Tomorrow.So soon.
Ines didn’t want to see him right now. Maybe that would help their case. “It might go better if you or Evelyne discusses this with Ines.”
Alexandre could not meet Gabriel’s gaze. It would see too much. So he focused on some papers on his desk.
“What exactly is going on with you, Alex?”
Alex.A distinction this question was friend to friend, not lord to king.
“Nothing is going on. I am dealing with…impending revolutions and an impending child. It is a lot.”
“It is, but these are not unexpected things. You’ve been preparing for both for months now, haven’t you?”
Yes. He had known revolution was a possibility at the transfer of power, at the changes he’d instituted—though, he’d gotten a little complacent in thinking that dangerous between-time had passed.
And yes, the plan had originally been for Ines to have his child, but…
Not like this. “Ines has…developed ideas.”
“Ideas?” Gabriel returned equitably. “Or feelings?”
Alex scraped a palm over his jaw. “She is simply confused. Perhaps…hormonal.” He winced a little bit at that, because he knew both Ines and Evelyne would take great offense at that suggestion, and they’d be right to.
But he needed a reason that Ines claiming she loved him was something temporary. Something he couldfix. Her loving him would only end in pain and suffering. That was what love did, in his experience.
Gabriel sighed gustily. “It’s beneath even you to blamefeelingsonhormones, Alexandre. Ines has been a wonderful queen to you and—”
“And I am a king. I have an entire country’s fate resting on what I choose. How I handle this revolution. I cannot be concerned aboutfeelings. Hers. Mine. Anyone’s.”
Our child will be loved. And I will love you. It is what we all deserve.
A princess. A daughter.
Names.
“You are more than a king, Alex.”
But Alexandre could not take that to heart. Certainly notnow. Why could no one understand that?
Because they had never been tasked with this.You cannot save me, Alex, so you will need to save them. Do not change course. Do not let anything in. Be better than him.
She’d been dying. Right before his eyes. Nurses and the doctor tending to the newly born Evelyne. No one had noticed him sneaking in. No one had noticed…
You must save your sister. You are her and Alis’s only hope. If I loved you less…
Alis’s only hope. He had held that close his entire life. His one duty. His mother had wanted it of him, so it would be done. She had not gotten to live a long, happy life. She had been brutalized, living and dead, by a man’s selfish whims and uncontrollable, unpredictable feelings.
This was all he had to offer her memory.
So he could only be a king.Only.
“If there is to be a revolution, I cannot be more or less than exactly that. I am the king. Period.” This was the clearest truth he knew, and getting Ines out from underfoot would help him remember that.
He had made a promise to his dying mother. Nothing would get in his way of protecting Evelyne. Of protecting Alis. Certainly not his own wants. Feelings. Self.
“Not all that long ago, you interfered when I was keeping my distance from Evelyne and my marriage,” Gabriel said.
Alexandre managed to meet Gabriel’s gaze now. “You were afraid of yourself. I am not afraid.”
