For when we returned to Pelion, things would have to change.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Marissa
THE TIME ON the island slipped away too quickly. I was angry at myself for spending a week avoiding him, when we could have been together. I was blissfully happy, but I missed Lily.
Of course, when we left here, I would miss being with him as we were now. I knew that. I somehow sensed that things were going to change.
Of course they would.
We would be back in a world that was completely foreign to me. I didn’t know how to be a queen.
I didn’t know how to live in this country; I didn’t know the customs; I didn’t know the way of it. Much less how to be royalty within it.
And so, I decided to ask him.
I felt raw, wounded by our coming together down at the beach, but more than that, the conversation we had after.
Thinking of what his father had done to him...
It tore me to pieces inside.
To think that a parent could do such a thing to their child... It was beyond imagining.
And he seemed to think...that he was fine. But I could see that he was not.
Or if not fine, he seemed to think that whatever remained in him was for the best, something that made him the sort of opponent that his father had required.
When I looked at him, I saw a wounded boy. And I knew he would not like that. Not at all.
So I didn’t say that to him. Instead, I would touch him whenever I could, not just to solidify the sexual connection, but to find closeness. To offer comfort. I found myself wondering if anyone had ever touched him kindly when he was a child.
Or if all he had known was abuse and negligence. In some ways, he was right. And my mother could easily be accused of actions similar to his own. She had certainly been unable to act against my father in a meaningful way in those years when I had been banished from the home.
But I had read about his mother. About all the traveling she did, the way that she flitted off to tropical islands at her leisure. The rumors that the young Princess was not the daughter of the King.
And I did not doubt that Hercules had believed he needed to protect them. I could see it in the way that he spoke. In every line of his body. He was protective of them.
And from what I had heard about his father, possibly rightly so.
But I had a suspicion that his father more or less ignored his wife and daughter, and did as he pleased with other women, and did as he saw fit to Hercules.
I wondered how much of the threat directed at Hercules’s mother and sister was simply a smoke screen set up by his father. A way to take advantage of the good nature that his son had. Because of course the King possessed none of his own.
I knew that Hercules mourned him in a strange way. But I would not mourn King Xerxes. Not for a moment. Not after the way I had learned he had harmed Hercules.
The physical scars might have long healed, but his emotional scars were deep.
I thought about Lily and the way he seemed afraid to connect with her. Though, he seemed to try at that more than he did anything else. He was a good man, of that I was convinced.
It wasn’t that he was incapable of connecting with Lily, or that he didn’t want to. To me it seemed as if he was truly frightened.
Of her, of something in himself, I didn’t know.
I wanted to fix it.
But I knew that I couldn’t.
So instead, I decided to give him a chance to fix me, because that might give him something to tether him to the earth.
“I don’t know how to be a queen,” I said to him over coffee the morning before our last here on the island.
“Come to think of it,” he said, his tone dry, “I’m not sure there is a very decent precedent set for a queen in Pelion.”
It was the first time I had ever heard him come remotely close to insulting his mother.
“In what way?”
“You may have noticed that my mother is absent from the country most of the time.”
“Yes. Will she return for your father’s funeral?”
“Oh, I suppose. They were still married, whether or not they had a relationship.”
“And you are not concerned about the rumors that will come from you not going?”
“There will be rumors, of course. But I stand ready to repudiate nearly everything about my father’s rule. I will lead with this. And I will make a statement.”
I was struck by his strength. By the way his face seemed almost carved from granite.
He was truly an incredible man.
“You’re not afraid of scandal, then,” I said.
“The only reason that I cared about marrying a suitable woman was that was part of the rules set for my father’s early abdication. Once I found out about Lily, I was able to institute a bit of blackmail to ask him to step aside. But then he did the most convenient thing I could imagine and died.”
“Well,” I said, laughing reluctantly at his dark comment. “I suppose.”
“I have never cared anything for convention. For in my eyes, the conventions established in my country were little more than a joke. Ways to keep pompous men like my father in power.”
“Has there ever been a queen? I mean...a queen like Lily.”
“No,” he said. “In fact, that makes me suspicious that they might have...” He grimaced. “I don’t even want to think about it. Hopefully no one made a practice of eliminating heirs to the throne based on their gender. Though, they might have just made them go away, the way that he did with Lily.”
“He didn’t know her gender when he did that.”
“No, indeed. But that had everything to do with keeping me from taking power any sooner than I might have.” He shook his head. “No. I don’t care one bit for the pomp and circumstance of the Xenakis family. We are making a new country. And so you will be the Queen that you decide to be.”
“I’m just a girl from an island who happened to meet a prince.”
“A prince with very poor self-control,” he said.
“That’s not true. I think you have amazing self-control, and any indication to the contrary is a little bit of a put-on.”
“I didn’t have self-control with you.”
I took that and held it close to my chest. “Well, I suppose that makes me special.”
“There is no suppose about it. You are unlike anyone else I have ever known.”
The admission seemed uncomfortable for him. Seemed torn from him.
“Then I suppose I will keep aiming for that as Queen.”
“Do you have any special interests?”
“The care of single mothers,” I said instantly. “Believe me when I tell you we face an inordinate amount of judgment while the men often responsible walk around without any.”
“Perfect,” he said.
“Perfect?” I repeated.
“Not perfect that they face judgment. But perfect that you have such a strong and clear interest. That will be your vocation, if you would like.”
“I would,” I said. “You know, I was so focused on taking care of Lily that I never truly thought about having work. Or...a calling, I suppose. I was given so much money by...well, your father...that I was able to buy a house, and we were able to live quite comfortably. When she was older, I would have had to find something to do, but that wasn’t encouraged in my home either. Women working. Having aspirations. So I just didn’t. But I like the idea of this.”
“Being Queen can be a vocation. A calling. No one else has taken it that way for my country in the past, but you could be the first.”
“I imagine I’d also be the first to marry the King after our child is born?”
“Likely. Unless, again, there has been some revision in the history books.”
“Well, we can a
lways assume there might be. I don’t mind being the first. Just another way that we are an oddity. Just another way that we will help change the country. I mean, not to co-opt your revolution.”
He laughed. “No, it’s perfectly fine if you want to join the revolution with me. You’re free to pick up a sword.”
“I hadn’t realized that swords would be part of the job description.”
“I can get you one.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Our eyes caught and held, and heat spiked between us.
What a strange and wonderful thing to have both, this ability to laugh with him and want him all at the same time.
“I have some things to see to,” he said. “I will... I’ll find you.”
There was something deep in that. Enduring. A promise that echoed in my soul. At least, I chose to let it.