Phoebe’s eyes sparkled with tears. He felt her indignation. She stroked his side again, her fingers shaking a little.
‘Marta would promise things and then withhold them for no reason. A phone call with Rodrigo that was then taken away because I’d made spelling errors, or the promise of a run after dinner that was removed because I’d slept late. Within a few months, I realised that the more I wanted something, the more she delighted in denying it to me. I learned a lot from her, and I don’t mean in the academic sense.’
A tear slid down Phoebe’s cheek. ‘And after Marta?’
‘Marta I had for several years. She retired and then there was Ines. She employed a combination of techniques to toughen me up, notably taking me into the bush surrounding my palace and leaving me there, telling me to find my own way home.’
Phoebe gasped. ‘You were aprince,’ she pointed out. ‘How dare she? What if something had happened to you?’
‘Mauricio would have been delighted.’
Phoebe ground her teeth. ‘Did you ever see him?’
‘Twice a year I would come back to this palace.’
‘He must have wanted to see you a little, then?’
‘On the contrary, it was written into my parents’ wills.’
Her cheeks flushed with anger. ‘Do you think they knew what he would be like?’
‘No. I don’t think they could have imagined what a cruel and power-hungry man he was. They pitied him, I believe, for his resentment. It made him so small and bitter, and they were bothfar too kind to be able to understand the things he was capable of.’
‘What was it like when you came here?’
‘More of the same. I was assigned to a room far away from where I had once lived, far away from all the rooms that were familiar to me. Mauricio delighted in telling me things about my parents that I know to be false. He would hint that both my father and mother had cheated, that they’d never been one hundred per cent sure I wasn’t a bastard, that he couldn’t see any of my father in me. This, at least, is provably false.’
‘You look so like him,’ Phoebe murmured, scanning his eyes.
‘Yes, and not only that, I have done a DNA test. I didn’t trust Mauricio not to go to the papers with the story. If he did, I wanted to have a counter-argument ready to go.’
Another tear rolled down Phoebe’s cheek. He wiped it with the pad of his thumb.
‘The only good thing about being in the palace was Xiomara.’
Phoebe placed her chin on his chest, eyes still locked to his face.
‘She was here, and she would come to find me, work out how to sneak me away from my nanny. We would run and play and she would bring me food from the kitchen—treats, like I’d enjoyed when my parents were alive. With her, the sun started to shine again. I always paid for it, afterwards, but it was worth it.’
‘Did she get in trouble?’
‘She had her mother to protect her. While her father ruled the kingdom in my name, and also my life for a time, in their family, Mira—my aunt—was in charge, at least of Xiomara. And for Mira, Xiomara could do no wrong,’ he added with an affectionate smile.
‘Then what about you? Surely Mira could have intervened on your behalf? Surely Xiomara told her how miserable you were?’
‘I don’t know if she ever understood the extent of it. My nannies did an excellent job of teaching me to be tough, to rely on no one. To trust no one. Besides, my time with Xiomara was too precious to ruin with complaints.’ He sighed. ‘Also, she was the one person who still treated me like she had before the accident. She’d always looked up to me, seen me as the strong, older cousin. I didn’t want that to change by breaking down to her.’
‘Oh, Octavio,’ she sighed, dropping a kiss to his chest. ‘How absolutely awful.’
‘Yes. It was. But it’s all ancient history now. I am King, and Mauricio will have to live with that.’
She pressed another kiss to his chest; he felt a tear splash down beside where she’d placed her sweet, full lips. ‘Despite all his efforts, you are a good man, Octavio. He must hate that.’
‘He hates everything about me.’
‘Then that’s his mistake, and it’s his loss.’ She looked up at him, and he saw now her cheeks were completely wet with tears.
That was the last thing he’d wanted. He used both palms to wipe them dry.
