The Most Powerful Of Kings - Jackie Ashenden Page 0,65

didn’t sound like his. ‘How can you ever believe someone when they tell you they love you?’

Xerxes stared at him a moment longer. Then he shrugged. ‘It’s called trust, Adonis. You can only trust them.’

‘I don’t know...’ His voice was cracked and broken. ‘I don’t know if I can ever trust anyone.’

‘You can trust her, though,’ his brother said quietly. ‘Her heart is big enough for both of you.’

And he was right, wasn’t he? His little brother was wiser than he was. Because if there was one person in all the world he could trust, it was his indomitable little nun who’d told him she would wait for ever for him.

She won’t fail you. You cannot fail her.

He could feel it then, the cracks running through him, but they weren’t fissures or chasms after all. They weren’t going to swallow him. They were letting the light in, pouring all over him, engulfing him in warmth. In strength. In certainty. A certainty he hadn’t felt for years. And this time he didn’t fight it, he embraced it.

It didn’t matter if one day she might feel differently. It didn’t matter if one day she changed her mind or found someone else more important to her than he was.

What mattered was that she was important to him. She was more important than anything in his entire life, except possibly Ione.

She was certainly more important than his throne.

And this was a choice, his last choice.

So Adonis Nikolaides chose.

‘You’re right.’ He looked at his little brother, his heart thundering in his chest. ‘I need her back, Xerxes. I need her back right now.’

‘Of course you do.’ Xerxes smiled. ‘And I have a very good idea how to go about it.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE FLIGHT TO England was interminable, the journey back to the convent deep in the rolling green hills of the English countryside even longer.

But Anna didn’t care. She found she didn’t care about much at all.

It was late and the Reverend Mother received her with little fanfare, apparently not requiring much of an explanation. She showed Anna back to her little room without comment, which was good because Anna didn’t want to talk and was pathetically grateful she didn’t have to, falling into a restless sleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

The next day she didn’t feel any better, gritty-eyed and hollow inside. Some of the other nuns wanted to hear about Axios, but she didn’t have the heart for conversation, staying in her room instead, lying on the bed with her arms wrapped around herself, trying not to think of Adonis or Ione.

Trying not to think of what she’d left behind.

She didn’t know what time it was when there was a quiet knock on her door and it opened to reveal the Reverend Mother. She looked at Anna for a moment, then said quietly, ‘You have a visitor.’

Anna shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Mother. I’m not up for visitors today.’

‘Nevertheless, I think you’ll want to see this one.’ The Reverend Mother’s lined face softened. ‘He’s waiting in the garden and he said he’d wait there all day if he had to.’

Everything inside Anna went still.

No. It couldn’t be...

She didn’t want to hold on to hope, so she tried not to as she walked the convent’s echoing halls and out into the tiny walled garden with the roses climbing up the walls.

Yet hope burst out of her all the same, opening its wings and flying straight into the sky when she saw the tall, powerful figure waiting beside the fountain.

She froze, unable to move, her heart shuddering in her chest.

And then the figure turned and her heart plummeted.

It wasn’t Adonis. It was Xerxes.

‘What are you doing here?’ Anna demanded, agony crawling through her.

Xerxes, against all odds, smiled. ‘I’m here on behalf of my brother. He’s been unavoidably detained, so he sent me to ask you if you’d like to attend a wedding.’

Anna blinked. ‘A wedding? What wedding?’

Xerxes’s smile grew even warmer. ‘Your wedding.’

Shock moved through her and for a minute she had no idea what to say. ‘Mine?’ she eventually forced out. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The king wants to know if it’s still true. If you’re still waiting.’

She shuddered.

‘Yes,’ she said hoarsely, before she’d had time to think. ‘I am.’

‘In that case, he told me to tell you that “never” came sooner than he thought and that you’re stronger and braver than he’ll ever be. And that he loves you more than he’d ever thought possible.’

Anna felt unsteady, the world upending under her feet.

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