not with anger, with unshed tears, and it was that show of emotion that saw him dropping his hand to his side and taking a step away.
“You have to believe it, don’t you? You have to believe all those things about him. Otherwise you might feel truly guilty for the fact you didn’t protect the remaining son your parents had that wasn’t you. That wasn’t anything more than an icon of the crown. Dionysus was a person. You’re... You’re not a man. You’re a beast. At best. A rock at worst. Stone. Unfeeling and cruel. You have to believe Dionysus would have disappointed me because otherwise you don’t know how you live with the guilt. It doesn’t matter if he could have been responsible for his actions. You’re the King. Even if you weren’t on the throne then, you always had that power in you. You should have stopped him. You were his older brother and you didn’t. You had the power to remove me from my home and bring me here. To demand that I marry. You had the power to stop him that night. To stop himself from making a fool of the family and wandering into his certain death. You certainly could’ve stopped him from having another woman at the party. But you didn’t want to, because you didn’t want me with him anyway. Is that the truth of it? That you liked him parading that other girl around on his arm? Because you knew it might get back to me?”
“I didn’t think it would hurt you to know the truth.”
Her words cut deep, because there was a truth to them. His brother had been more and more careless with his whoring. And there was a time when it had mattered little, because Tinley was young and he wasn’t going to be in an intimate relationship with someone her age. But they were at the point where their marriage would have been coming soon, and the engagement had been officially announced. And that meant there was no excuse for him appearing in public with other women.
The fact was she wasn’t wrong about any of it.
He had been angry with Dionysus and he had been happy to allow his brother to make a fool of himself so that he actually had a mess to clean up.
He had been happy to give himself a moment to indulge himself in what he wanted most of all.
Dionysus had female company for the evening, and it wasn’t Tinley so why shouldn’t Alex have...
And had it gone that way, he would feel no guilt. But the consequences for allowing him to go off on his drunken night had been permanent and irreversible. He was only grateful the woman who had been with Dionysus had not been an unintended casualty. She had been traumatized, certainly. But not harmed.
“If you consider it my job as King to conceal people from the truth, then you’re correct,” he said, his voice stone. “I was lax in my duties. I thought he was your friend. I thought you knew him. You certainly weren’t my friend.”
The truth of it resonated between them. They’d known each other years, and they were not friends.
They never would be.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t have any friends.”
“Kings don’t have them.”
“Your father did. So I suppose that’s just a lie you tell yourself to feel better about living here. By yourself. With no one. At least, no one who likes you.” She turned to leave and that same recklessness that was only ever present when Tinley was near fired through him. He reached out and grabbed her arm, stopped her from leaving. She turned around, her eyes wide, her lips parted softly. He could see her breath coming shorter, harder. Faster.
“You might not like me,” he said, his voice like gravel. A stranger’s voice. “But you feel something else, something more than hate, and I think you find it disturbing.”
“What do you think I feel?”
He reached out and touched a lock of that unruly hair, and the fire inside of him nearly exploded. But outwardly, he kept himself still. She was frozen, like a startled doe caught in the headlights. The pulse of the base of her throat beat rapidly. He moved his hand, cupping her face, sliding his thumb along her cheekbone, then tracing the line of her lower lip.
She was so soft. Impossibly so.
The beach.
The ballroom.
The corridor.
It all burned between them now.
Those moments filled with anger and recrimination and resistance.
“You’re not