The Queen's New Year Secret

“I know I haven’t been married very long...”

“A week, Andres. If you begin handing out marital advice before the ink is dry on your license, I will reopen the dungeons just for you.”

“Perhaps if you’d opened the dungeons for Tabitha she wouldn’t have left you.”

“I am not going to keep my own wife prisoner.” But dear God, it was tempting.

Andres arched a brow. “That isn’t what I meant.”

Heat streaked along Kairos’s veins, and he thought again of that last night here in his office. Of the way she’d felt in his arms. His cool ice queen suddenly transformed into a living flame...

I hate you.

“We do not have that sort of relationship,” Kairos said, his voice stiff.

Andres chuckled, the sound grating against Kairos’s nerves. “Maybe that’s your problem.”

“Everything is not about sex.”

Andres shrugged. “It absolutely is. But you may cling to your illusions if you must.”

“What do you want, Andres?”

“To see if you’re okay.”

He spread his arms wide. “Am I dead and buried?”

His brother arched a brow. “No. But your wife is gone.”

Kairos gritted his teeth. “And?”

“Do you intend to get a new one?”

He would have to. There was no other alternative. Though the prospect filled him with nothing but dread. Still, even now, he wanted no one else. No one but Tabitha.

And now that he’d tasted the heat that had always shimmered between them as a tantalizing promise, never before fulfilled...

Forgetting her would not be so easy.

“I do not want a new one,” he said.

“Then you have to go and claim the old one, I suppose.”

Kairos offered his brother a glare. “Worry about your life, I’ll worry about mine.” He paused for a moment, staring again at that pile of broken glass. The only thing that remained of his marriage. “I will not hold her prisoner. If Tabitha wants a divorce, she can have her damn divorce.”

* * *

Tabitha hadn’t seen Kairos in four weeks. Four weeks of staring at blank spaces, eyes dry, unable to find any tears. She hadn’t cried. Not since that single tear had fallen in his office. Not since she’d told him how much she hated him—and meant it—with every piece of herself. She had not cried.

Why would you cry for a husband that you hated? Why would you cry for a husband who felt nothing for you?

It made no sense. And so, she hadn’t cried. Tabitha was nothing if not sensible. Even when she came to divorce, it seemed.

She was slightly less sensible when it came to other things. Which was why it had taken her a full week of being late for her to make her way to the doctor. She had no choice but to use the doctor she had always used. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to be at risk by going to a doctor who was employed by the royal family. But her only other alternative was going to one she had no relationship with. One she had no trust in at all. News of her and Kairos’s divorce had already hit the papers, and it was headline news. If she went to an ob-gyn now, everything would explode. She couldn’t risk it. So she was risking this. She swallowed hard, her hands shaking as she sat on the exam table. Her blood had already been drawn, and now she was just waiting for the results.

She had waited so long to come to the doctor because she was often late. Her period never started on time. For years upon years every time she had been late she’d held out hope. Hope that this time it wasn’t just her cycle being fickle. Hope that it might actually be a baby.

It was never a baby. Never.

But it had been a full week, and still nothing. And she couldn’t overlook the fact that she and Kairos had had unprotected sex.

Nothing unusual there, though. They always had. For five years they’d had unprotected sex, and there had been no baby. The universe was not that cruel. How could God ignore her prayers for five long years, and answer them at the worst possible moment?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

For the first time, when the doctor walked back into the room, her expression unreadable, Tabitha hoped for the no. She needed it. Needed to hear that the test was negative.

She knew now that she couldn’t live with Kairos. It was confirmed. She couldn’t make it work with him. He didn’t care for her. And she...she felt far too much for him. She could not live like that. She simply couldn’t.

“Queen Tabitha,” Dr. Anderson said, her words slow. “I had hoped that King Kairos might have accompanied you today.”

“If you read the paper at all, then you know that he and I are going through a divorce. I saw no reason to include him in this visit.” The doctor looked down and Tabitha’s stomach sank. A no was an easy answer to give. A no certainly didn’t require Kairos’s presence.

“Yes, I do know about the divorce,” the doctor said. “All members of royal staff had been briefed, of course.”

“Then you know why he isn’t here.”

“Forgive me for asking, my queen,” the doctor said. “But if you are in fact carrying a child, is it his?”

“If I am? You’ve seen the test results. Don’t play this game with me. Do not play games with me. I’ve had enough.”

“It’s just that...”

“This is my test. It has nothing to do with him. My entire life does not revolve around him.” Tabitha knew she was beginning to get a bit hysterical. “I left him. I left him so that he wasn’t at the center of everything I did. We don’t need to bring him into this.”

“The test is positive, my queen. I feel that under other circumstances congratulations would be in order,” Dr. Anderson said, her tone void of expression.

Before this, before the divorce proceedings, Dr. Anderson had always been friendly, warm. She was decidedly cool now.

A King Kairos loyalist, clearly. But Dr. Anderson didn’t have to live with him.

“Oh.” Tabitha felt light-headed. She felt like she was going to collapse. She was thankful for the table she was seated on. Had she been standing, she would have slipped from consciousness immediately.

“Based on the dates you have given me I would estimate that you are...”

“I know exactly how far along I am,” Tabitha said.

Flashes of that night burst into her mind’s eye. Kairos putting her up on the desk, thrusting into her hard and fast. Spilling himself inside of her as they both lost themselves to their pleasure. Yes, there was no doubt in her mind as to when she had conceived. January 1.