that after Anna his detachment was irreparably damaged and nothing could fix it.
Whatever it was, right in that moment, fury rose, thick and hot, and he was out of his seat, coming around the side of his desk. He took his brother by the shoulders and flung him up against the wall before slamming an arm across his throat. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that.’ He wanted his voice to be cold, but it wasn’t. It was hot, gravelly, and full of rage. ‘I am the king.’
Xerxes didn’t fight him and didn’t move, but gold gleamed in his eyes. ‘You’re not a king. You’re an idiot. You love her.’
‘I can’t love her,’ Adonis ground out. ‘Love can be used—’
‘Why did you send her away?’ Xerxes interrupted, as if his brother’s arm wasn’t pressing against his throat. ‘She loves you, brother. Her tears broke my heart.’
He’d thought that after facing Anna the night before he’d got rid of his emotions. That he would never feel anything again. Yet here he was with fury eating him up inside and guilt following on behind, along with grief and pain, and all those other emotions he’d been struggling his whole life to ignore.
They were cracks in his detachment, in his soul, fracturing him like veins of magma in a volcano, weaknesses undermining the strength of the whole. And they were getting wider, spidering out, making him feel as though he was going to break apart.
‘I had to send her away,’ he said roughly. ‘A king cannot—’
‘A king can do whatever the hell he pleases.’
‘No.’ He forced his arm harder against his brother’s throat, his heart beating hard in the cage of his ribs. The cracks widened and he tried to stop them, tried to keep himself together. ‘You of all people should know what love does to someone. What it did to me.’ He was breathing faster now, the tangled wave of emotion boiling up inside him making those cracks turn into fissures, great chasms that would swallow him whole. ‘What it did to you, Xerxes. What our father did to you. And all because of me!’
Strangely, the look in his brother’s eyes softened. ‘I know, Adonis.’
‘I could have saved you.’ The failure of it choked him, guilt strangling him. ‘If only I’d stood up to him. But I didn’t. Because I wanted his approval. I was desperate for it.’ He could hardly breathe. ‘I put my need ahead of your pain, ahead—’
‘Adonis,’ Xerxes said quietly. ‘Let it go.’
‘How can I do that? After what you suffered? After how I failed you?’
‘You were just as much a victim as I was.’ Xerxes’s gaze was very direct, very steady. ‘And my suffering led me to Calista. Believe me, brother, I would go through it all again, every second twice over, if it meant I got to have her in my life.’
His jaw was tight, his body ached. ‘I can’t let it go. It’s not that easy.’
‘I know it’s not,’ Xerxes said. ‘But if I found the strength to step away from Xenophon’s shadow, then so can you.’
‘How?’ He searched his brother’s face. ‘I don’t understand how it’s possible.’
‘Look into your heart, Adonis. That’s where your answer is. That’s where your true strength lies.’ A fierce light burned suddenly in Xerxes’s eyes. ‘That’s where I found mine. In my wife and in my daughter. In my love for them.’
Every muscle in his body was tense. He felt as if he was in the middle of a battlefield.
How could love be a strength when it had been nothing but failure and pain for him?
Anna knows how.
Something surged through him, something that felt like rage and yet wasn’t.
His little nun. His brave little nun. Who loved without fear and without reservation. Who didn’t cut herself off or detach herself. Who threw herself passionately into everything she did, including caring for his daughter.
Including loving him.
She is so strong. How could you think she would fail you?
He went utterly still, frozen rigid where he stood as the thought hit him. She’d told him she loved him and he’d ignored it. Dismissed it. All the important people in his life had failed him, so why wouldn’t she?
‘That’s not strength. That’s fear...’
He’d dismissed that too, because he wasn’t afraid.
Or was he? Was that the real truth? That deep down he was afraid? Afraid of all those emotions burning inside him. Afraid to let himself feel. Afraid to let himself trust. ‘How do you know?’ he asked in a voice that