The Most Powerful Of Kings - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,49

shot her. My father was injured in the subsequent attack, but luckily his bodyguards were able to save him. My mother died of her injuries.’ His voice was so cold, as if it were someone else’s mother who’d died, and not his own.

Horror and a terrible sympathy flooded through her. This was the source of the pain she’d seen in his eyes back at the ball, wasn’t it? And no wonder. His mother had been tortured right in front of him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. It seemed so empty and inadequate, but it was all she could think of to say.

‘My father was furious. He blamed me. Told me that if I’d stayed strong and hadn’t given away his position, she wouldn’t have grabbed the gun. That the palace guards would have found us and rescued us.’

Anna’s throat constricted. ‘But you were just a little boy. How could you—’

‘It doesn’t matter how old I was,’ he interrupted harshly. ‘I shouldn’t have broken. I shouldn’t have told them where my father was. I put my feelings for my mother before my duty to protect the throne.’ His gaze glittered. ‘And she died.’

The look in his eyes made her heart hurt. It was so bleak. So...cold. As if he felt nothing. Which was a lie, because he did, she knew he did. Last night had proved that, though the mountain might appear icy and remote, inside he was molten. Inside, he was a volcano.

‘Adonis...’ she began softly.

But he went on, implacable. ‘My father was determined to teach me a lesson. He thought I was far too emotional and that enemies would be able to use those emotions against me, so he made it his mission to excise that weakness from me.’

The foreboding that hadn’t quite gone away tightened its grip on her.

She didn’t want to ask, but then, she didn’t need to, because he went on anyway,

‘Xenophon kidnapped Xerxes and interrogated him, tortured him. He pretended to be an enemy, using my voice as a way to break my little brother. I was put in the next room and ordered not to intervene. I had to listen to him scream. My will had to be strong enough to withstand him being used as a weapon against me. My first duty was to my throne, not to him.’

Shock washed through her, a bucket of ice water dumped over her head.

This was the reason he was so hard and so cold. She didn’t know much about King Xenophon, only that he’d been an old-style king, harsh and militaristic in his ways. But this brutal? Torturing his own sons? Because that was what Adonis was describing. Actual torture. And not only the torture of his brother, but the torture of himself too.

‘That’s terrible,’ she said, an instant and fierce protectiveness rising inside her. Because of what he’d suffered. Because of what his father had put him through. Because of what he’d become. ‘That’s abuse.’

‘It was necessary,’ his voice was even icier now, ‘because to break would have been to prolong Xerxes’s pain.’

‘What about your pain?’ She knew she sounded demanding, but she was angry and couldn’t hide it. ‘What kind of father would do that to his own children?’

‘He wasn’t a father,’ Adonis said relentlessly, ‘he was a king. Just as I ceased to be his son, only his heir. Emotion can be used as a weapon and so I had to rid myself of it.’

‘So that was his excuse?’ She couldn’t shut herself up. ‘That was his justification for hurting you? The fact that emotions can be used against you?’

‘He said that our enemies would have no mercy and so he couldn’t have any.’ Adonis’s thick black lashes were a stark contrast to the blue of his eyes. ‘He wasn’t wrong. Our enemies had no mercy. They tortured my mother because they knew I would break.’

‘But that was years ago—’

‘Xerxes was captured while on a mission with his platoon,’ he interrupted in the same cold tone. ‘Our father refused a rescue mission. He was certain Xerxes had been captured in order to draw me out.’ A muscle jumped in Adonis’s hard jaw. ‘I knew I should have put my duty as heir first, but I couldn’t let them have my little brother. So I disobeyed my father’s orders and mounted a rescue mission. I was successful, but Xenophon wouldn’t have any of it. He made me choose once and for all—the throne or exile. He would make Xerxes his heir instead.’

Anna took a shaken