Page 41 of King's Heir of Hate

We can make whatever we want out of our life, she had said, as if that was easy. Or possible. Or permitted.Out of this reign of ours.

As if it had always been theirs, to do with as they pleased. It was laughable.

But he was not laughing.You remember what it was like, she had said.I know you do. When we would lie in bed, drunk on feeling, imagining how beautiful we could make this life we got to share?

He did remember. He remembered too well. That feeling of possibility, of limitless horizons. That scandalous, glorious feeling that the two of them truly could beat all the odds—because they already had. They’d expected to find each other passable at best. Nice enough, even.

Instead, one look and they’dignited.

It had to mean that they could change their whole worlds—Tadeo remembered how deeply and fully he’d believed that. With Esme at his side, there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish.

But his father had set him straight. He’d always been so grateful for that. He’d spent all the years he’d had left with his father making up for that lapse. He’d gone out of his way to prove to King Hugo that he had a worthy successor.

And Esme had made him question all of that.Have you considered the possibility that your mother wasn’t the Whore of Babylon?she had asked.

When Tadeo knew exactly who his mother was. Exactly who everyone knew his mother was. That hadn’t changed simply because Esme wanted to be difficult.

Still, he couldn’t seem to get her words out of his head.Maybe she was in love with a man who acted like an iceberg, Esme had said, and it had punched straight through him.Maybe she did what she needed to do to keep from freezing to death.

It occurred to Tadeo then that he’d never considered his father cold, only correct.

But if he wasn’t…

Later, he found himself pacing through the palace, and he must have had a fierce enough expression on his face because no one attempted to speak to him. In fact, they stepped out of his way, bowed their heads, and kept their eyes averted.

A lot like he was having the sort of emotional episode he wanted—badly—not to be capable of.

Tadeo found himself in the portrait gallery yet again, looking at the faces of his ancestors as if they could offer him some clues. Looking at his own wedding portrait that he’d always thought had adequately captured what their marriage was. Cordial, but appropriately separate. Cold, certainly, but that had been representative of the relationship they’d had then. The relationship he’d assumed they’d always have.

He’d already realized, since Esme’s pregnancy had been revealed, that he’d been ignoring how sad she looked in the portrait. Somehow he’d always believed that she simply looked like a queen. Appropriately solemn—but no.

She looked like she wanted to cry.

Tonight he was horrified to discover that even looking at the painting now made him…

Something in him balked. He didn’t want to name it. He didn’t want to call this what it was, because that gave it a power—

Sad, something in him whispered, sounding a great deal like Esme herself.That’s the word you’re looking for. Sad.

The last time he could remember using that word to describe his state, he’d been eleven years old. His mother had died under less-than-ideal circumstances—gallivanting about, quite publicly, with a lover on a boat near Crete—but his father had decided to give her the state funeral her position demanded.

A funeral fit for the queen, nay,the womanshe should have been, the self-righteous television anchor had intoned.

It had been a somber affair. Now, looking back, Tadeo found himself wondering if everyone had been aware that it was all for show on his father’s part. Some believed he was simplythat good, certainly. But surely there had to be others who wondered if, perhaps, King Hugo had been going to a great deal of trouble to prove that he had been the decent spouse. That he was self-sacrificing even to the end, and even in the face of his wife’s outrageous behavior.

Someone had to have wondered if, perhaps, he’d been protesting too much. If they did, they did it quietly. The papers had already been calling King Hugo a saint.

But eleven-year-old Tadeo hadn’t known anything aboutmessaging, or the manipulation of the press.

What he’d known was that his mother was dead. Moreover, that he was highly discouraged from commenting on that or displaying any of the many emotions he felt about that death in public.

Why are you making that face?his father had asked as they had walked soberly and slowly behind Marisol’s coffin through the streets of the kingdom.You are being watched, Tadeo. A certain decorum is expected from a future king and it is best you exhibit it.

I’m sad, Tadeo had said to his father. Not the King, just…his father.I’m just sad.

But Hugo had not spared him a glance. He had continued his slow and precise pace, his back straight and tall, his eyes forever forward.Don’t be so maudlin, he’d said, in that cold, dismissive way of his that had settled deep into Tadeo’s bones.You are the Crown Prince of Bellaza. You are, by definition, never anything so pedestrian assad.

Over the years, Tadeo had decided that his father had been trying to give him a pep talk. That Hugo had been trying to keep Tadeo’s spirits up while they saw to such a grim task, and more, while they did so under such intense scrutiny.