”
He didn’t know, did he? After all these months of gossip and meetings and revelations, Antonis Nicolea didn’t know the full truth.
Dimitrios rose, careful to remain non-threatening. “My father endured thirty-eight years of torture. He died for her. For me. Not one scream, not one word to give us away. Does that sound like a selfish man to you?”
