“I do not understand why you are looking at me as if I killed a man,” Ares said.
And what struck her most was how truly, effortlessly beautiful he was. He was dressed in one of his usual royal uniforms, complete with the sash that proclaimed him the crown prince of these islands. Even here, in a controlled environment with less intrusive lighting, he looked as if the sun beamed down upon him.
Pia should have known when Marbella had laid this particular dress out this morning. It was pure white. And while the hilarity of wearing all white while this astonishingly pregnant did not escape her, she couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh.
Because she had believed him, and he had been putting on a show.
And all the things she’d told herself about the heartache she’d experience had been one day. Far off the future. Far away from here, now, today.
Yet here she was anyway, with a fantasy ring on her finger and a fantasy man, and a fantasy new marriage, too. The reality was a girl the size of a whale in a white dress that seemed pointed, a staged kiss, and all the sniggering she was sure she could already hear out there—or maybe her ears were ringing. She couldn’t quite tell.
“I’ve spent my whole life in my father’s shadow,” Ares was telling her, standing over her with all that light he made on his own, and Pia should never have let herself do this. She should never have been so weak, risking not only her own humiliation—but her sons’. “I’ve never been good enough for the man. He ranted at me about our bloodline until I wished I could reach my hand inside my own body, and exsanguinate myself to escape it. The only thing that worked was keeping myself away from him. Excusing myself from the damned bloodline. But then you came along and changed everything.”
“And you felt the best way to celebrate this change was with the paparazzi?”
Pia felt raw inside. Torn wide-open.
And worst of all, like such a fool.
Because she’d believed him. She’d believed that not only did he care for her, not only did he want her, but that deep down—whether he knew it or not—he might even love her.
She had believed what she wanted to believe, clearly.
And Ares had been setting up a photo opportunity to get at his father.
“I realized the last time I saw my father that I have abdicated my responsibilities entirely where he is concerned,” Ares told her, still standing where she’d left him in the middle of the wide hall. “And the closer we get to the birth of our own two sons, the more I realize what I owe not only them, but this kingdom. I think our subjects deserve better.”
“Power infects,” she said, sounding hollow to her own ears. “You told me that.”
“Better to claim it, then,” Ares replied, something flashing in his green eyes. He crossed to her, then crouched down to put himself at eye level. “Better that than to let it sit about, festering. I want to be the kind of king these princes—” he put his hand out to touch her belly, and for the first time she wanted to slap it away “—can look up to. No temper tantrums like winter storms, brutal and unpredictable. No shards of crystal littering the floors while they stand there, hoping not to be hit. I want to be a better man, Pia.”
There was a roaring thing in her, grief and shame, and she wasn’t sure she could keep it inside her skin. She wasn’t sure she could survive this. Or that she wanted to.
“You’re not talking about being a better man, Ares,” she threw back at him. “You’re talking about being a king. You begged me to marry you, and I surrendered. You didn’t tell me that it would be a business arrangement. You didn’t convince me by promising me a convenient union we could both use to our own ends. You made love to me. You made it romantic.”
And she would hate herself forever for the way her voice cracked on that.
But she pushed on anyway. “How could you make it romantic?”
Ares looked floored. Astounded, as if it had never occurred to him that she could possibly have a problem with what had happened here today.
“I do not understand the issue,” he said stiffly.
“You could have asked me. You could have appealed to my practical side. You didn’t have to sleep your way into it.” And there were tears then, and those were worse. They felt too salty against her cheeks. They felt like a betrayal, or one more betrayal, and her heart felt tattered. Broken beyond repair. “You could have asked, Ares, and I would have come around.”
“Pia—”
“But you pretended it was something else,” she said, and the cramping was getting worse with every word she spoke. She rubbed at her belly, sucking in a breath as she tried to make herself comfortable. Or just make it through this conversation. “You pretended that you cared.”