Page 49 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

She didn’t think that was true, but even if it was... “Not me, Diamandis. Never me.”

His eyes searched her face, and she held very still. She wanted this to be the moment he gave in. She wanted it to be the moment he understood what they could have if he’d only let his past go.

But she also knew, based on her reaction to her mother, that she had not let her own past go. So who was she to hope the same for him when his past was all the more traumatic?

“Why do you always seek to absolve me, Katerina? Even before, when you were my assistant. I am an arrogant, inflexible ogre, but you have always insisted I am better than I really am.”

“You are a bit of an ogre,” she agreed, chuckling when he glared at her. “And underneath all those quirks, I suppose, is a man who guards a soft heart because of a tragedy that marks him still. I absolve you because I know where these behaviors come from, and I know you could do better if you could realize that those past mistakes don’t define you. I love the man you are, Diamandis, regardless of those things you think make your heart black.”

“There are things I have done that you do not know about, that no amount of love can absolve.”

She knew this. She knew that there were things, things from the night of the coup, that he held on to. Secrets he wished to take to the grave. Secrets that it would change him to confess. “Tell me,” she whispered, desperate to be the one who got through to him.

But whatever moment she thought they might have dissolved before her eyes. His gaze went very blank. He brushed a kiss over her forehead, but there was no real warmth to it. Maybe kindness, but not love.

He gently pressed her into the pillow as he stood. “Rest, my queen. I will handle everything with your mother.”

No one had ever said these words to her before. She looked at him, wishing it were that easy. Wishing she could believe him. Wishing...

He had comforted her. He had held her while she cried. When she thought he would have turned away or scolded her for such a foolish emotional outburst.

He’d absolved her too.

And if they could give each other that, maybe there was hope for them even in the shadow of her mother’s accusations.

But only if Diamandis put down his heavy burdens, and that seemed even less likely than getting rid of her mother for good.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DIAMANDISIGNOREDMESSAGESfrom Marias over the next few days. Though most of them were apologetic, Diamandis had no time to decide how he felt about his adviser. About the things changing inside of him.

He had only one concern: to find a way to keep Ghavriella Floros away from Katerina for the rest of her days, regardless of the veracity of her claims.

So he consulted a man he knew could outmaneuver an operator like Ghavriella and was relieved when not two days later Lysias came to him with answers.

“It pays to have a billionaire for a brother-in-law,” Lysias said, not waiting for Diamandis’s ever-missing assistant to announce him.

Diamandis looked up from his desk as Lysias sauntered in. Though Lysias was irreverent and obnoxious within the palace walls, he could be counted on to act with decorum in public, and Diamandis was learning to accept this.

Slowly.

“I should hope so,” Diamandis returned, which caused Lysias to chuckle as he lowered himself onto the chair opposite Diamandis’s desk.

“Ghavriella and I have a friend in common—your former royal doctor.”

Diamandis scowled. The former royal doctor had been prepared to falsify Zandra’s DNA results for Lysias and had consequently been relieved of his position.

“It appears they both met with Thropos in the prison in Athensafterthe wedding. I leaned on the good doctor a bit and he admitted Ghavriella was attempting to forge your wife’s paternity—something Thropos was willing to be in on, hoping it might gain him some measure of clemency.”

Something dark and hot welled up inside Diamandis. It was an old feeling of betrayal he often tried to squelch with ice lest it get...out of hand. His hand curled in a fist as he tried to manage his temper. “Did she really think she’d get away with this?”

“I don’t see why not. It’s not so difficult, particularly if the person you’re doing it to doesn’t know what you’re up to. I had once planned to forge Zandra’s paternity. I would most certainly have gotten away with it.”

“You say that with such ease, as if you don’t feel guilty in the least.”

Lysias shrugged as if the betrayal he’d almost enacted mattered not at all. “I don’t.”

Diamandis would never understand the man who had once been as close as a brother and was now his actual brother-in-law. “Why not?”

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