X: Command Me through Alexander's Eyes - Geneva Lee Page 0,61
to be king one day,” he continues. “I won’t live forever.”
I suspect he might do just that purely out of spite. The last thing he wants is to pass me the crown.
“You need a suitable wife.”
“This again?” I say wearily. “I hardly think bringing a date to one party is a proposal of marriage.”
“You know it is,” he snarls. “I don’t care who you date or who you fuck if you do it with discretion. You do not bring girls home. You don’t invite them to the family birthday party. Or Christmas. Or whatever stunt you’re planning next.”
I bypass the accusation and opt to point out his hypocrisy. “Inviting the woman you’re fucking means wedding bells? Well, Pepper will be thrilled.”
“Pepper is part of our inner circle,” he interjects distastefully, “and our relationship is none of your business.”
My control slips, and I take one menacing step forward. One move. One swing. He’d crumble. I force my fist to stay by my side. “Neither is mine.”
“I’m a widower. I’m King. No one expects me to marry.” He tugs on his suit cuff, showing no sign that he’s concerned. “The whole world is watching you. Consider that before you invite her in the future.”
“I don’t care what the world thinks,” I tell him as he walks to my bedroom door.
He opens it before turning back just enough to give me an amused look. “That’s your problem. It’s how I know she can never be a queen. Well, one of the reasons. You’re so concerned with proving something to me—to the world. You haven’t even stopped to think of what you’re doing to her. You’ll ruin her. You’ll hurt her. In the end, you’ll lose her. If you care about her, you’ll let her go.”
He steps through the door, closing it behind him, leaving me alone to deal with my choices and demons.
“You’re avoiding her,” Edward tells me the next morning when I go out to grab a mug of tea.
I stalk back to my room, adding him to the list of people I’m avoiding under my father. Clara is at the top of the list. But my brother isn’t so easily dismissed. He follows behind me.
I give up and sink into a seat by my bedroom’s hearth. He takes the one opposite.
“Go on,” I encourage him. “Keep telling me all the ways I’m cocking this up.”
“I think you already know,” he says.
“Then why do I keep making the same fucking choices?” I ask him miserably. I’d known what I was getting Clara into, and I did it anyway. Edward’s right. I am avoiding her—for her own sake.
“Because we don’t know any better.” He sighs, a half-smile on his face. “We hardly had a normal upbringing, and, as for relationships…”
He has no memories with our mother. She died when he was born. My own can’t be trusted given how young I was when she was alive. I remember a caring, beautiful woman. I remember how my father looked at her.
I remember how sad she seemed.
Locked up in a palace and taken out for special occasions on the arm of the King. There are other memories, fleeting and conflicting ones I never mention to Edward or anyone else, but especially not to my father.
“You know we can’t do this to them,” I say distantly, thinking of a memory that sticks out like a page in a photo album.
She was crying in her room. Again. I climbed onto her lap, and she held me close. I patted her smooth cheek.
“I love you, my precious boy,” she whispered into my hair. “Always remember that first.”
“I love you, Mummy.” My own small voice is foreign and unfamiliar. How could I have ever been so little? So vulnerable?
“Someday, you will meet a girl,” she says, “and you will love her. She will be your princess.”
I looked at Sarah, playing on the floor with blocks, then gazed at my mother with a doubtful shake of the head. “I don’t like girls.”
“You will.” This made her laugh. My heart swelled. I liked to hear her laugh. It felt like a reward, especially on the days she cried.
“What am I going to do?” she murmured, stroking a lock of hair that had fallen over my forehead. She wasn’t really talking to me. She did that a lot. Ever since she told me she was having another baby.
“Will this baby be a boy?” I asked hopefully.
“I don’t know.” More tears then.
“I’m sorry!” I squeaked, wishing I hadn’t asked the question. “I’ll be