Beside her, Dimitrios dropped back a step.
Outside the gates, shouts layered over each other. “No,” and “She wouldn’t do that,” and “Who do you think you are,” reached her between gasps and bitter laughter.
Nikolas appeared on her left and fisted her upper arm hard enough to bruise. “Time for you to go.”
She tore free. “I’ll go.” She raised her chin. “Afterthey hear the truth.”
Nikolas shot Dimitrios a look of disbelief, but his king wasn’t looking back.
Dimitrios held her stare, and his voice broke on his next question. “Who are you really?”
“My name is—” Her tongue froze on the poisonous words climbing her throat. She faced the gates and forced the truth to rise to the surface. “My name is Milonia Dardona, born Milonia Gregoriana. My father is Quintus Milonius Gregorius, the unseated king of Otuvia. And my son is his heir.”
While the people roared in response, Milonia faced Dimitrios. “I am your enemy.”
The ground turned to quicksand beneath Dimitrios’s boots, and Milonia’s words were the anchor dragging him under.
As if from some monumental distance, Milonia continued speaking to his people, shouting over the raucous, “I intend to keep my promise to your dead queen. I came here determined to find this man’s fatal flaws and free you from this family.”
At this, the cacophony quieted some. She was ontheirside. She was like them. Betrayed by the blood in his own veins.
“Shall I tell you what I’ve found?” she asked.
The people nodded and thrust fists toward the sun. Excitement charged the air.
“Dimitrios Vidalatosis notwho the princess Alexandra says he is. He is good and decent. And those in power have been working against him from the moment he set foot on our shores.”
What was her game here? What was the point? She’d lied from the beginning. She’d been his friend and his lover, and he?—
He’d loved her.
He’d betrayed the memory of his wife for her, and she’d deceived him with every word, every smile, every breath. She’d turned his longing for a family into a blind spot. She’d made him look like a fool.
The same power that once disarmed him now held his people in thrall. In brief, she revealed the contents of the hidden letters. About Leonidas’s plans to hand Perean over to Titos, his orders to attack their allies, and all they’d done to discredit Dimitrios’s name. How they’d orchestrated every bandit attack on Perean soil, taken bribes, and treated the coffers like a personal bank.
She said nothing of her own betrayal. Of how she’d fooled his mother. Of the letters. The slow seduction of hope, of home.
How she’d awakened what he’d long thought buried.
Nikolas appeared at Dimitrios’s elbow. “Let me stop her. She can’t?—”
“Milonia.” Dimitrios’s voice dragged through his grief. “That’s enough.”
“But they need?—”
Dimitrios met her eyes, and she fell silent.
Only days ago, he’d woken beside this woman, those eyes bright with humor and love—or so he thought. He’d considered making her his wife.
His queen.
He never imagined how quickly that could change. How deeply he could despise her.
“You need to leave these lands,” he said for her ears alone. “I never want to see you again.”
Tears erupted from her eyes and spilled over her cheeks, but she nodded. “I understand.”
Caius sprinted down the steps and across the courtyard, those damned pups on his heels, the betrayal stabbing deeper. He wasn’t just losing the woman he loved, but a son as well.
