Carrying The King's Pride

She left before the conversation could drag on into something painful and awkward. Carlos was waiting for her downstairs, that same pleasant smile fixed on his face as had been there earlier. She slid into the back of the car, unable to summon a smile in return, and rested her head against the back of the seat as Carlos climbed in and set the car into motion.

A raw, achy feeling invaded her. She wrapped her arms around her chest to ward it off. She’d lied to Nik upstairs, perhaps to save face. Because if this was what taking risks felt like, she didn’t need them in her life. She’d rather feel empty than feel any more pain.

* * *

Fully awake and unable to sleep after Sofía left, Nik pulled on shorts and a faded Harvard T-shirt and took a glass of Prosecco into the salon.

Ending things with Sofía had been the right thing to do. She had been starting to get attached. He could see the signs; they were unmistakable for a man who’d spent his life avoiding commitment. And perhaps he’d already let it go on for too long, because hadn’t he always known Sofía was different from the rest of the sycophants he’d dated? Tough with a vulnerable underside... Content to keep their affair between the two of them because she didn’t care about the rest.

Content to keep it uncomplicated. And yet tonight it had gotten complicated. He had hurt her.

His insides twisted. His rule never to allow a woman too close, to trust anyone in his position, was based on experience. He was a target for fame seekers, for those who sought to use him to further their own agendas. Charlotte, his ex-girlfriend, who’d sold her story to the tabloids and almost destroyed his family’s reputation was a prime example.

Not that he put Sofía in that category. She was different. He had trusted her. He thought, perhaps, he was more angry than anything. Angry she’d broken things off first. Angry because he’d thought their relationship still had legs—the sexual part of it that is. It was the first time a woman had initiated an end to a mutually beneficial relationship. He couldn’t deny it stung.

A wry smile curved his lips. Perhaps he’d had that one coming for a long time.

He pulled out his laptop, deciding to work through a few emails he’d left earlier to attend the event. His personal aide, Abram, who must have seen the light, knocked and entered from the adjoining staff quarters.

Equal parts friend, butler and highly trained fixer, Abram was sometimes dour, frequently circumspect, but never flustered. And yet, right now, in the heart of the Manhattan night, he looked distinctly agitated.

“What is it now?” Nik asked. “Don’t tell me—King Idas has somehow managed to put my brother’s nose out of joint with yet another expulsion of hot air.”

Abram fixed his faded green gaze on him. The tumultuous light he saw there made his heart skip a beat. “Crown Prince Athamos has been in an accident, Your Highness. He is dead.”

The room dissolved around him. He rested a palm against the sofa, his head spinning. “An accident,” he repeated. “It’s not possible. I just spoke with Athamos last night.”

Abram dipped his head. “I’m so sorry, sir. It happened last evening in Carnelia. It’s taken time to verify the reports.”

His blood turned to ice. His mind raced as he attempted to process what his aide had just told him. His brother had been raging about Akathinia’s overly amorous suitor last night, its sister island Carnelia and its king, Idas, who wanted to annex Akathinia back into the Catharian Islands to which it had once belonged over a century ago. Insanity in this age of democracy, but there were enough examples around the world to put everyone on edge.

Nik had talked his brother off the ledge. What the hell had happened after that?

“What was he doing in Carnelia?”

“The facts are thin at the moment. There was an argument of some sort over a woman. Prince Athamos and Crown Prince Kostas of Carnelia decided to settle it with a car race through the mountains, the same route the ancient horse race used to take.” His aide paused. “An onlooker said Prince Athamos took a curve too steeply. His car plunged off the cliff and into the ocean.”

An argument? Over a woman? His brother was as levelheaded as Nik was passionate and reckless. And yet he had gotten into his car and raced his arch nemesis through the suicidal cliffs of Carnelia? His enemy’s domain? A man known to have as much fire in his veins as his hotheaded, tyrannical father...

He worked to free his throat from the paralysis that claimed it. “Are they sure...?”

“That he is dead?” Abram nodded. “I’m sorry, sir. Witnesses say there is no possibility a man could have emerged alive from that drop. They are working to recover his body now.”

“And Kostas,” Nik grated. “He survived?”

Abram nodded. “He was a car length behind. He saw the whole thing happen.”

A red rage blurred his vision, mixing with the agony that gripped his insides to form a deadly, potent storm. He got up and walked blindly to the windows, the spectacular skyline of Manhattan unfolding in front of him.

All he could see was red.

The clink of crystal sounded behind him. Abram came to stand beside him and pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand. Nik raised it to his mouth and took a long swig. When he had emptied half the glass, his aide cleared his throat. “There is more.”

More? How could there be more?

“Your father took the news of the accident badly. He has suffered a severe heart attack. The doctors are holding out hope he will survive, but it’s touch and go.”

A complete sense of unreality enveloped him. His fingers gripped the glass tighter. “What is his condition?”

“He is in surgery now. We’ll know more in a few hours.”

He lifted the tumbler to his lips with a jerky movement and downed another long swallow. The fire the potent liquor lit in his insides wasn’t enough to make the reality of losing both his father and his brother in one day in any way conceivable. His father was too strong, too vigorous to let such a thing fell him. It could not happen. Not when their estrangement ate at his insides like a slow-moving disease.

He flicked a look at his aide. “The jet is ready?”

Abram nodded. “Carlos is waiting downstairs to drive you to the airfield. I thought you might want to gather some things. I will stay behind and take care of the outstanding details, cancel your commitments, then join you in Akathinia.”

Nik nodded. Abram melted into the shadows.

Alone at the window, Nik looked out at Manhattan sprawled in front of him, his brother’s voice, crystal clear on the phone the night before, filling his head. Athamos had sounded vital, belligerent. Alive. Despite the different philosophical viewpoints he and his brother had held, despite the wedges that had been driven between them in the past few years as Athamos had prepared to take over from his father as king, they had loved each other deeply.

It was inconceivable he was dead.

The sense of unreality blanketing him thickened into a dark fog with only one thought breaking through. He was now heir to the throne. He would be king.

It was a role he had never expected to have, never wanted. He had been happy to allow Athamos to take the spotlight while he did his part in New York to make Akathinia the thriving, successful nation that it was. Happy to keep his distance from the wounds of the past.

But fate had other plans for him and his brother...

Sorrow and rage gripped his heart, engulfing him like the inescapable gale force winds of the meltemia that ravaged the Akathinian shores without warning or mercy. His hand tightened around the glass as the storm swept over him, immersing him in its turbulent fury until all he could see was red.

Abram’s horrified gasp split the air. He followed his aide’s gaze down to his bleeding hand, the shattered remains of the glass strewn across the carpet. The dark splatter that seeped into the plush cream carpet seemed like the stain on his heart that would never be removed.

* * *

Nik reached his father’s bedside at noon the following day. Exhausted from an overnight trip during which he hadn’t slept, worry for his father consuming him, he pulled a chair up to the king’s bedside in the sterilized white hospital room and closed the fingers of his unbandaged hand around his father’s gnarled, wrinkled one.

The king’s shock of white hair contrasted vividly with his olive skin, but his complexion was far too pale for Nik’s liking.

“Pateras.”

Light blue eyes, identical to his own, opened to focus on him.

“Nikandros.”

He squeezed his father’s hand as the king opened his mouth and then closed it. A tear escaped his father’s eyes and slid down his weathered cheek. The weight of a thousand disagreements, a thousand regrets crowded Nik’s heart.

He bent and pressed his lips to his father’s leathery cheek. “I know.”