Carrying the King's Pride(28)

A play of emotion crossed the king’s face. Greed, another hefty dose of skepticism and...interest. “It’s an intriguing proposition.”

“New sources of income are the answer, Idas.” Nik drilled his point home. “Not an unpopular war.”

A silence followed. “We will need some time to consider it.”

“You will have it. If you give me your word you will not act militarily upon Akathinia during the time of these negotiations.”

The king stood up and walked to the French doors. When he turned around after a lengthy silence, Nik knew he had won.

They shook hands. Nik walked out of the palace into the bright sunshine and on to the waiting helicopter. He wasn’t stupid enough to think the threat of Idas had been neutralized. But it was a start. A very real success he could take to his critics, to the people, and move forward with.

He drew in a breath as the sleek black bird rose straight into the air. For the first time in weeks he felt as if he could breathe.

The palace, surrounded by the mountainous Carnelian countryside, faded to a mere blip on the ground as the helicopter rose high in the sky. He sat back in his seat and turned his thoughts to his fiancée. His other persistent problem he couldn’t seem to fix. She should have been neutralized as an issue when she’d agreed to marry him. When his heir had been secured. Instead her insistence she hadn’t planned her pregnancy, her demand he trust her was an impasse they couldn’t seem to get past.

He agreed it was out of character for her to have done it. For the vastly independent Sofía he’d known in New York to get pregnant to keep a man. Nor was she acting like a woman who’d gotten everything she’d wanted. She was acting the opposite—as if she was the trapped one. Which made him wonder if it had simply been an error in judgment on her part. An impulse she regretted. Sofía reaching for the money and security she’d never had. Perhaps she hadn’t even realized what she’d been doing?

Or he could be wrong. Sofía could be telling the truth. The medication may have affected the efficacy of her birth control pills. But allowing himself to believe that, that she was that honest, different woman he hadn’t been quite ready to let go of in New York wasn’t an alternative he could allow himself to consider. He wouldn’t be made a fool of a second time. Not when his last mistake with a woman had produced a scandal that had rocked his family. Not when now, of all times, his head had to be clear, something it evidently hadn’t been up until now.

What they needed, he decided, was a fresh start. With neither of them bearing any axes to grind. Which, he conceded, involved developing a healthy relationship between them as Sofía had said. Which he could do. He liked her. He admired her strength—the survivor in her. He appreciated her vulnerability—her soft underside that would make her a great mother. They had been good together in New York. If they could both move on from this, they could make a great team.

Tonight, he decided grimly, he was solving this impasse.

The helicopter banked and followed the coast, bound for Akathinia. An impulse took hold. He leaned forward and shouted an instruction to the pilot. The pilot nodded and changed direction. Fifteen minutes later, they landed on a flat patch of green halfway up the southern Carnelian mountain range.

Nik stepped out of the helicopter, walked across the field and hiked the half mile down to the treacherous, winding road that dropped away to the pounding rocks and surf below.

The site of his brother’s accident was marked by the masses of flowers that lay at the side of the road, once a vibrant burst of color, now withering and dying.

Soon they would disintegrate into nothing.

For the first time since he’d been informed of the accident in that mind-numbing conversation with Abram, he acknowledged his brother wasn’t coming back. Wasn’t ever coming back. That this all hadn’t been the horrific nightmare he’d wanted it to be. Just because they hadn’t managed to find his brother’s body when they’d pulled the car from the sea didn’t mean he wasn’t gone.

Hot tears slipped down his cheeks, scalding in the whip of the wind. You need to give yourself permission to grieve. He hadn’t done that. Just as he’d suspected, it was a dark tunnel he had no desire to travel through.

Athamos smiling that wicked grin of his at him as they’d cut the sails in the America’s Cup and declared victory for Akathinia. His brother’s fierce countenance when they’d fought tooth and nail over their beliefs. His big grin when they’d made their peace with one another.

It was lost to him now. There wasn’t any time left to tell him how he’d truly felt. To mend the fences that had risen between them. To ask his brother what the hell he’d been doing in that car racing Kostas that night. Answers he would never have. Answers he would have given anything to have.