was the king.
It felt like a knife in her heart.
More palace staff surrounded her, and as Ione was led off Anna was taken back not to the little room she’d once occupied, and not to the king’s personal suite either, but to another suite of rooms in the wing where the royal family lived.
The bedroom was large and airy, with big windows that looked out over Itheus and a stone balcony to take advantage of the magnificent view. A huge four-poster bed, hung with gauzy white curtains, stood against one wall, angled towards the windows, while other carved, heavy furniture was scattered about.
It was luxurious and beautiful, but a chill had settled down inside her and she couldn’t get rid of it. She didn’t know why she’d been put here. Surely, she would now be sleeping with Adonis? Then again, maybe not. Maybe he was trying to keep a sense of propriety.
She tried to ignore the cold feeling, busying herself with settling in and then going to see if Ione was okay. The little girl had been fractious and tired, only wanting to watch TV and not do anything else, which was unusual, since she was normally very active. Her nannies were puzzled by this behaviour, but Anna wasn’t. She knew that Ione was feeling exactly the way she was feeling too because she wouldn’t see her father again, not the way he had been back on the island.
Anna did what she could for her, and later that evening tucked her into bed with a story, but Adonis didn’t come to say goodnight the way he’d done every night in that house by the sea, and he didn’t send a message.
And when she went back to her own rooms she found a meal had been laid out for her on the coffee table, but it hadn’t been made by him and he wasn’t sitting there waiting for her, smiling. There was no one there at all.
He had become the mountain again: icy, remote and completely inaccessible.
She told herself that it was okay, that, now he’d experienced what it was like to have a real family, he would start to let down his guard again. It would just take some time.
But, deep down, a part of her doubted.
The next couple of days were the same. She didn’t see him, and when she asked where he was she was told that the king was catching up on work and was very busy.
Of course he was busy. He was always busy. Not that she had nothing to do herself. Wedding preparations were happening and there were dress-designer appointments and make-up consultations, plans for her hair and for the flowers she would carry, a meeting with the Archbishop of Axios, who would conduct the ceremony in Itheus’s big cathedral.
But no Adonis. And no message from him either.
She tried not to let that bother her. Tried to tell herself that of course there would be a period of adjustment. That he would find his way back to her and to the man he’d been on the island again in time, she just had to be patient. In the meantime, she flung herself into caring for Ione to distract herself from the insistent, dragging doubt that the little family she’d been part of so briefly would always be missing one of its most vital components.
Him.
Five days later, alone in the luxurious rooms he’d set aside for her, Anna pushed wide the doors to the balcony and stumbled outside, feeling inexplicably as if she couldn’t breathe.
She’d had a day of dress fittings and Ione being difficult, and there was a sadness inside her that she couldn’t escape. It dragged at her, pulled at her, made her bad tempered, and the brittle calm she’d been trying to maintain had broken. She’d spoken too sharply to Ione, making the little girl run from her in tears, and making herself feel as if she were right back in the convent, desperate for something she couldn’t name.
The night was deep and warm and velvety, the lights of the city beneath the palace glittering, the mountains looming on either side. The air was cool on her skin, but not too cold, carrying with it the memory of the hot noonday sun.
It was a beautiful night, but Anna couldn’t enjoy it, unable to shake the sense that she’d only swapped one empty place for another, and both of those places were missing something vital. Something that could have made them home. Something she