Would he even want to hear her condolences? The condolences of the woman who had sneaked out of the palace while he was dining with potential investors, supporting the island he loved?
She’d told him she would stay.
He’d forgiven her lie, but he had Catalina now. Without Amy’s presence there, distracting him, he would turn to the Princess for comfort. Just as he should. Maybe grief would bring them together properly.
And as she prayed for a happy ending for her Prince and his Princess, hot tears spilled out of her eyes. She brought her knees to her chest and cried her broken heart out for the happy ending that would never be hers.
* * *
The funeral, a full state affair, was a sombre occasion.
People lined the streets in tens of thousands, all there to bow their heads in silence and pay their respects to the man who had served them with such dedication for fifty years.
The wake was an entirely different matter.
Out on the streets the atmosphere changed markedly. Television coverage showed military re-enactments from throughout the ages, even children dressed in loincloths and armed with plastic tridents. Barbecues lit up Agon’s famous beaches, music played on every corner and there was food, drink and dancing everywhere in abundance.
Agon was putting on a show in the only way it knew how.
In the blue stateroom of the palace solemnity had given way to merriness too. The King was with his Queen. His suffering was over. His country and his family had laid him to rest and now they could celebrate his life.
For Helios, the occasion brought no joy. He accepted that his grandfather had moved on to a better place, but the hole in his heart felt so great he didn’t know how it would ever heal.
To know he would never talk to him again, dine with him, play chess... All the things he’d taken for granted were all gone. The man he’d worshipped, a man ten times the man his own father had been, was gone.
Helios watched his brothers, stuck like glue to the sides of their respective fiancées, and smiled for them. Their parents’ marriage had been the worst template a child could have asked for. That his brothers were heading into marriages that would be more like their grandparents’ gave him much hope. They would be happy.
He was under no illusions that he would follow suit.
Although he had seen little of her since his grandfather’s death, Catalina had been at his side throughout the funeral service, a calm presence who had known exactly what to say in all the right moments.
But, however perfect she might be, he knew that fifty years of marriage wouldn’t bring them the bond Talos and Theseus shared with their fiancées.
That last smile his grandfather had given them was a white shadow in Helios’s mind. It gave him comfort. His grandfather had welcomed death. He’d left the world knowing his grandsons—all of them—would take care of his beloved island, freeing him to move on to his beloved Rhea.
His three grandsons.
Three boys raised to be princes.
Catalina came to stand by him. He stared down at her and met her thoughtful gaze.
‘Marriage to someone you feel no affection for can only bring misery.’
Those were the words his grandfather had said the last time they’d spoken lucidly together. And in that moment he knew those words hadn’t been a reproach. They’d been a warning from a man who knew how powerful love could be and had witnessed the destructive nature of his son’s contempt for the wife he didn’t love.
And in that instant everything became clear.
He couldn’t marry Catalina.
If he’d never met Amy everything would be different. He would be different.
If he’d never met Amy he would be marrying Catalina with no expectations or knowledge of how things might be. He would be King. She would be Queen. Their only bond would be of duty. He wouldn’t know what it felt like to love or be loved.
Love.
The one word he’d never expected to apply to himself other than in an abstract form. Familial love he’d felt and believed in, but romantic love...? That was not something he’d ever been able to hope for, so not something he had ever allowed himself to think about. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was something he’d hidden away from. The scars of his parents’ marriage ran so deep that what he’d convinced himself was rational acceptance of his future union was in fact a mask to hide the real truth—that love in all its forms was the most terrifying emotion of all.
But also the most wonderful.
Because, Theos, he loved Amy. With everything he had.
Try as he might, he couldn’t get used to walking into the museum and not seeing her there. He couldn’t get used to being in his apartment and seeing the connecting door, knowing she wasn’t at the end of the passageway.