The Most Powerful Of Kings (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Royal House of Axios, Book 2)

by Jackie Ashenden

  He noted the tension around her mouth and jaw. ‘Except you wanted to meet her, didn’t you?’ He wasn’t sure why he was pushing for information, especially since it was obviously an old wound and he didn’t want to reopen it, not to mention that her pain made him uncomfortable. But he couldn’t ignore it, either.

  She gave another small sigh. ‘I would have liked to. I just...wanted to make contact with someone who was related to me, to see where I came from, that kind of thing. I felt out of place in the convent, so I wanted to know if I perhaps belonged elsewhere.’ She made a dismissive gesture. ‘But my mother was uncomfortable with that and so I let it go. It’s fine.’

  But it wasn’t fine and he could see that.

  ‘Your mother might have had her reasons for not wanting to keep in contact with you, Anna, but that doesn’t make it any less a rejection. Especially one you didn’t deserve.’

  ‘That’s the issue though. Perhaps I did deserve it. I wasn’t very nice to her, you see. I told her that she owed me a meeting after getting rid of me and then she got upset and hung up on me.’ Anna sat back, her hands in her lap, and her shoulders hunched. ‘I shouldn’t have got so angry with her. It was the wrong thing to do.’

  He could hear the bitterness in her tone, saw the hurt radiating from her. And he’d moved around the table towards her before he was even conscious of doing so.

  She lifted her head as he approached, resisting slightly as he pulled her from the chair she was sitting in. But as soon as he put his arms around her, she melted utterly against him and put her forehead on his chest.

  ‘I made a stupid mistake, Adonis,’ she said, her voice muffled in his T-shirt. ‘I shouldn’t have got so angry. I just wanted so badly to talk to her, to have some kind of connection with her. To know where I came from and who my family was. And why she didn’t want me. What was so wrong with me that...’ Anna broke off, her small body shivering.

  And he felt that shift in his chest again, a tight sensation that wouldn’t let up, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t know where the impulse to take her in his arms had come from either. But he didn’t release her. She was upset and in pain and it felt wrong to leave her to deal with it alone. She was also warm and holding on to him, clinging to him, calling to the deep protectiveness that had woken when he’d found out about her pregnancy.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ He put a comforting hand on the back of her head, letting his palm rest against her pale, silky hair. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Mum didn’t want me, not even years later. And I was always such a trial to the nuns. I don’t think they wanted me either—’

  He reached for her chin, forcing her head back so she had to look up at him. Her eyes were full of hurt and a bitterness that he hated to see there. ‘It’s not you. How could it be? Your mother didn’t even know the woman you grew up to be.’ He let her see the conviction burning in his eyes. ‘And as for the nuns, the Reverend Mother knew your worth. Why else did she send you to help Ione? You’re unselfish and generous. Warm and passionate. You’re exactly what Ione needs.’

  Anna’s eyes gleamed with tears, but there was something else in the look she gave him that made the tightness in his chest contract even further. ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What about what you need?’

  You need her.

  The thought was bright and burning, making longing curl through him. Anna, warm and generous and giving. Anna, who’d braved his disapproval in order to help Ione.

  Anna, who’d never put a throne before a person.

  The way your parents did?

  ‘You shouldn’t ask me questions like that, little nun. Not when you know the answer already,’ he said, his voice unaccountably rough, ignoring that thought. Of course his parents had put the throne before their son. They’d had to.

  She didn’t look away, and he had the disturbing impression that she could see inside him, see all the thoughts in his head.

  ‘I wasn’t asking the king,’ she said quietly. ‘I was asking you.’

  He lifted his hands and cupped her face between them, keeping his touch gentle, because his words would not be. ‘Anna. You know this already. I can’t be anything other than the king. And a king can’t need anyone.’

  Her gaze searched his face and the strange, tight feeling inside him grew. ‘I know that’s what your father made you believe. But it’s not true.’

  ‘Anna—’

  ‘Do you think I can only be a nun? That I can’t be a friend as well? Or that Xerxes can only be a prince and not a father?’

  It felt as if she’d found a vulnerability in his armour and had slid a knife inside it, cutting him. ‘It’s different for you. Different for him,’ he said flatly, not wanting to discuss it.

  ‘Why?’ She threw the question at him like a stone. ‘How? You’re a man like Xerxes is. You’re also a father.’

  ‘A king has to protect millions—’

  ‘Stop spouting the lies your father taught you, Adonis,’ she interrupted, suddenly fierce. ‘Because that’s what they are. Lies. Not having emotion doesn’t make you a king, it makes you a robot.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘It makes you him.’

  He dropped his hands from her face and took a step back, his heart beating far too fast and he wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t his father, of course he wasn’t. Xenophon had been brutal, yes, but everything he’d done had been to help Adonis be a better king.

  It had been for Axios’s sake.

  It’s always about Axios. Never about you.

  ‘I’m not him,’ he growled. ‘If I were, do you think I would have asked you to marry me? I would not do to Ione what was done to me.’

