His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,56

loving him had given her something that his rejection could never take away.

She had found herself.

And she had the hope that when he found a way to bring all those pieces of himself together, he would be brave enough to love too.

The gift that she would take away from this palace was that she was enough on her own.

And it allowed her to close the door on a lifetime of pain heaped on her by her mother.

And as she exited her room, and closed the door on this beautiful moment of her life, she knew that she would be taking with her more than she was leaving behind. Lessons and strength and powerful new truths about who she was.

It was just...that the difficult thing was, she was leaving behind one thing that was quite important.

Her heart.

And she didn’t know if she would ever have a hope of getting it back.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HE HADN’T HAD to check to know that she was gone. He had felt it. Had felt the absence of her as sure as he had ever felt the presence of her. She was gone, and it was a good thing. She was gone, and it was absolutely what he needed. What she needed.

Is it?

He thought that he’d banished pain from his chest as a boy.

For the loss of his brother had been great, severe and intense and it had torn at his tender, untried feelings. But more than that, the rejection his mother had given him after...

When Lazarus had died, he had been a boy mourning his brother. Above all else. And his mother had not held him. Had not comforted him.

You did this.

He could still hear those three words. Could see himself standing there with his arms outstretched and then she’d said that.

He’d needed her.

She’d turned her pain onto him like a knife.

He had learned then, what it meant to be a man. To take blame. To have to soldier on even with that blame resting on your shoulders.

You were a boy.

Yes, he had been a boy. But the end result was the same, whether he was boy or man, so he supposed it didn’t matter.

He was the King, and he had to be King. He couldn’t... I love you.

He could not accept her love. Any more than he could allow her to give it. It would be the end of them both...

Would it? Or are you simply unable to put the ghosts of the past to rest? Just as she said?

No, if she could love him then perhaps these dreadful and terrible things out in the world weren’t his fault.

He looked out the window of his bedchamber. He looked down to the wood below.

That was it. It was the site of everything. The place of all his destruction. There were no answers up here, but perhaps...

He tore down the stairs, and out of the palace. He was not drunk, no matter how he had wanted to make the pain go away with drink.

He didn’t allow himself such luxuries.

No, he was in his right mind. Utterly and completely sober.

Lazarus had been lost in the wood.

Dionysus.

His fear over Tinley, which had caused him to realize he was edging too close to his greatest fear, had happened because of the wood.

If it was magic, then it was a dark magic, and it wasn’t going away. No matter how much he wanted it to. No matter how much he tried.

If there were answers, they would be there.

Through the darkness, through the mist, Alexius de Prospero, the Lion, charged into the wood.

Alex looked around at the eerie stillness in the trees. There was no sound. Not tonight.

Not even the wolves.

He didn’t know what had called him into the forest tonight, but he trusted it.

Which was an odd thing to feel. To think.

For nothing the forest had ever done was particularly trustworthy.

But he was tied to it. Connected in a way he could not escape. And so he moved forward. Until he was back in that same clearing where he found Tinley and the cat. He heard a sound coming from the bushes, and he turned. But it was not a wolf standing there. It was a man.

Tall, his features obscured by shadow.

“State your business,” Alex said.

“Do I need official business to speak to my brother?”

She had gone to her mother’s house in Rome. She knew it was a strange choice, considering she was raw and vulnerable and it would be easy enough for her mother to take strips off her in her