Page 44 of King's Heir of Hate

He hadn’t realized how empty he’d felt until now, when he finally felt whole.

When he finally understood the whole story of not just his life, but his father’s and his mother’s and all the ways they’d led him here.

“I was coming to look for you,” Esme said after a moment, sounding…thrown, perhaps. But she rallied. He saw her square her shoulders. “I have something to say to you, Tadeo.”

“Say it,” he bade her, and he leaned back against the boot of his car and folded his arms, because if she wanted to talk to him, he would listen.

This time he would listen as if his life depended on it and he would keep his father out of his head while he did.

“The manor house has been desecrated,” she told him, very seriously. “It smells like new paint and regret. It’s pale and sadand diminished.” She moved closer to him and then she pointed her finger directly at his chest. “That’s what you want to do to me, Tadeo. And I won’t allow it.”

She wasn’t wrong, and he would have to live with that. But that was for later.

Now, he shook his head. “I doubt you could ever be diminished, Esme.”

He did not expect her to scowl at him, much less so ferociously. “Don’t patronize me, please. I have no intention of letting you shuffle me off again. I don’t know why I put up with it for seven years. I kept thinking that if I was perfect enough, if I was dutiful enough, I would somehow live up to whatever paragon it is you have in your head. I thought that I could prove that even though we were blessed with the chemistry that drew us together, I was also capable of being the perfect queen for you. I think I did that, Tadeo. I think I pulled it off.” She pulled in a deep breath. “It still wasn’t enough for you.”

He said nothing, but she moved closer still. He watched her as her gaze searched his, and could not begin to imagine what expression he wore.

She frowned, so he assumed it was unusual. “On the night of your father’s funeral, I only wanted to comfort you. But it turned into something else and I realized the truth.Thatwas the real reason you never wanted to be alone with me. Because there was no getting away from it, is there? There’s never been any escaping who we are to each other.” Another breath, like she was preparing herself. Her chin rose. “And I’m not going to facilitate it anymore.”

She was even closer now and Tadeo felt nothing inside him but that great wave and swell that was all her, always her. It was beautiful Esme, the mother of his child. Esme, his queen. Esme, who had knocked his world off its axis by smiling at him outside a Boston restaurant on that fateful first evening.

Esme, the woman who had loved him when he most certainly did not deserve it for the past ten years.

He reached over and pulled a thick lock of her dark hair between his fingers, then rolled it back and forth.

Her breath stuttered slightly. He saw a flash of heat along her cheekbones. “What are you doing?” She frowned, but it looked to him as if summoning it took work. “Why aren’t you putting up your usual fight?”

And then, at last, it was Tadeo’s turn.

He was determined to get this right.

“Esme,” he said, tasting her name on his mouth the way he’d used to do, as if it was some kind of sweet liquor that could only go to his head. “I have been fighting against you since the day we met. You came in like a storm, swept me away, and I never found my footing again.”

“You didn’t need your footing. You have a crown.”

He tugged slightly on the lock of her hair, and she subsided. “I tried my best. I broke up with you in a way calculated to hurt you the most. I insisted on a cold pageant of a wedding, and worse still, a frigid marriage. And you went along with all of those things. You went along with them, and I intended to reward you for that service by divorcing you.”

“Yes,” Esme agreed, though she looked…not quiteconfused. Something more likewary. “You’re the worst man I know. I have no idea what I see in you.”

“Nor do I,” he assured her. “But tonight, if you will allow it, I want to make you a new kind of vow.”

He moved in closer then and he took her hands in his, and was cheered when she gripped him in return.

“I was told that love is a fantasy, and emotions are weakness. That my country required me to lock those things away and hide them where they could never be seen, never be felt, and never, ever shown to those around me.” He lifted her hands to hismouth and pressed a kiss on her knuckles. “And what has that made me? An ice sculpture, as you say.”

Esme’s eyes were wide, now. He could see the pulse in her throat going wild.

“Everything I know is inside out,” he told her, his voice low and raw, because perhaps that was what truth did when it finally came out. It left marks. “It is possible my father was simply incapable of feeling anything and considered that his greatest virtue. Perhaps he decided that those who did not possess that virtue the way he did—meaning everyone around him—were disappointments. Maybe my mother simply refused to keep the parts of herself locked away as he demanded.”

It was his turn to blow out a breath, and he did, then held her hands tighter. “When I came home from Boston that summer and told my father that I’d fallen in love with the woman that everyone expected me to marry—an absolute miracle of epic proportions—he was horrified. I should have realized that was his problem, not mine. But I had been raised on a steady diet of my mother’s scandalous behavior and my father’s noble attempts to keep his head up high despite them, and I believed he knew better.”

He held her gaze intently, then. “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for not defending something so beautiful from the start.”

He felt the jolt that went through her, and saw the emotion in her eyes.

But he wasn’t finished. “You were the only one I wanted anywhere near me at my father’s funeral, but I could never admit that to myself. I was relieved when you found me. And I remember exactly who started that kiss that night. It was me. Filled with all those emotions I would have told you I didn’t know how to feel and just drunk enough to hope no one would notice.”