  ‘And yet you hold her at a distance. You tell her you have no time. And you tell yourself that the throne comes first.’ Concern flooded her lovely face along with a sympathy that cut him open. ‘Is that what your father told you, too? That he couldn’t put you first? That the throne came before everything?’

  Pain throbbed inside him, a crack running through his soul.

  His mother had held out despite how those men had tortured her, but not to protect him. It had been for her husband. To protect the king. Then she’d taken that gun, bringing about her own death, and it had all been to protect the throne. Not to save her son.

  And his father hadn’t seemed to care how the blame he’d laid on his oldest son for his mother’s death had crushed him. How the torture of his little brother had torn him apart.

  The throne was more important. It was always about the throne.

  But how could it be about anything else? A country and the lives of millions were always going to be more important than he was.

  ‘He was right,’ Adonis forced out, hearing his own father’s voice in the words and hating the sound of it. Hating himself for saying it. ‘The throne has to come first.’

  She lifted her hand and cupped his cheek before he could pull away, her touch warm as sunlight. ‘You can’t believe that.’

  But he did. The love he’d once had for his father had died a death the day Xerxes had been banished, yet he still carried the spirit of Xenophon’s teachings.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said roughly. ‘I have to believe it. Otherwise everything that was done to me, to Xerxes, would have been for nothing.’

  There was such sadness in her eyes. ‘That’s the bleakest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  He could feel tension crawling through every part of him and he had to concentrate to hold himself still. ‘What do you want from me, Anna?’

  She stared at him and he didn’t know what she was looking for. ‘I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to know that you’re not alone.’

  He couldn’t have said why that felt like a knife twisting inside him, cutting him deeper, but it did, a sharp, insistent pain.

  He didn’t like it. And he didn’t want to
talk about this any more. So he kissed her hard instead, ending the conversation.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ANNA SAT ON the end of the small jetty that projected out from the rocky beach of the island and into the deep blue water. The sun was warm on her back and she had her feet dangling in the cool water.

  In the small, sheltered cove, a little sailboat tacked back and forth, its white sail shining in the sun. She could hear Ione’s shrieks of delight echo across the water as her father guided the small boat, and a bittersweet feeling collected inside her.

  Ione had arrived a couple of days earlier and had greeted the news that her father was going to marry Anna with a great deal of satisfaction.

  ‘Good,’ Ione had said. ‘I didn’t want you to leave. Marrying Papa means you have to stay.’

  They’d spent the past few days adjusting to the new state of things, not that Ione seemed to require much adjustment. Not when she’d spent most of the time basking in the attention from not just one, but two adults.

  When Ione had first arrived, Adonis had been stiff and unbending, as if he didn’t quite know how to treat her, not helped by the fact that Ione had been a bit manic to start off with. But then, when she realised that her father wasn’t suddenly going to send her away as he did in the palace, she settled down and relaxed, and little by little so did he.

  Anna didn’t know what had changed, whether it was being away from the palace and his duties, or whether it had something to do with the conversation she’d tried to have with him about his father, or perhaps it was simply having some time with his daughter, but Adonis seemed different.

  He became less expressionless, less cold. A granite statue became warm, living flesh. A king slowly turned back into a man.

  He joined in the activities Anna had organised: picnics and swimming and fishing off the end of the jetty, then stories and games in the evenings, and walking along the beach finding seashells during the day.

  One night he’d smiled at her and it had taken her breath away. Then the next, he’d laughed at something Ione had said and the sound had made her heart squeeze tight in her chest.

  Today he’d readied the small boat kept in a little shed by the water, deciding to take Ione for a sail. Sailing was something he’d learned from his nanny and, considering the casual competence with which he handled the boat, it was obvious he’d once spent a lot of time out on the water.

  But watching him with his daughter made Anna ache.

  Did he know he was a different man out here, on the island? Was he aware at all?

  He was so unbelievably handsome when he became human. So charismatic. A king anyone would follow. A king anyone would die for.

  ‘You don’t understand, I have to believe it...’

  Her throat contracted at the memory of his voice and the ferocity in his eyes as she’d confronted him about his father, about those lessons Xenophon had taught him. Lessons in torture and pain. Lessons in abuse.

  She could only guess at his father’s motives, and she had no idea whether Xenophon had truly believed that he was helping Adonis be a better king or whether he had been punishing his son for his mother’s death—or perhaps even punishing himself for failing to save his wife. But maybe that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Adonis felt he had to believe his father.

  She put her hand up over her eyes to shield them from the sun as she looked out over the sea to where the little boat sailed. It was the sun that made her eyes water, surely, not the memory of him looking down into her eyes and cupping her face between his hands, telling her that there was nothing wrong with her, that she was a great many wonderful things. And that she was needed.

  He wasn’t detached, no matter what he said. And he didn’t believe what his father had taught him, not deep down, she was sure of it. Why else would he hold her so gently? And give her such reassurance?

  Why else would he be worrying so much about his brother, even now?

  ‘Everything Xerxes went through would have been for nothing...’

