Page 5 of King's Heir of Hate

His queen, Tadeo noticed—hiswife, though hopefully not for much longer—did not rise, though it was protocol that she do so. Esme stayed where she was, draped in so many different shades of billowing fabric that he could barely see her body beneath it.

“Leave us,” Tadeo told the staff, and did not watch them as they all fluttered off, like so many dark-feathered birds. He kept watching Esme. He studied her maddeningly perfect oval of a face with her dark flashing eyes and that lush, impossible mouth that he absolutely could not feel all over his body, because that was insupportable.

“Have you taken up sewing?” he asked her, not convinced he was entirely in control of his voice. He blamed her for that, too.

The proverbial straw on a camel’s back.

“I’m redecorating a room,” she replied.

In that same serene voice of hers. Brimming with that same abominable confidence that he found both atrocious and wildly compelling.

Tragically, she also remained the most beautiful woman he’d ever encountered.

This had been true when she was but a sophomore at Wellesley. It was even more true now. It was an outrage on every level, but she still looked like the model of the perfect woman, should he have been asked to draw such a creature.

Shoulddrawingbe one of his talents.

It was not that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, he supposed. But it was a cruel trick of fate that she managed to hit every single one of the buttons Tadeo had not entirely realized he had until he’d met her. She was elegant. She was graceful in everything, from her smallest gestures to the way she laughed—a sound that came from her belly and transformed her whole face. She had the sort of exquisite manners that were necessary for the circles they moved in, but Esme always made them seem as if they were innate.

As it was not something she wasdoing, but something that was simply a part ofwho she was.

She had been kind to his father, who had been less enticed by thefairy-taleargument and had been largely chilly in return.She was always kind to their subjects, no matter what sort of questions they tried to ask her while she was shaking hands and playing her part. It was his cross to bear that she also looked equally as stunning when she was in jeans and flats as she did in a bespoke gown made for ceremony and circumstance.

Today, she had her dark, glossy hair piled casually on the back of her head. It looked like she was wearing a simple T-shirt, which seemed to hug her curves more than usual. And yet she still simply emanated sophistication from every pore.

Only Tadeo knew that there were ways to touch this woman that lit her on fire. Only he knew what she looked like, her dark eyes glazed over with sex and longing, her mouth open while sounds of desire poured out, and how she writhed beneath him, taking more and more until he wasn’t certain if either one of them would actually survive—

But that was not the point of this visit.

“My father has been dead for five months,” he told her curtly.

“Five months and thirteen days,” Esme replied. Oddly specific, to his mind, but she said it so calmly. Her lips curved. “I am aware, Tadeo.”

If he could go back in time, he would not have given her access to his family name. By the end, only his father still called him that in person. Most of his friends from school called him variations on his title. Or other nicknames of one sort or another.

The press, of course, used all of his names as they pleased.

He could have had her call him by his proper first name and he often thought that would be easier, because he wouldn’t feel this tug of undeserved familiarity. Maybe the name alone would have done it. Maybe then he would never have become familiar with her at all.

But he couldn’t go back to that first dinner in a quiet restaurant overlooking the Charles and fix what happened.

He could only do the necessary damage control now.

“I told you long ago that we would remain married only as long as necessary,” he told her, no longer caring how dark he sounded. It needed to be done. It didn’t matterhowit was done. “I’ve come here to let you know that I intend to begin our divorce proceedings. Immediately.”

Tadeo didn’t know what he expected. For her to cheer, perhaps? Sometimes he convinced himself that she was no more interested in continuing this marriage of theirs than he was. Perhaps he thought she might cry? After all, he hadn’t been so far gone that he’d forgotten the things she’d whispered in the night after his father’s death.

Sometimes he thought those words haunted him.

But of all the possible responses he’d imagined, it wasn’t the way she smiled at him.

Her lips curved gently. Even kindly, he thought.

And then she rose.

The fabric cascaded off her and slid in heaps of shimmering color to either side of her, landing on the tiles at her feet.

But Tadeo forgot all about that. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.