Page 4 of Vows to a King
Frustration, and something darker, fueled him as he strode through the opulent corridors of the palace, the familiar scent of beeswax and lavender polish mingling with the faint aroma of old books and aged wood.
As a boy, he’d loved running around the endless maze, laughing, shrieking, and generally creating mayhem. Unless his father was near and ready with his cold disapproval.
His heart pounded now—turning him into that eager, needy child—as he approached the King’s chambers, a place he’d once been forbidden to enter as punishment.
The pattern of the heavy oak door was as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror. He had spent hours staring at it, while their father regaled his firstborn and favorite son with war stories, taught him to play chess, and loved him with all his heart.
The cruelty had been unbearable on his young heart for he hadn’t known then why his father would love Adamos so much and yet so thoroughly neglect him.
Gritting his teeth against the memory, Adonis pushed the double doors. The room was dimly lit by late afternoon sun filtering through the heavy drapes, casting long shadows on the rich, intricately woven tapestries depicting the glorious history of Thalassos. The scent of medicinal herbs and a hint of stale air lingered.
His gaze fell upon the large, canopied bed where King Aristos lay. The once formidable monarch appeared frail and diminished, his hair silvered with age, his eyes clouded with confusion. Gnarled hands twitched on the embroidered bedspread.
“Father,” Adonis said softly, nearing the bed. His voice, steady yet tinged with emotion, seemed to drift into the stillness of the room.
The King’s eyes flickered toward him, a bright spark of recognition making them shine. “Adamos,” he whispered, a tremor in his voice. “My wonderful boy, you’ve come back. I told them nothing could hurt you. Nothing.”
The words hit Adonis in his gut, a physical blow that knocked his breath out. “It’s Adonis, Father,” he corrected gently, bending and taking the King’s trembling hand in his own.
The older man’s skin felt paper-thin and cold, a stark contrast to the strength he had prided himself on.
“Adamos, my son. I knew you would return,” the King murmured again, reaching out to touch Adonis’s face, his eyes lost in a distant memory. “Nothing could take my mighty son. Not the wind, not the mountains, not the sky.”
Adonis felt the sharp sting of heartbreak as his father kept repeating his brother’s name, each utterance a knife twisting deeper into his heart. Apparently, nothing had changed. He swallowed hard, fighting back tears that threatened to spill over.
Tears that spoke to his weakness after all these years. How could he still crave this man’s acknowledgment, a kind word, even a chance to offer a moment’s respite from the horrendous loss they had suffered when it had never been offered before? Hadn’t he hardened his heart enough?
As always, his father didn’t see him, much less need him.
But his refusal to even acknowledge Adonis’s presence—even with festering resentment that the wrong son had died—felt…wrong on a deeper level. Like, his father was present in his body, but in his mind, he was not fully there.
Adonis patted his father’s hand and stormed out of the chamber, confusion warring with anger. Questions pounded at him. How ill was the King? Why hadn’t he been informed?
The nearly half-mile walk did nothing to grant him control of the whirlwind of his roiling emotions. He turned the corner when a woman stepped out of his mother’s chambers, closed the doors behind her, and turned.
Jemima Nasar.
His dead brother’s fiancée. The Almost Queen of Thalassos. The only woman he’d ever wanted with a blazing honesty and burning desire—not to bury his own demons or escape into gluttonous pleasure—but because she fascinated him.
The only woman he had realized soon he shouldn’t touch and couldn’t have.
The smoldering kiss she’d demanded of him before she’d been engaged to his brother had only poured fuel on their connection. The memory of her lush body wrapped around him sent echoes of longing through him even now.
Your freedom and adventure and unfettered spirit, Adonis, she’d boldly claimed when he’d asked her why she’d picked him for her first kiss, using his name before he had given her permission to. Her amber eyes glittering with desire under the mask she wore.In that interview, you said the moment before you dive is when you’re the most afraid and yet you do it. I…can’t imagine being that willing to face life at its scariest.
And he had known then that approaching him had been her most defiant act and he had pulled her to him and sealed their lips. The second kiss had blazed hotter than the first, deepened into a soul-drenching one in mere seconds, the sweet eagerness of her passion stoking his own.
He’d learned only at the end of the masquerade ball when her father came to stand by her that she was Aziz Nasar’s daughter. The dutiful mouse who never put one step out of line, a brainy bookworm whose poise and smarts been praised even by his father the King.
In two minutes, she’d stripped him of all the things that had weighed him down, that had given him a false sense of belonging in the damned world.
Seeing him only as he was.
It was the first, and only, time a woman had wanted him simply for who he was at his core. The only time he’d allowed one actually close, even though he’d glutted himself on women all the time.
That she had been chosen as his brother’s bride, by the King no less, mere days later had only entrenched the memory deeper inside him.
In his mind, she’d become another thing he’d been denied, another chance he’d been robbed of, because he hadn’t been found worthy.
