Page 8 of King's Heir of Hate

Her parents were only a mountain range away, and supported her in all things, but she never wanted them to think that they’d made a mistake in setting up this marriage. She never wanted to worry them. She still didn’t. In fact, she worked hard to convince them that everything in her marriage was fine. Perfectlyfine—and she assumed her perceptive mother chose to believe her. Because her mother loved her.

We can see about confessions when His Majesty chooses to visit, the housekeeper had said tartly one morning, waiting for Esme outside the bathroom suite in her rooms. The older woman had held out the ginger drink they’d made for her on those early pregnancy mornings when her stomach wanted toseparate itself from her body. As violently as possible.But he would have to come here in order to do that, would he not?

Esme could tell Tadeo all that. She could tell him what the past seven years had been like, sequestered in this manor house and trotted out only to smile and wave and play her part, all while pretending she felt nothing for him outside of the roles they played. But why start there? That was simply how long they’d been married.

She could go back even further. To having to drag herself through her final year of college utterly heartbroken, a ghost of her former self, because he had dropped her so cruelly. Her friends had rallied. They had done their best, but they didn’t understand—and how could she explain?—that the situations with college boys they loved and would forget that they were comparing to her affair with Tadeo were different. Not as intense. Not as all-consuming. Not asreal.

There was no way to share those things, even though she knew it was true. It would only make her sound delusional.

Esme had become so embarrassed by the fact that she couldn’t seem to find her smile again that she’d forced it. She’d figured out how she could always put on a face appropriate to the moment, no matter what she was feeling inside. She’d learned how to play whatever role was needed and expected, with no one the wiser.

This new ability got her through graduation, then off to London for a charity internship that had been plotted out long ago. Princess Esme of Clarebonne had made a few tasteful charity-based headlines that year and at the end of it, she had been certain that she would be left to explain to her parents, her own kingdom—and his—that there would be no fairy-tale betrothal after all. That just because their families had agreed that there would be one, one day, and had even hinted in publicat their being betrothed from her birth, it would never happen. She’d been preparing her statement since college.

Esme had been nothing short of flabbergasted when she’d received formal notice from his kingdom that the royal courtship would begin.

Maybe, finally, she could tell him what it had been like to have to succumb to an extremely public relationship, every moment scripted for the cameras, with the ex who had ripped her heart out of her body and stomped it into dust. Like it was nothing.

But she doubted he wanted to hear any of that.

Now, she watched him turn away from her, looking back over the gardens that she had made her own. They were happy now. Bright explosions of color, basking in their own beauty. She treated the manor house itself the same way. Every time he made her sad, she found something else to brighten. Room by room, wall by wall, she put bright colors in place of the parts of her heart that he’d bruised.

She couldn’t say that she regretted it.

“This isn’t what I had planned either, you know,” she said, addressing his back. His outrageously well-muscled back that, if she let herself think about it too much, she could actuallyfeelbeneath her fingertips. As if she was wrapped around him, holding him close, her fingers digging into his shoulder blades as he surged deep inside her—

The trouble with being pregnant, she had discovered, was that—contrary to what she’d always believed, given the way people talked about the state—she did not feel at all like that beaming, sexless, goddess mother figure she’d expected would take her over.

All she thought about was sex. Not just any kind of sex. Specifically, sex with Tadeo.

It was a torment.

His being here today didn’t exactly help.

He didn’t respond to her, so she kept going. “I was looking forward to our divorce. I was going to move back to the States. Do some good work with my time. Help others, perhaps launch a lifestyle cooking show, whatever came to mind. I thought perhaps I would find a chic home in Manhattan like Jackie Onassis and swan about with oversize sunglasses for the rest of my life, refusing interviews. Either way, the world was mine.” She blew out a breath. “But somehow I think that’s no longer the option that it was.”

Her friends had been more and more adamant on every visit over the years. She needed to get the hell out of Bellaza. She had to get as far away as it was possible to get from King Tadeo.

That man has been a shadow over your entire life and has blocked out your sun since you were twenty, her best friend, Hilary, had said matter-of-factly.It’s been too long, Esme. It’s time for something new.

Esme had agreed. And instead, she was pregnant. Not just pregnant the way anyone might be,shewas pregnant with the baby who would be heir to the kingdom of Bellaza and there was precious little possibility that anyone in the palace or this valley would look kindly on that heir being raised on a separate continent. So that was that.

A full eclipse, I’m afraid, she’d told Hilary.

Tadeo turned back to her and though there was a glittering in his gaze, his face remained unreadable. When there had been a time, long ago now, that she’d been able to read him so easily.

“I will concede we are both to blame for this,” he said, sounding darkly formal and so stuffy it made her want to scream. But that would be playing into his narrative about her—so emotional, so immature, so over-the-top, and so on—so she smiled instead. “It is both of our faults.”

“I understand that you are getting used to this,” she said in the same soothing tone she’d been using, that she hoped he foundcondescending. “You’ve had a shock and you’ll need some time with it. That’s acceptable. But I’m not going to stand around and talk about the childwe made, who will be coming into this world in not so many months, as something we should be ashamed of. Or call it a fault or a mistake. I just want that very clear.”

“I wasn’t the one who kept it a secret,” he replied with that cold efficiency that had always left her breathless. It was like a knife. “Have you seen a physician?”

“No, I thought that it would be great fun to simply risk everything and see what happened,” Esme shot back at him. When his eyes widened slightly, she sighed. “Of course I’ve seen a physician. The same physician I always see.”

“You mean the palace physician.” When she nodded, Tadeo looked astonished. “And no report was made to me?”

“I imagine the palace physician was under the impression you already knew,” Esme said coolly. “Since you are, in fact, my husband.”

“You knew that I did not.”