Page 19 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

“How are you feeling, Katerina?” Zandra asked as the staff began to serve dinner.

“Well enough. I am very fortunate that I’ve had such an uneventful pregnancy. Twins can often be complicated.”

“It’s hard to imagine that soon enough we will havethreechildren running about the palace.” Zandra smiled broadly. “I don’t remember much of my childhood here, but I remember the feeling of being glad I had so many other children to play with, even if I was much younger. I can’t wait for...”

Diamandis tuned her out. Becauseheremembered. In color. He could hear his brothers’ voices even now. They had loved to play pranks on him—the angrier he got, the more hilarious they had found it.

Their laughter haunted his dreams. As did every cruel word he’d ever uttered to them, thinking himself better—older, more mature, theheir. A person with real responsibilities, while they got toplay.

He could remember Zandra as a little girl. Their mother had given her too much freedom, in Diamandis’s estimation. The girl had always followed him about, and when he’d return her to the children’s wing or tell her that he was busy with important things, she would poke him in the throat.

Hard.

He remembered, too well, taking all of them for granted. Their love, their existence. He assumed Zandra could only bear it because she remembered so little.

And none of the aftermath.

Wasn’t she lucky?

“Diamandis?”

It was Katerina, looking at him like he’d never wanted her to: with a sympathetic kind of understanding, when there was nothing to understand.

Everyone but Zandra had been murdered. The end.

“We will approach the committee as a unit,” he said, not worried about whatever conversation they’d been having that he hadn’t been paying attention to. They were eating together to discuss business. “They will no doubt have some questions and concerns, but we will assuage them all.” He gestured to Lysias. “Thanks to Lysias, we already have an Athenian marriage certificate, dated late last year.”

“I assure you, no one would ever question the validity,” Lysias said, smiling broadly at Katerina. “It’s amazing what money can buy.”

Diamandis endeavored to keep the conversation to subjects like the council and what would happen next, but Zandra somehow kept bringing up children and families. Diamandis forced himself to eat, though everything tasted like ash in his mouth.

He would not think about these things. He would no longer engage in these dinners. This was about the crown, notfamily.

When he was certain Katerina and Zandra had eaten their fill, he signaled the staff to begin taking things away.

“Is everyone finished? We must head down to the throne room. The council should be assembling as we speak.” He did not look at Katerina as he offered her his arm.

This wasn’t about her, or about their children, or about his sister, and most of all not about his childhood.

It was about the throne. It was about lines of succession and making sure nothing tarnished what his father had left him any more than he already had.

When Diamandis held out his hand for her, Katerina only hesitated for a moment before she took it.

It was now or never. If she went along with him to this council meeting, it was all over.

Are you really going through with this?

He led her into the hallway and toward the throne room without question, without hesitation. In his mind, it was already done. That alone should make her balk.

She watched him as he kept his gaze straight ahead, jaw clenched tight as it often was before he faced the council.

She knew she did not have to be by his side—as future queen or former assistant.Shehad the choice here, but...

Her choice had already been made when she came to dinner. It had been the doctor’s visit earlier that had swayed her. Not the royal doctor she’d expected, whom she’d always found a bit aloof, but a woman, maybe in her forties, who had brought along a specialist who was well acquainted with multiple births and high-risk pregnancies.

They had gone over not just where she was at now—heartbeats and everything healthy and as they should be—but what was still to come. How they would care for her and her babies in labor and delivery and address any complications that could come up.

Katerina would never be able to afford such care on her own, and the risks with twins were higher. By leaving the palace, by refusing to be Diamandis’s queen, she was riskingallof their lives.

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