Page 96 of X: Command Me through Alexander’s Eyes

Chapter Thirty-Six

Iwatch Clara wander around my bedroom. She pauses to survey a photo of me with my mother and Sarah. I can’t even recall where it was taken or when. Most of the memories waiting for me in this room feel as though they belong to a different man living a different life.

“She was beautiful.” Clara picks up a photo of Sarah on one of her horses. The photo was taken on the grounds. She must have been fifteen years old. Was that the last time she was here?

“She loved to ride horses,” I share, trying to remember the last time I saw her ride.

“What happened?” she asks softly.

I’ve been waiting for Clara to ask me about the accident since the morning after we slept together the first time. I know all too well how many women will get in bed with a prince to get a peek at the family secrets. But Clara never presses. She waits. She offers. She means it when she says she wants all of me, and she’s willing to wait for me to give myself to her.

I wish I could.

“Clara, I honestly wish I knew.” I hesitate. Why tell her this so near the end? It’s not how I want her to think of me. But part of me feels she has to know this, as though it might help her see why she doesn’t belong in this world. She’s too precious to risk to the reporters and the courtiers and my own flesh and blood. “I remember flashes. That’s why I continued to invite Pepper to events.”

She smiles, not a radiant, bright smile but a small, understanding one. She’s listening.

“I was drinking, and my sister showed up. She was underage, and I yelled at her for being at a bar.” I shake my head. The night is so blurry, even after all these years. I’ve replayed it over and over in my head. Her palm moves to my shoulder. “For some reason, we left. I don’t remember much after that. And what I do remember, I can’t burden you with.”

“Nothing between us, X,” she murmurs. “No secrets.”

No secrets. Sarah is proof there will always be secrets. My family clings to them, especially the ones we keep from ourselves. If we never admit we know the truth, it’s not a lie. It’s how we protect ourselves. It’s how we continue to do our duties.

For some reason, I can’t stop talking about that night, though. I thought it might serve as a warning for her, but now something else is driving my confession—something I don’t understand. “I remember how slippery her blood was on my fingers. She sagged like a rag doll. I remember the heat of the fire as it blazed across my skin, but I couldn’t leave her there, even though I couldn’t carry her. I was so scared that I didn’t even feel the frame of the door in my side. I’d been impaled, but I wouldn’t leave her, so we burned together.”

Clara claps a hand over her mouth, but I hear her sob of horror. “And Pepper?”

“She’d been flung from the car. Broken bones,” I say. “If she remembers more than me, she’s never admitted it.”

“X, what happened was horrible.” She brushes the hair from my forehead, trying to get me to look into her eyes, but I won’t. “But it wasn’t your fault.”

“Why don’t you see the monster when you look at me?” I ask. “Everyone else does.”

“They don’t see you like I do.” She takes a deep breath before plunging forward. “They don’t love you like I—”

“I’m sorry,” I cut her off. “I just need a minute.” I move to the loo, locking the door behind me, and sag against the wall. She’d almost said it. I’m not sure I could let her go if she did. I haven’t heard those words since they died. Not from someone close to me. Someone who knows me. Girls shout it at me on the streets, but behind closed doors, no one loves me, and I love no one. Sarah rarely said it and usually only out of formality. I haven’t truly heard those words from anyone since I was a child.

Clara is wrong. I’m the reason Sarah was there that night. She’d followed me. She had a crush on Jonathan. I should have let her stay. Dance. Have fun. But I demanded we leave, knowing what the papers would say the next morning. I was already fighting with my father about university. I didn’t need any more attention paid to me. Instead, the morning’s papers told a different story—one that changed my life forever.

One that sent me into hell looking for redemption. One that showed me how little anything mattered in the larger scheme of the world. And one that ultimately put me on a collision course with her.

No good came from that night. Its poison taints my family’s blood. Leading me to her was only its finally temptation. Would I damn her soul along with mine?

I can’t.

I will never hold Clara on blood-soaked pavement. I will never dictate her every waking hour to duty and ceremony and all the other bullshit a royal has to deal with. I will never take her freedom to steal joy from this half-life I’ve been born to.

I will let her go.

A low voice floats muffled through the door. My father’s arrived, come to seek me out for another round. I resist the urge to open the door and save her. I can’t do that anymore. Letting him threaten her is the first step in my plan. The only way to save Clara is to break her heart.

I wait for a minute or an hour. It hardly matters. I open the door to hear my father say, “You’re his toy, and when he tires of you, he’ll get a new one. There’s nothing you can do to secure your place in this family.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that I am not looking for marriage?” she asks, her voice pitching up a bit. “Or a place in this family?”

He laughs at her, and my blood runs cold. “All women are looking for marriage, whether they know it or not.”

Clara turns, spotting me in the door. She starts toward me, but I narrow my eyes, lifting the veil to the rage that always simmers just below its surface.