Page 50 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

“Well, for starters, I didn’t go through with it. If I held myself accountable for everything I thought about doing or almost did, I would be depressed all the time. Oh, is that your problem?”

Diamandis spared Lysias a cool look, but the man only smiled wider. It had eased some of the anger inside of him though. The scheming woman had been caught in time to do no further damage to Katerina.

This time.

“She wished to cause a ruckus. No doubt she will try again.”

“Yes, but if she’s attempting to forge records, it’s likely she knows who the father is and wants no one to know. I know you have men on her, but I can put one of mine on her for the foreseeable future as well, should she seek to find a new target when she realizes this one will not work.”

Diamandis nodded. It was something, and while he could keep one of his own men on the case, Lysias tended to have a staff that was a little bit more...rough around the edges. Which was exactly what he needed.

But this made him think of the doctor, of Marias’s questionable loyalties, the councilmembers he’d had to dismiss—all the men who’d used him in the past under the guise of caring for the Kalyvan crown.

“Am I such a bad judge of character?” Diamandis muttered, not having meant to say it out loud. But the past few months had been a constantly humbling exercise in sifting through all the staff members he thought had been on his side purely because they had been on his father’s.

“You are in a difficult position, Diamandis. People have used the memory of your parents for their own ends, including myself. Anyone who truly knows you doesn’t blame you for this.”

“Perhapssomeoneshould blame me.”

“I think you do that enough all on your own.”

Diamandis had had quite enough of Lysias. He nodded to the door in dismissal. “Thank you. This will indeed protect the Agonas legacy.” Diamandis considered it a dismissal, but Lysias continued to sit there, studying him.

“You wish to protect yourwife, not your legacy.”

“She is the queen of that legacy.”

“Hmm.”

Diamandis stood. He needed no more of Lysias’s poking. He had the information he needed and he would use it to protect his legacy, which just happened to include Katerina. “That will be all, Lysias.”

“Unfortunately, there is one more thing I’d like to discuss with you as a member of the council. Marias isn’t happy.”

“And I am not happy with Marias, so I suppose that makes us even.”

“He’s been spending an inordinate amount of time sucking up to Zandra these past two days, and in ways that make me realize previous overtures since her return might not have been quite so genuine. He claims his reasons are lost time and wishing to see his beloved king’s children supported and happy, but there is something I do not trust about the man.”

“You yourself told me Marias was not one of the people who would have voted against me.”

“Yes, but only because there was no one to replace you. Now that Zandra is confirmed to be the princess, it feels...questionable. Especially considering he doesn’t approve of Katerina.”

“He doesn’t approve ofyou.”

“But he does approve of my bank account.”

Diamandis shook his head. He already had his own doubts about Marias, but how could the man he’d trusted for so long be working against him? “Marias was like a father to me. I would not have succeeded without him.”

“But did he step into that role because he wished to support you, because he loved you like a son, or because it gavehimpower?”

Diamandis could only stand there in silence. His own suspicions had been drowned out by his feelings. By his loyalty to Marias. He had talked himself out of those very questions without ever answering them.

But Lysias voicing them...

“I am an outsider, of course. I have no idea what happened that night aside from what little I saw on my end of it. It is Zandra’s belief that you are the only one who fully knows what happened.”

No, not only him. Marias and him. The secret keepers.For the good of the kingdom. If anyone found out...

Lysias did not take Diamandis’s silence as a hint to leave. He just kept at it. “But Marias’s words and attempt to ingratiate himself with my wife make me wonder if that is true.”

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