‘You not wanting heirs...is that the reason you held back?’
‘It’s not that I don’t want children, Helia, it’s that I know what kind of life awaits them if I do. I won’t do that.’
‘No, you won’t. Because it’s not in you to be cruel.’
She remembered how good he’d been with the children at the orphanage. Every one of them. Yet he thought he wasn’t good. Helia wouldn’t allow it. She’d noticed that he avoided her question, which meant not having children wasn’t the reason he tried to keep his distance. She considered that maybe this lonely, unloved boy still couldn’t trust anyone to be in his corner. She certainly hadn’t until Vasili came along.
Whatever he thought, Vasili needed love. And lying on his bed, in his arms, Helia vowed that she would be strong enough to love him. Even if it meant he could never return it. Even if she craved hearing the words he might never be able to say, she would love him still.
She was risking her heart, but that already belonged to him. It did scare her that Vasili was the first person she’d admitted to loving since losing her father. If he ever found out how she felt he might decide to abandon her too. But there was absolutely no way she would allow Vasili to feel that he didn’t deserve love or had to earn it.
He was enough, and she would show him. Even though her heart was further fracturing at the thought of how lonely it would be to spend a lifetime in this vortex of unrequited love.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HELIAWALKEDDOWNa golden lit passage. Her dress swished along the marble floors. She barely felt her arm in her husband’s as she reflected on the days and weeks that had followed their first time together. They’d been some of the best and the worst. But each day had started with them wrapped around one another and ended the same way. Each day she’d felt stronger. Settling in her role as Queen.
After the clash with Andreas over the tax bill, things had improved with him as well. Perhaps he was coming to accept how different the new King and Queen were, but Helia didn’t know for sure. What she did know was that since then she had dealt with him with an authority that sometimes felt uncomfortable, but was always fuelled by her pursuit of her goals.
She and Vasili went about their duties, made their appearances together and apart, and worked on their project. They were achieving many of their objectives quickly.
She read a different story about her and Vasili every other day in the media, and they were all greatly positive. The people liked it that she was one of the masses, now a queen.
Yet every day felt harder.
Every day she would love her husband. Show him that she did but never utter the words. Every day that one-sided affection had her growing lonelier. And when she looked to the future all she saw was this path stretching on. Just her and Vasili, stuck in this magical, desolate connection.
Vasili didn’t want children, and she had knowingly agreed to his terms, so that meant she would have no family—ever. No outlet for all the love inside her. No one to want and need her as much as she wanted and needed them.
Helia only realised they had arrived at their destination when she was jerked to a stop.
‘You seem distracted,’ Vasili said.
Helia looked at the shut double doors and shook her head, keeping her every thought well hidden. ‘Just a lot on my mind.’
Of course she would be nervous about the coronation banquet.Vasili thought to himself.
It would be her first interaction with foreign dignitaries. He didn’t want to be here either. His reasons for hating the event hadn’t changed, but he had resigned himself to doing his duty.
Even as he’d walked down the passage with Helia on his arm he’d still been wishing he didn’t have to step through these gilded doors, but this tradition served a purpose.
‘If it helps, think of it less as a celebration and more as an opportunity to meet everyone as King,’ Helia offered.
There would be politics to navigate. Every word more than it seemed. Alliances and threats made with smiles on faces and warm hands to shake.
Vasili hooked a hand around Helia’s nape, pulling her in for a kiss that heated his blood as it always did.
‘I wasn’t prepared to wait.’
Especially when she looked so beautiful. Soft and feminine in a pale blue dress falling in layers of chiffon and tulle that reminded him of flowing water. Her hair was pinned up at the centre of her crown, an heirloom of diamonds and sapphires donned by every queen at the coronation banquet. And on her finger sat his ring.
She placed her hand over his heart, on the gold sash that sat on his black uniform. He thought she looked like the very heart of the Kingdom, and if she was its heart he had to be its immovable pillar of strength.
Helia laughed. ‘You never are.’
‘Ready?’
When she nodded, the doors to the ballroom swung open and in they walked to a room full of splendour. Gold and frescoed walls. Elaborate floral arrangements atop tall pillars. Gentle music flowing from the string quintet.
