‘Your father was oldest?’ she asked, then realised how silly that question was, because of course Octavio’s father, who’d been King before Octavio, had been the oldest. ‘Never mind. Dumb question.’
‘Not so dumb, actually,’ Octavio said. ‘My father was older, yes, but by only a few minutes.’
‘They were twins,’ she said on an exhalation, something prickling her spine—a sense of history repeating itself. She pressed a hand to her own stomach, as if she could communicate with the babies there.
Octavio nodded, turning back to face her, coffee cup clasped in one strong, tanned hand. ‘All his life, Mauricio resented my father for something which he could not control. My father had been born first. By the law of the land, he was therefore the heir to the throne.’
She winced. ‘That must have been hard, for everyone.’
‘Yes and no. My father didn’t have a resentful bone in his body. He was naturally very good at things. Sport, academics, he was well-liked, popular. Power came easy to him. Even without his title, his command was apparent.’
‘Sounds like someone else I know,’ she said, with sincerity.
Octavio’s smile was automatic, almost dismissive. She wondered if he recognised the truth of her words.
‘I think generally, twins are quite close. Almost codependent. The same could not be said for my father and Mauricio. For every accomplishment my father enjoyed, Mauricio seemed to act as though he was being robbed.’
‘How do you know this?’
Octavio rubbed a hand over his jaw. ‘Things I heard as a boy, things I’ve learned since, things I’ve read—quotes that Mauricio stupidly gave to journalists when he was in a fit of pique.’
‘Why then would your parents nominate him to serve as your Regent?’
‘They had no choice. It’s enshrined in the constitution.’
‘Right, I think I was taught that.’
Her mind had become hazy with all the lessons she’d consumed between getting engaged to Octavio and marrying him. ‘Just the essentials,’ her tutors had assured her. It hadn’t felt at all essential to Phoebe to learn the obscure laws of Castilona, at least not in order to get married, but she’d sat there and paid attention. Mostly.
‘Obviously they had no thought of dying. They were young, both in excellent health. Their deaths couldn’t have been foreseen.’
‘It was a car accident, wasn’t it?’
He nodded, but slowly, like he was buried in deep thought. ‘They were overseas, for work. Their trip took them to a remote village high on a mountain, where they intended to tour a school. Rain had been forecast, but it turned into a flash flood. Their car was caught in a deluge and pushed off the edge of the cliff.’
She shuddered. It was awful. Truly awful. ‘Octavio.’ She reached across for his hand, tears sparkling on her lashes. Pregnancy hormones regularly pulled at her emotions, but this was more than that.
‘I know,’ he said, and something morphed in her body—a sense that they understood one another’s deepest thoughts and needs without words. It was a closeness she’d never felt before. But how ridiculous, a voice in her head chastised. They werenotclose. Not in any way but the physical. They were virtual strangers, still dancing around, getting to know one another gradually. Weren’t they?
She’dknownChristopher. Known him for years, but never really understood him. She’d thought she could trust him with her life, and he’d betrayed her. Knowing someone was a fallacy.
She couldn’t wrestle with the conundrum a moment longer because Octavio was talking again, almost as if the floodgateshad been opened and he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—close them.
‘I remember the day I heard so clearly. Everything about it is burned into my memory. Where I was, the light, the sound of Rodrigo’s voice, when he came to tell me. He had been crying—which was unusual for him. He tried to hide it from me, but I could tell by the way his eyes were puffy and his voice raw. He sat me on his lap and held me close and explained to me that my parents were gone but that they would always love me. He told me that not only would my mother and I always have the stars, but she was now amongst them, so all I had to do was look up and see them sparkle and know that she was thinking of me.’ He grimaced. ‘I was nine—he was doing his best to be age-appropriate.’
‘It sounds like he did a good job to me.’ She dashed at her eyes, forestalling the tears that were threatening.
‘From then, it was a whirlwind of change. Mauricio was quickly announced as Regent, ruling in my name until my twenty-eighth birthday.’
‘Why so old? Why not eighteen or twenty-one, or even twenty-five?’
‘Tradition. A tradition that had not, until me, been tested. It was an arbitrary number, decided upon several generations ago. I’m the first monarch to have been held powerless until that age because of the law.’
She sipped her coffee, a hand on her stomach on autopilot. ‘You don’t feel Mauricio did a good job?’
‘I know he didn’t,’ Octavio said, his voice like steel. ‘Everything Mauricio did was about consolidating his own power. I am still not convinced that he wasn’t moving the pieces into place to stage a coup, closer to my coronation.’
She gasped.
