Free The Missing Monarch by Rachelle McCalla

mother
soon.
    And Peter would believe her. He had to.
    * * *
    Thaddeus settled back in his seat and turned his face
toward the woman who refused to look back at him.
    His wife.
    Whatever her complaints might have been about his abandoning
her, it seemed as though the years had been good to her. She was still
beautiful,with her dark hair and brown eyes and smile that could melt his
heart. Granted, at this close range he could see the beginnings of the faintest
wrinkles etched into her skin. But they were laugh lines, highlighting the
corners of her eyes and the upward tilt of her mouth, not the dour wrinkles of
pinched lips or furrowed brows.
    Monica had been happy without him, then.The knowledge swirled
in a bittersweet fluttering in his chest. He was glad for her, that she hadn’t
suffered as he had. He was glad she’d known laughter and joy, and had presumably
raised their son with such. But even as he felt comforted knowing she’d found
happiness without him, he wished he could have been a part of it. As those laugh
lines had etched themselves into herface, he wished he could have been standing
beside her, smiling and carefree, as well.
    “It wouldn’t have mattered.” He’d given her question thorough
consideration and reached his conclusion.
    Monica turned to face him. “What?”
    “If I’d known about Peter. It wouldn’t have changed the
situation. At most it would have made it that much more important that I stay
awayfrom you, and you from me, so that nothing like this would happen.”
    “I disagree.” Monica held up her bound hands to stop him from
speaking further. “I don’t think your disappearance actually protected us at
all. They still found me. Octavian has Peter.”
    Thad didn’t like the blame that buttressed her words. He didn’t
like the situation they described, either. “How is itthat Octavian found you?”
he mused aloud.
    “I don’t know.” Monica defended herself as if she’d been
accused of personally giving away the secret. “I didn’t whisper a word to
anyone. My parents don’t even know anything about you. Peter has your picture by
his nightstand, but he only knows you as ‘Daddy.’ He doesn’t know your
name.”
    Thad felt a foreign stirringof emotion as Monica’s words
evoked the image of the blond-haired boy being tucked into bed next to a picture
of his daddy.
    Next to a picture of him .
    “What does he know about me?”
    “Just that the man in the picture is his daddy, that you’ve
gone away for a long time and we don’t know when or if you’re ever coming
back.”
    “Anything else?” Each detail she sharedprickled his heart like
a painful scab being peeled away before the wound was fully healed. But he had
to know what Peter knew. Octavian had the boy, and would soon learn everything
the five-year-old could tell him. Octavian would use any information he could
against them. Thad was certain of that much.
    “Just that—” Monica stopped herself and shook her head.
    “What?”
    “It’s nothing. It’s not important.”
    “ Everything is important. What were
you going to say?”
    Her lower lip quivered, and she seemed to debate whether she
should answer his question. Just when she seemed about to speak, General Marc
Petrela cleared his throat and approached them, standing in the aisle with his
arms crossed over his chest, glowering at them.
    Thad glowered back. Of his father’s three generals, Petrela had
long been the one Thad most respected. He was younger than David Bardici and
Corban Lucca. In fact, Thad realized General Petrela wasn’t much older than he
was. But the man had a lengthy record of service in the Lydian army, having
risen through the ranks on hard work and dependable leadership. He’d kept his
bodyin top military shape, instead of going soft like the other two generals.
On top of that, he was a churchgoing man. Thad recalled seeing him in worship
services for years, back when he was growing up in Lydia’s capitol city of
Sardis.
    As