  He carried guilt for his brother’s torture at their father’s hands; she’d seen it in his eyes. Guilt for his mother’s death, too, and no doubt guilt for his own treatment of his daughter as well. No wonder he clung to his father’s lies and detached himself so completely from his own emotions. They must have caused him such agony.

  Anna blinked the moisture from her eyes, a ghost of that agony echoing inside herself.

  Knowing all of this didn’t change anything, though. She’d wanted him to know that he wasn’t alone, and that was still true.

  But what you feel for him...

  She knew what she felt for him. She’d known it for days. Perhaps she’d even known it for weeks, ever since the night he’d made love to her in his office.

  The decision she’d made the first morning here had taken hold: she’d fallen for him completely and utterly, and with no hope of return.

  Not that falling for him changed anything either. No, it only made her even more certain that what she was doing was the right thing.

  He was a lonely man with deep wounds and he needed healing, but they hadn’t talked about his father again, and the only connection with her he’d allowed was in bed, in that room overlooking the sea.

  It was a start. She only hoped it would be enough of one.

  Anna’s throat felt sore as the little boat turned towards the jetty, the waves glittering in the afternoon sun, and began to make its way back to shore.

  Ten minutes later the boat was tied up, and Ione had leapt off, chattering at Anna about how she was going to be a pirate queen when she grew up and make people walk the plank. Adonis, leaping off after her, laughed and in a completely natural movement reached down to swing her up onto his shoulders, telling her that she would make a superb pirate, though he wasn’t sure about the plank-walking.

  The pain in Anna’s throat worsened at the show of spontaneous physical affection, and not only that, but there was also laughter in his voice and in his eyes, his beautiful mouth turning up into a smile that took her breath away.

  This was the man he should be. A man who looked as though he knew happiness. Who was relaxed and smiling, warmth radiating from him as he reached out his hand to her, and they all walked up the path to the house above the sea.

  Not the hard, granite-faced king, but this charming, charismatic man. The man he would never allow himself to be.

  It won’t happen. He won’t let it.

  No, it had to happen. And if she loved him enough, he might...

  They spent another couple of magical days on the island, Anna shoving aside her growing trepidation at returning to the mainland, trying to remain optimistic that the happiness they’d discovered as a small family would remain even after they’d returned to the palace.

  Yet when the day came that they had to leave, and they were all in the helicopter flying back to Itheus, the trip was a silent one; even Ione was quiet. And the closer they got to the palace, the more Anna felt Adonis withdrawing. His features hardened, his powerful body tensing, those blue eyes becoming sharper, cutting. The smile vanished and his mouth became hard and unyielding.

  The man he’d been on the island disappeared so completely it was as if he’d never existed.

  She had no time to speak with him when they landed. The instant he got out of the helicopter he was surrounded by people, and he didn’t look at her or Ione once as they exited behind him. He didn’t glance around to see if they were coming; he simply strode along the path to the palace, deep in conversation with his aides.

  Anna had hoped some sign of the man would remain, but it hadn’t.

  The man was gone. All that was left was the king.

  It felt like a knife in her heart.

  More palace staff surrounded her, and as Ione was led off Anna was taken back not to the little room she’d once occupied, and not to the king�
�s personal suite either, but to another suite of rooms in the wing where the royal family lived.

  The bedroom was large and airy, with big windows that looked out over Itheus and a stone balcony to take advantage of the magnificent view. A huge four-poster bed, hung with gauzy white curtains, stood against one wall, angled towards the windows, while other carved, heavy furniture was scattered about.

  It was luxurious and beautiful, but a chill had settled down inside her and she couldn’t get rid of it. She didn’t know why she’d been put here. Surely, she would now be sleeping with Adonis? Then again, maybe not. Maybe he was trying to keep a sense of propriety.

  She tried to ignore the cold feeling, busying herself with settling in and then going to see if Ione was okay. The little girl had been fractious and tired, only wanting to watch TV and not do anything else, which was unusual, since she was normally very active. Her nannies were puzzled by this behaviour, but Anna wasn’t. She knew that Ione was feeling exactly the way she was feeling too because she wouldn’t see her father again, not the way he had been back on the island.

  Anna did what she could for her, and later that evening tucked her into bed with a story, but Adonis didn’t come to say goodnight the way he’d done every night in that house by the sea, and he didn’t send a message.

  And when she went back to her own rooms she found a meal had been laid out for her on the coffee table, but it hadn’t been made by him and he wasn’t sitting there waiting for her, smiling. There was no one there at all.

  He had become the mountain again: icy, remote and completely inaccessible.

  She told herself that it was okay, that, now he’d experienced what it was like to have a real family, he would start to let down his guard again. It would just take some time.

  But, deep down, a part of her doubted.

  The next couple of days were the same. She didn’t see him, and when she asked where he was she was told that the king was catching up on work and was very busy.

  Of course he was busy. He was always busy. Not that she had nothing to do herself. Wedding preparations were happening and there were dress-designer appointments and make-up consultations, plans for her hair and for the flowers she would carry, a meeting with the Archbishop of Axios, who would conduct the ceremony in Itheus’s big cathedral.