by Maisey Yates
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not afraid of being hurt again. I’m afraid of the damage I can do when I forget who I am and what I am. When I allow myself to fully buy into all that is supposedly good and elevated about me. When I treat myself as though I truly am royal, as though I deserve some sort of greater consideration than those around me. I know how much destruction it can bring. And I will not become that again.”
“You’re afraid of being hurt again,” she persisted, her voice trembling now. “And I don’t blame you. My mother isn’t dead. She simply rejected me, and I live with that same fear. So I’m standing in front of you now risking that, because I feel like when it comes to love you should do nothing less but risk your whole self, your whole heart. And, I also believe that love is honest. It doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. So, I’m going to tell you the truth. You didn’t make the choice to lose her. You would never have chosen to lose your son. But you’re choosing to lose me, to lose this, to lose what we could have. Adam, I can never replace her. And maybe...maybe you’ll never love me the way you loved her. I don’t need that. I just need the best you can give now. I just need you to try. And I need you to choose me. To choose us. Choose life instead of death. You didn’t have that choice before. It was an accident. You had no control. But you do now, and you’re choosing to kill us. Don’t.”
She was ready to beg. To get down on her knees. She would; she would do it gladly. Anything to keep him, to keep this. She had no pride where he was concerned, where this was concerned. What good would pride do her?
She had been a child when her mother had sent her away. Packed up her frilly little room that had been more a testament to her mother wanting to appear like a good parent than it had ever been about Belle’s taste.
And then she had put her in a town car, bound for her father’s house, and told Belle she wouldn’t be coming back.
It had broken her. Shattered her world. She had screamed and screamed, determined to make her mother hear her pain, her fear. But her mother had turned away, and so Belle had wept and shouted, all alone in the car except for the poor driver, who was simply following orders. A creature of woe and utter despair.
But she wouldn’t dissolve. Not now. Not with him.
And she would be damned if she let Adam do this, if she let him retreat back into the darkness without the full force of her light shining on him. She wasn’t afraid to be loud. Not now. She wasn’t afraid to love, wasn’t afraid to rip her chest open and spill the contents before him.
Because without him, there was no heart to protect. He was her heart. He was everything. And she was determined not to lose him. If she did, it wouldn’t be for a lack of fighting. Of that she was certain.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, his voice as blank as his expression. He leaned over and flicked on a lamp, the harsh sideways light casting his scars into even sharper relief, the peaks and valleys of his ruined skin looking even more exaggerated now. As though all the darkness, the ugliness, the pain from the inside him was bleeding up through his flesh. “Perhaps I am choosing this. To let you go. But, that is my prerogative. Don’t you understand? This is what I want. This is what I am. I am nothing more, and I can give you nothing more. We had fun these past weeks, or at least, something close to what a man such as myself can call fun. I have certainly enjoyed the luxury of escaping into your beautiful body, but it is not love. I’ve had love,” he said, the words choked. “I had love and it’s dead. This is not that. And if it is what you want, you should go. It is a kindness that I’m sending you away, Belle, rather than lying to you and telling you what you want to hear. I can keep you here, and I can keep your body for my use, but it is not something that would make you happy. So, if I were you I would retreat gracefully, and with the understanding that I am actually doing you a great service by sending you away.”
His words cut deep into her, stabbing into her lungs, making it so she couldn’t breathe. And yet, somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t the truth. Because of what he said about doing her a kindness. Because, if he were even half as cruel as he was pretending to be now, he would not extend her that kindness. If it was all about sex, all about her body, then he would keep her. Because it would cost him nothing to live. The only reason he was lying was so she would leave.
It hurt. It wounded her down deep. To know he felt that what they shared wasn’t love. That it was lesser than what he’d had before, because it was bigger, greater and brighter than anything she had ever had in her life. Than anything she had possibly imagined.
“Do you really want me to go?”
He nodded slowly. “It would be best.”
“So you’re going to stay here and lick your wounds. And open them over and over again, never letting yourself heal because you’re comfortable with this pain and afraid of experiencing any new pain?”
He moved off the bed, so fast that she didn’t have any time to react. She backed up against the wall, her movements wild. Adam’s hand came up, resting lightly on her throat. “It is not so I don’t get hurt again. I do not possess the ability to be wounded any further than I already have been. But if you don’t leave, you are destined to be hurt by me. The door is open now, Belle, and it may not be in the future. If I were you I would run. Far and fast. Go back to Tony. Go back to the beach. Go back to your father. He is sick, after all, and perhaps it would be best if you spent what could be his remaining days with him.”
His words hit hard, but then, they had been designed to. To wound, to inflict the maximum amount of damage.
And because he knew her so well, better than anyone ever had, they hit their mark unerringly.
She nodded slowly, and he lowered his hand, taking a step back, his expression blank.
“Then I’ll go.”
