Page 51 of Pregnant at the Palace Altar

Diamandis’s head whipped up to glare at Lysias. “What do you mean?”

Lysias stood. “I don’t have details or evidence or information. I have vague suspicions. Just keep in mind, Diamandis, that secrets have more power than the truth ever will. And it has taken some time, and some doing, and your sister’s love, to get to a point where I have forgiven you for the role you played in my parents’ murder. Because you were a boy who had been traumatized, and the adults who should have cared for you instead used the tragedy to seize power.”

Everyone kept talking about how much of a boy he’d been, but the kingdom had expected him to become king. He had been expected to rule. How could everyone now decide he’d beenjust a boy?

“I got rid of everyone who had a hand in the aftermath. Anyone who voted for your parents to be executed without sufficient evidence. No one involved is still in my employ.”

“Are you so certain?” Lysias asked gently.

Gentle enough it felt like a dagger. Because no, he was no longer certain. He just was too torn up to do anything about it. And what kind of king did that make him?

Just like your father. Who will die this time?

“As I said, I do not have any proof, but I could get it,” Lysias said carefully. “With your permission.”

“And without it?”

“I would not stick my nose into it. As long as there seems to be no danger to my wife. It is not my goal to upend your life, to discover if Marias is an enemy, unless you want answers.”

Diamandis tried to keep his breathing even, tried to work through all that roiled through him. He didn’t want to poke into it. He wanted to tell Lysias to forget all this foolishness. Marias had been good, had gotten him this far. Secrets weren’t powerful. They werenecessary.

But it was as if Katerina were here beside him because he knew what her advice would be. What she would tell him to do.

Shehad never trusted Marias.

“You have my permission.”

Katerina had spent some time after her mother’s appearance wallowing. It turned out that wallowing as a queen was quite nice. People waited on you. You didn’t need to get out of bed in order to eat your weight in cookies. If you said you didn’t want to do anything, you didn’t have to do anything except sit in a cocoon of blankets and pillows and feel sorry for yourself.

But she couldn’t indulge herself for long. She was too used todoing. Restlessness pushed her out of bed and in search of work. Stelios was far too competent an assistant to leave her much to do, so she’d cornered Tomás and commandeered some ofhisassignments.

She didn’t think Diamandis would approve, exactly, but he had made himself scarce after her emotional breakdown and who could blame him? She’d likely be able to do some work to help out Tomás without Diamandis ever—

“Your Highness? The king,” one of her maids said at the door.

Well,thatfigured.

Diamandis strode into the little sitting room where she’d been doing her work. He frowned at the tablet in front of her. “What are you working on?”

“Well, I needed to occupy my mind with something, and Tomás left your appointment log in such a mess that I took it upon myself to fix it.”

“You are not my assistant any longer,” he said, though not as disapprovingly as she might have expected.

She turned in the chair and gave him an arch look. “I am better than Tomás.”

“A tree would be better than Tomás.”

Katerina shook her head, trying not to smile. “Why do you keep him around?”

“I have not had time to hire a new assistant. No one compares to you, Katerina.”

His words shouldn’t please her as much as they did. “I could still handlesomeof my old duties. Obviously it wouldn’t do for the queen to answer phones or deal with dry cleaning, but I could handle some things. I could certainly attempt to train the young man.”

“Soon you will have enough to handle,” he said, nodding toward her stomach.

She looked down at it, placing her hand over the bump. “Yes, I suppose.” She rubbed at the little twinge she felt there, and then looked at her husband. “I haven’t seen much of you.”

He sighed. “I tasked Lysias with tracking your mother’s activities to see if she’s been up to anything, and it appears Lysias discovered that she was attempting to forge a test that would prove you were Thropos’s daughter, but it is not true.”

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