For the first time he accepted that Amy leaving Agon when he married would be a good thing. The best thing. For all of them.
All he knew was that he wouldn’t be able to commit himself to Catalina as a husband if Amy resided under the palace roof and worked in the palace museum.
He’d thought when she had come back to him that everything would be all right and they could return to the way they’d been. But everything was not all right. Everything was worse.
His feelings for her...
There was a trapdoor looming in front of him and every step he made took him closer to falling through it. But he couldn’t see in which direction the trapdoor lay. He just knew it was there, readying itself to swallow him whole.
As was normal at a Kalliakis party, none of the guests was in a hurry to leave. But, as was not normal, Helios was in no mood to party with them.
He did his duty and danced with the Princess. Again he felt nothing. His body didn’t produce the slightest twinge. Nothing.
When Catalina finally left to catch her flight back to Monte Cleure with her father and brother Helios sought out Theseus, who was still going through the motions with the last of the straggling guests, and bore him away to his apartment.
From the look on his brother’s face he needed a drink as much as Helios did.
For someone with a newly discovered son he adored, and a wedding to the boy’s mother on the horizon, Theseus was acting like someone who’d been told he was to spend the rest of his life locked in the palace dungeons.
Much as Helios himself felt.
He’d never thought of alcohol as a tool for making problems better—on the contrary, he knew it tended to make matters worse. But he wasn’t trying to make himself feel better. That wouldn’t be possible. All he wanted was a healthy dose of numbness, even if only for a short time.
Was Amy waiting up for him?
They hadn’t made their usual arrangement. It had been on the tip of his tongue to say his customary ‘I’ll come to you when I’m done’ that morning, but this time something had stopped him. A sense of impropriety. Indecency. To parade the news of his fiancée to the world, then expect to slip between the covers with his mistress...
An image flashed into his mind of Amy standing in the cathedral in a wedding dress, of his mother’s sapphire ring sliding onto her finger... It was an image he’d been fighting not to see for weeks.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
This was madness.
He took another swig of neat gin and said without thinking, ‘Those people watching the Gala. They have no idea of our sacrifices.’
‘What?’ Theseus slurred, staring at him with bloodshot eyes Helios knew mirrored his own.
‘Nothing.’
Even if he’d wanted to confide in his brother, Theseus was clearly in no state to listen. He knew he should ask him what was wrong, but the truth was he was in no state of mind to listen either.
Moody silence followed, both brothers locked in their own thoughts. The anticipated numbness failed to materialise. All the gin had brought on was the monster of all headaches.
Helios slammed his glass on the table. ‘It’s time for you to crawl to your own apartment—I’m going to bed.’
Theseus downed his drink without a murmur of protest and got to his unsteady feet. At least his brother was drunk enough to pass out without any problems, he mused darkly.
As Theseus staggered out Helios promised himself that he would leave Amy to sleep. It was long past midnight. Soon the sun would rise. To wake her would be cruel. To go to her at all, tonight of all nights, would be the height of crassness.
Dammit. He’d just become officially engaged. Couldn’t he show some decorum for one night?
But the memory of Amy’s ashen face during the exhibition tour refused to leave him and he knew he had to go to her. He had to see for himself that she was all right.
He walked down the passageway, promising himself that he would leave if there was no answer. When he reached her bedroom door, he rapped on it lightly.
Within seconds he heard the telltale turning of the lock.
When she’d opened the door Amy gazed up at him with an expression he couldn’t distinguish. One that combined anguish, desire and need in one big melting pot.
And as he stepped into her welcoming arms he realised that, for all his talk of sacrifice, he didn’t yet know how great his biggest sacrifice would be.
* * *
With the early-morning sunlight peeking through the curtains, Amy gazed at Helios’s sleeping form.
Hours after the post-Gala party had finished he’d come to her. And for the first time since they’d started their relationship all those months ago, nothing physical had happened between them.
Until he’d quietly knocked on her door she’d been trying to sleep, without any luck. She hadn’t wanted to stay awake for him. She’d been scared that he wouldn’t come to her and equally scared that he would.