A Royal Wedding(45)

“My mother is the only hero I’m aware of being related to,” Lara threw at him, feeling a desperate, consuming need to defend Marlena. To avenge her. To fight for her, even now, even when she wasn’t sure she believed her story. “But that’s not something a man like you can understand, can you? The plight of a single mother on her own, forced to run from all she knew—”

“Forced?” Adel laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. “You must be joking. The only thing your mother was ever forced to do was face her own failings as a wife. But she could not handle that, and so she ran from the palace with you rather than deal with the consequences of her behavior.” His gaze hardened. “And when I say ‘consequences,’ let me be clear. I am speaking of her admitted infidelity.”

“Don’t you dare speak of her!” Lara cried, rising from her chair without knowing she meant to move. Her hands moved of their own accord, out in front of her as if she meant to strike him. As if she dared. And oh, how she wished she dared! “You know nothing about her, or me! You have no idea what our life was like!”

“No,” he said with a seething sort of impatience, and that hard gaze that seemed to arrow into her very core, “I know what your life should have been. I know what was stolen from you. And from the King. And from your people.” He made an abortive gesture with one hand. “I know that when the country needed you, you—the Crown Princess of Alakkul—were toiling away in some pedestrian job, in some life far beneath your station, acting as if you were nothing more than a run-of-the-mill, anonymous nobody. Instead of who you really are. The last Alakkulian princess. The dawning of a new age for our people. How can you possibly defend the woman who so dishonored you?”

There was a searing kind of silence. As if the whole world hung there between them, changing even as she tried to breathe. Lara could feel her pulse hit hard against her neck, her ribs, her wrists. And between her legs. Just like his voice.

“My mother saved me!” She could not take his words in, could not let them register. She could only remember the stories, so many stories, and the nights her mother had wailed and screamed and cursed, and there had only been Lara to comfort her. Had it all been lies? All of it?

“From what, exactly?” Adel demanded, incredulous, sitting forward in his chair. “Your wealth? Your heritage? Everything that should have been yours? Me? Are you certain she is the hero of this story—and not its villain?”

“I know all about the life I might have led, had I languished in that horrible place,” Lara threw at him. She wanted to hurt him back. To make him pay for saying these things to her, and she did not want to think about why she blamed him. “I thank God every day that my mother saved me from that. From you—a fate worse than death!”

“Says someone who has never faced death,” Adel said smoothly, his voice a dark current that moved over her, through her. That made her feel things she hated—that made her hate herself. Things that made no sense. “Because had you done so, you would not make such naive statements. Did your mother fill your head with this foolishness? That death was preferable to your birthright? To a marriage that at sixteen you wanted desperately?”

“A birthright—a marriage—that would have been nothing but a prison term,” Lara retorted, desperate to strike back at him, to make him as off-balance as she felt, somehow, as some kind of retaliation. Because she could remember, now, that desperate, dazzled yearning for him. Oh, how she had wanted him! It made her even angrier now. “A whole life shut away in a gilded cage—never allowed to think or dream or live. Trained from a girl to be nothing more than a biddable wife, a possession, a thing. The pawn or the prize for men like you. No, thank you.”

“You say things you cannot possibly mean,” Adel said, his voice growing softer, more dangerous. She was reminded, suddenly, that he was a warrior first, a king second. That he had all manner of weapons at his disposal. His head tilted slightly as he regarded her. “When I kissed you, you cried tears of joy. When I took your hands in mine, you trembled. You were sixteen and in love with me, and I remember the truth of what was between us even if you do not. She took that from you, too. And from me.”

“No,” Lara said, her hands in fists at her sides, afraid to let his words penetrate—to let herself remember the things he did. “I was a teenager. I was in love with the idea of love. You were incidental. My mother did us both a favor!”

“There are any number of words I could use to describe your mother, Princess,” Adel said in a deadly tone. The hairs on Lara’s neck stood at attention. “But I will refrain from using them in your presence because they are disrespectful.”