Page 245 of Modern Romance Collection March 2025 (1-4)

His father was…distant. She found that she quite liked him. But she wondered if he had been not the most loving father. At least outwardly. She understood that. Her own father had done his best, but he had been lost in his grief.

At midday, she decided to stop feeling sorry for herself, and she wandered around the palace. Her sisters were in various rooms, reading, watching movies, playing games. She looked into one of the sitting rooms and saw her father, sitting with the King.

She paused in the doorway. They were talking with each other. Her heart squeezed tight.

Both of those men had been very hurt by love and loss. Even if in different ways.

And they had passed that pain down to their children, even though they hadn’t meant to. It didn’t mean she didn’t love her father. She did. But he had stopped functioning when her mother had died. And now, even with the best of intentions…

He was dying. His own behavior had sent him to his deathbed. That was a difficult pill to swallow.

Very difficult indeed.

She knew that it was probably the same for Adonis. He clearly respected his father greatly, or he wouldn’t wish so badly to make him proud, to rule the kingdom in a way that would do his legacy proud. But, there was also a lot of anger surrounding his mother, and he couldn’t fully believe that his mother had been entirely at fault. Adonis was too smart. He had been sent off to the nanny because he had been unruly…

He had definitely been lacking in meaningful connections. That much was so abundantly clear.

She wanted to protect him. The boy that he’d been.

The man he was now.

She felt all the complexity inside of her, the strange affection for the men in front of her, along with her disappointment that they hadn’t been able to do better by their children.

It was such a strange thing, that she and this Prince had been born a world apart, so many layers of wealth apart. Many years apart, and yet, they had been through so many of the same things.

She moved away from the door, her heart pounding.

She went into the dining room, and found that a table with a lunch spread had been set out, made for any of them to grab their own plates, and so she began to make herself sandwiches, and then went and sat at the foot of the table.

She was chewing rather contemplatively when Adonis came in.

“There you are,” he said. “I had to ask around with the staff to ascertain your whereabouts.”

“I’ve been having a bit of a lazy day.”

“Good. Does that make you happy?”

“Yes. Thank you. And also, my sisters being so well cared for. Our fathers sitting and having a conversation.”

He raised a brow. “Are they really?”

“Yes. You know, I was thinking about our discussion last night. And I think the thing that you’re discounting is fate. Because what were the odds? What were the odds that you and I met at that airport? That you hadn’t managed to snap your princely fingers and come up with an even better alternative to getting to your wedding than using my plane. I think that’s an impossibility. And it’s the thing that you can’t reason.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. “Because it takes the choice out of it.”

“I don’t think that accepting that fate can have a hand in something takes the choice out of everything. If you take fate out of the equation, then you take out magic.”

“Maybe I don’t believe in magic.”

“Okay. You, the Prince do not believe in magic. You have a literal castle, and have, so I’ve heard, had an endless number of lovers, and also been many places. Which I suspect feels quite a lot like magic.”

“Was it fate, then, for my mother to abandon me?”

“We need to contend with that,” she said. “What are you going to do about your mother’s abandonment?”

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