Back in the limo, on their way to the embassy, the fire in her, the light, had been extinguished. He couldn’t tie her to a life of duty. He couldn’t—no, wouldn’t—make her live a life of sacrifice for a country that wasn’t even hers. He knew how heavy the bonds of those chains were, and the only thing he’d succeeded in doing tonight was looping them around her too.
So he would give her the only thing he could give her. He would give her freedom. Even if she hated him for it.
‘Get out,’ he commanded, unconsciously echoing the words he’d said to her six months ago. ‘Leave.’
He closed his eyes against the hurt he could see in her own.
‘You’re right,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone. Our marriage will be annulled. We will be divorced. Whatever it takes. I’ll be free to make a marriage with someone who understands what it takes to be a queen. Someone who can bring something to Farrehed other than selfish demands of love.’
He hated himself more and more. Every word dripped poison into his veins and hers. Every word was designed to make her leave. Every word—as hateful as they were—was a way for him to love her. To protect her from a life that would surely be her undoing.
Her face drained of colour and her eyes glittered in the dim lighting of the room. But still she remained determined.
He couldn’t take another word falling from that lovely mouth of hers. He didn’t think he would survive it.
‘Get out!’ he roared.
CHAPTER TWELVE
August 2nd, 07.00-08.00, Farrehed Embassy
THE BEAT OF Odir’s pulse pounded within his head. Ripples shivered over his skin, through his body, over his mind and covered his heart. He was alone. Eloise had left. He didn’t remember seeing her go. She must have slipped out while he’d had his eyes closed.
The banging came again, and Odir wondered if it wasn’t his pulse after all. He didn’t want to see anyone. Not like this. The pain he was feeling was nothing like he’d ever felt before. If this was what love was then he’d been right to avoid it for so long. He felt it like a punch to his gut, stealing his breath and causing agony to radiate around his body. Shock. He thought he might actually be in shock.
The banging came once more and finally, without waiting for his approval, the door swung open into the room and Jarhan stormed in.
‘Where is Eloise?’ he demanded.
Odir almost laughed. His brother had not spoken to him in such a way since they were teenagers.
‘Gone.’
That one simple word finally put a name to the thing that had happened. That he’d made happen.
‘Gone?’ his brother queried.
‘Gone.’
‘Is that all you can say? What the hell happened?’ Jarhan asked, casting his gaze around the room.
He stalked towards Odir in one easy movement and grabbed him by the shirt.
‘What did you do to her?’ he demanded, but the fury in his eyes was nothing compared to what Odir was feeling at that moment.
It struck Odir that just hours ago he would have taken his brother’s behaviour to be jealousy, but it wasn’t. It was love. Where yesterday he would have seen the lack of it, the absence of it as something that satisfied him, he now saw it all around him.
Jarhan’s features changed at Odir’s lack of response. ‘You do know that nothing happened—?’
Odir seized the change in their conversation as a distraction, to protect his mind and his heart from thoughts of Eloise. Instead, he dragged forth feelings and emotions about his brother—reactions and thoughts he’d kept at bay for hours now.
‘Why did you not tell me? I would have been there for you, Jarhan. I would have helped you in any way I could.’
Incredulity and anger shone in his words and Odir didn’t care—he didn’t care that his words betrayed his feelings. If tonight had shown him anything, it was that secrets and lies only destroyed.
‘What could you have done?’ his brother asked, removing his hands from Odir’s shirt and shrugging in a helpless way that broke his heart even more. ‘Would you have told the people of Farrehed? Would you have told our father? Torn our country apart because of your loyalty to me? Or would you have been forced to ask me to keep it a secret? To ask me to be something I am not?’ Jarhan stepped away and turned his back to Odir. ‘I could never put you in that position.’
‘Because you didn’t trust me to make the right decision?’ Odir asked, terrified of his brother’s answer.
‘No,’ Jarhan said, turning back to face him. ‘Not at all. I know what decision you would have made. You would have stood by me and watched our country burn. Watched everything you had ever wanted for Farrehed go up in smoke because you love me.’
And there it was—simply said and simply accepted. This love that Odir had fought so hard against ever since the loss of his mother, ever since the change in his father. Despite all that had befallen them, his younger brother had not been tainted with that same despair.
‘There may be a time in the future,’ Jarhan continued, ‘when what I am—who I am—will be accepted by our country. But not whilst our father sat on the throne and certainly not right now. And that is my sacrifice to make. That is my duty, my cross to bear. Not yours.’
Odir threw a curse out into the room. He had been so arrogant, so consumed with the need to protect the people of Farrehed from his father’s wilful neglect, selfishness and paranoia, that he’d thought all the weight of that duty had fallen solely on his shoulders. He hadn’t even seen how his brother had made his own sacrifices for duty, how he’d borne it on his shoulders too. How strongly he’d carried it.
Odir forced