She didn’t want to. And each step she took matched the rhythm of her heartbeat, a heartbeat that wounded her with each and every pulse. That cut her deep as though the entire organ had transformed into shattered glass.
She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay. She wanted to turn herself around and fling herself at his feet and beg him to allow her to stay. Beg him to allow her to accept the crumbs of his affection.
But she didn’t. Not for her pride, because truly, pride had no place in this. She didn’t because she knew that if Adam was ever going to realize he could be hurt, if he was ever going to realize that what they had was real, that something in him had changed in the weeks they’d been together...she had to. She had to go in order for him to learn. If there was any chance he might grieve her loss, she had to allow him the opportunity to do so.
But it cost her. Each footstep feeling like a lead weight, each breath like a knife down her throat.
By the time she reached the edge of the corridor, she ran back to her room, not caring if any of the staff members were around to see her distress. When she reached her bedchamber she looked all around, at all the things in the room that had become part of this life that was only borrowed. None of it had ever been hers. Not the clothes, not the sumptuous bed, not the dark, scarred prince that had changed her forever.
She should pack. She should call for a ride to the airport. She should call Athena to bring her a pot of tea and tell her everything would be okay.
She did none of those things. Instead, she took a deep breath, flung herself down face-first onto the bed and wept as though her heart were breaking.
Because it was.
* * *
“She’s gone. I do hope you’re happy.”
Adam rolled over in bed, squinting against the light that was flooding his room. He thought for certain he was hallucinating, because it seemed as though Fos was standing in the center of the room, glaring at him with disapproval.
“Who is?”
“Belle,” the other man returned. “But then, I imagine that was your goal.”
His adviser never came into this part of the palace. All members of staff were forbidden. It was private. It was wh
ere Adam kept his pain, and until last night he had never willingly allowed anyone to step inside of it.
For all the good it had done. So, she had left. It was what he had wanted after all. He should feel more triumphant. Instead, he felt nothing but a lead weight in his chest.
“Yes,” Adam returned. “I did send her away. It was time.”
“She cared for you.”
“And if that doesn’t show how precarious her sanity is, nothing will.”
“Then I suppose mine is, as well,” Fos said. “Because for some misguided reason I care about you too. And I care about whether or not you sink beneath the weight of your grief. You had a chance with her. You had a chance to fix some of what was broken. I cannot understand why you would not cling to that for all you’re worth. Very few people would have come in here and dedicated themselves to understanding you the way that she did.”
“A great many women would love to marry me. I don’t have to be handsome. I don’t have to be charming. I am royalty, and I can make whatever woman weds me a princess. It’s hardly a great feat on my part.”
“But you don’t need another princess. You need somebody who can see past all that is broken in you. And on a good day, I can barely do that, and I have known you since you were a boy. What you had with Belle...it was the only thing I can see that would ever cast out this darkness. And if you would just stop carrying around so much guilt, you might be able to make room in your arms for love.”
Adam laughed, a low, bitter sound. “Love. What has love ever done for me? Absolutely nothing. Nothing but destroy me. And what did I ever give to the woman I loved besides a premature death?”
“Death happens,” Fos said. “Life isn’t fair. But you are a prince—you are not God. You didn’t orchestrate the accident that night. And if you were selfish, then you are no less than human. We are all selfish from time to time. My wife died thirty years ago, and I still remember everything that I did wrong. I still regret so many things, things I would do differently now, that as a young man I did not possess the capacity to do. But that is life. We cannot hang on to those feelings forever, or how else will we live through the day? You’re only a monster because you’ve decided to be.”
He turned to go. “You’re finished, I guess?” Adam asked.
Fos sighed heavily. “I might have to be.”
On that ambiguous note his adviser left him sitting there in bed as a strange ache began to grow and spread in his chest.
It hurt. It hurt so much, reaching across the bed and finding nothing there. Almost as much as reaching out and feeling his late wife’s cold skin.
Suddenly, rage and pain roared through him like a beast and he reached out, grabbing hold of some trinket or other that was on his bedside table. He hurled it across the room. It did nothing to ease the feelings rioting inside him.
He threw his covers off, not caring that he was naked, and stalked down the hall, into the sitting room that often bore the brunt of his rage.
Too much furniture was already destroyed. Already turned over onto its side. He reached up, grabbed a painting of his father from the wall and flung it across the room, feeling somewhat more satisfied when the frame broke, when the canvas bowed. The old man had died and left him too. Why should he leave his painting there to mock him? Like every other thing he had lost. It was too much. It was too much to be expected to endure.
He walked by a chair and kicked it onto its side, stomping heavily on the leg, breaking it in two. So much rage inside him. So much anger. And no one to blame. Nothing to rage at. Ianthe was dead. She was dead, and she was never coming back. His son was gone before he ever had a chance to draw breath. And none of it was fair.
