Page 19 of King's Heir of Hate

“If you cannot explain what it is you wish me to do, I’ll be forced to assume that you don’t know what you wish me to do,” Esme said with a shrug. “You set all this up, Tadeo. Once again, we are here in service to your wishes and your demands.” Though she did smile as she said it. “I believe the onus is on you.”

“You would believe this, of course,” he replied in his typically chilly manner, yet always with all that brooding beneath. “As believing it suits the narrative you tell yourself.”

“In any case,” she said, as calmly as possible, which did not feel particularly calm today, particularly when he said such things to her, “have you given any thought about when and how you would like to make the announcement?”

Tadeo did not exactly frown, though it seemed to suggest itself somewhere in the vicinity of his brow. “I do not think that anyone in the kingdom needs to know our precise living arrangements, Esme. Why do you?”

“I’m referring to the impending birth of your child and heir, Your Majesty,” she replied, with scathing courtesy. “There will come a point—and that point will be soon—where even the most ingenious fashion in the world will not be able to hide my belly. I imagine it would be best to get out ahead of speculative articles in the press, don’t you?”

His jaw flexed. She took that as a win.

“I will consult with my team and get back to you.”

“Naturally,” she murmured, in the same tone he’d used when discussing thenarrativeshe told herself. “After all, what surely matters most when anticipating a child is the messaging.”

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that words he didn’t care for spoken to him in his office did indeed count against her. Though Esme found that was not a particular hardship that night, because he’d annoyed her in return.

She did nottell herself narratives. She was the one who had to live according to his.

“I hope it was made clear to you that you are not to treat rooms in this palace in the same shocking fashion you did the manor house,” he said one evening while they were being transported to an event.

They sat in the back of one of the palace’s fleets of vintage cars, each of them dressed magnificently. Her gown flowed over the seats, and while it was impossible for him not to touch the fabric, he was very careful not to touchher.

“No garish paint jobs, please,” he told her, as if he thought she might mistake his meaning.

“No one has made anything clear to me,” Esme replied sweetly. So very sweetly. “In fact, I’ve been under the impression that it’s all been left opaque on purpose. It seems I am to be left to my own devices in all things and it is true that historically, this has indeed involved a few rounds of cheerful paints.”

He sighed, and made a meal out of the sound. “Let me be the one to make certain you understand. The palace is a monument. It is the property of the kingdom as well as its joy and its emblem. Nothing in it is to be moved, renovated, changed, or even reconsidered without a consult with palace staff. Not your palace staff. Mine. Is that understood?”

“I understand perfectly,” she said, in what she hoped was a voice so placid it irked him. The look he shot her way suggested that she was successful. “As there is no nursery available in my compartments, I can only hope that the royal heir will be perfectly happy to loll about on the floor. Catching every draft and building a baseline of neglect that will likely color the rest of his or her existence. When this astonishingly hardy child grows up and decides to end the monarchy in retaliation, I’m sure that his or her Spartan beginnings will figure highly in that decision.”

Tadeo did not respond to that. Not with words. All he did was turn his head and fix that fulminating glare of his upon her, making it perfectly clear to Esme that if she had any designs on his body that evening, they would be denied. She had notearnedthe right to touch him. Again.

Once more, she rather thought she was glad.

But the trouble was, being irritated with him didn’t last.

Too many of their engagements involved them standing too close to each other. Touching each other—whether she took his arm as they walked or allowed him to sweep her into his arms for a dance in the middle of a ballroom.

All theater, she told herself. All smoke and mirrors.

But she was weak, it turned out. It had been easier before, when she could repair to the manor house after nights like these. When she did not have to lie awake at night, knowing that he wasright there. Right on the same hall, in the bedchamber next to hers. Sleeping beneath the same ornate roof.

And if she could only follow his obnoxious rules, she could have everything she wanted.

Everything shethoughtshe wanted, that was.

For the first few weeks, she wasn’t entirely certain that she did. Or maybe the real truth was that she’d always imagined that if something changed in their marriage, everything would change. It hadn’t occurred to her that it could substantially change in so many respects, yet still leave her feeling as abandoned and alone as ever.

It hadn’t occurred to her that there were so many more complicated places to go.

One night, Esme was so busy turning these things over and over in her head that they made it all the way to their night’s engagement without her saying a word. She didn’t even realize it until they were on the way home again.

It had been a long night of forced gaiety, but it turned out that they were both quite good at that sort of thing. She’d forgotten that, somehow, over the course of the last five months. That for all that Tadeo liked to brood at her, he could turn on his charm when it mattered.

That was what she was thinking about in the car as it slipped through the old city streets and then bumped over the oldcobblestones around the palace. How easy it was for him to be charming to everyone else in the world but her.

She almost asked him about it—or, perhaps, bludgeoned him a bit with it, as that was likely to make her feel better—but then she remembered.