They had both been gone before Adam had a chance to save them. There had never been a chance. The only chance would have been if he simply hadn’t gone, but he had, and for all that he was he couldn’t go back and remake that decision.
They were his future, they were his heart, and they were gone.
But for some reason, as he thought those words, it was Belle’s face that swam before his mind’s eye. He pressed his hand against his chest, trying to ease the ache there.
He walked across the room, not caring as he stepped on broken glass, dried flower petals and pieces of furniture. And then he reached the photograph. The one with his wife smiling so radiantly, and with him...with a face he no longer recognized, a light he no longer recognized.
His future and his heart. Three years ago that had been her. It had been her and the child she carried.
But that future, that heart, was for a different man.
Now when he thought of wanting something, when he thought of loving something...it was Belle.
Somehow, she loved the scarred, dark man he had become. She had stood there offering him those things he had thought lost to him forever, and he hadn’t even realized it. She was right. She had been right as she had stood there, shouting him down as though she had nothing in the world to fear. He was a coward. A coward who used his grief as a shield, used it to protect himself from ever caring again.
Yes, he had craved those snatches of light that she had given him, but mostly, he had been content to hide in the darkness where nothing could find him. Where nothing could reach him.
And if he stayed here in the darkness, it would certainly offer its own kind of protection. There would be no surprises. Grief, old memories and pain would be a constant. He would be the master of that pain, though. And it would never have the opportunity to master him. It would never sneak up from the depths and shock him, destroy him the way that it once had.
If he stayed here like this, if he stayed alone, he knew exactly how his days would be spent. He knew exactly what he would have stretching out before him. A future full of nothing, a blank endless slate destined never to be filled.
But if he claimed Belle, if he accepted her love, if he admitted to himself that he might love her in return, if he wanted again, hoped again, needed again, then God only knew what the result might be.
Perhaps she would tire of him. Perhaps he would destroy her eventually. Perhaps death might take her, as it had been so cruel to him before. If he cared, if he wanted, if he needed, then the future was a bright, riotous unknown filled with hidden patches of darkness and uncertainty.
And if he stayed here—if he stayed like this—this room full of broken memories and dead flowers would be all he ever had.
He bent down, sweeping his fingertips over those dried-out rose petals. How long had they been there?
Years. They had died along with everything else. He hadn’t brought any new life into this place since. He picked one up, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, grounded into dust. Dust. Death. That was the only thing he had here. Regret, and guilt, and memory.
And she was right. He blamed himself because at least then there was something to be angry at. Because at least then he could make a sick kind of sense of it. And more than that, it allowed him to stay here. To justify never moving forward. To justify this selfish, closed-off existence that was a monument to his wife and son in a way that served no one. Not his country, not their memory and most certainly not his heart.
Fos had spoken of magic spells last week in regard to Belle. And right now Adam felt there might be some truth in their existence. Because standing here, he felt as though he were bound in chains. Chains that were as real as any that could be seen by human eyes. Fos had told him that Belle was the one with the key. The one that possessed the ability to break the bonds. But, Adam had a feeling that wasn’t entirely true.
Belle was the reason. But he was the one who would have to do it.
There would be no certainty. No certainty that she would forgive him for the horrible, untrue things he had said to her in his attempt to drive her away. No guarantee that life would continue on smoothly and he would have her until he drew his last breath. All these things required a step taken in faith, taken in bravery and taken in love. The very idea of doing it seemed impos
sible. Seemed utterly untenable. And yet, he found himself taking a step forward, and then another. And while he knew very little about the way his life might end up, in the moment he knew exactly what he was walking toward.
It was light. It was pain. It was pleasure. It was love.
It was Belle.
He took his phone out of his pocket, still holding the dead rose petal in his hand. And he dialed Fos’s personal phone. “Flowers,” he said when the old man picked up. “We need flowers in the palace again.”
* * *
Between long hours spent in oncology, and then long hours spent caring for her father while he felt ill with the aftereffects of his treatment, Belle felt wrung out and gritty by the time she walked out the back door of their modest home and wrapped a sweater around herself to fortify her body against the sea breeze blowing in off the waves. She walked down the stairs, kicking her shoes off as she reached the sand, making her way down to the water’s edge.
If a human could be stale, Belle certainly was. She felt brittle, as though the slightest bit of pressure could break her in half. She felt tired. Broken.
And she couldn’t even blame it all on her father’s treatments, or the clear physical toll they were taking on him. No, this was all to do with heartbreak. It was all to do with Adam. When she had arrived back home teary-eyed and pale, her father had railed against her monstrous captor with all the strength he had in his frail body. But, Belle had only managed a weak smile, and told him that Adam truly wasn’t as awful as he had been made out to be.
Of course her father had protested.
“He took you prisoner over a few photographs!”
“You don’t know what he’s been through. He’s very private. And he’s endured so much pain. Just because he was born royal doesn’t mean everyone has a right to stare at him, and to dissect his pain.”