Free King's Ransom by Amelia Autin

passion.
    But she could never forgive him for being something other than the man she’d thought she’d loved...eleven years ago. For making her weep bitter tears until every shred of the warmth, love and trust she’d possessed at eighteen had been slain, replaced with cold, cynical suspicion.
    Maybe he did you a favor,
she told herself now. If he hadn’t already inoculated her against love, could she have survived in Hollywood? If she hadn’t already experienced those devastating emotional wounds he’d inflicted on her, could she have portrayed them so believably on the silver screen, especially in the early stages of her career?
    She didn’t know. But one thing she did know. She would have traded every acting award she’d ever won, every glowing review from the critics, every box office success, if she could take back one night. Because if that night had never happened, if she hadn’t believed herself loved the way legend claimed the first Andre Alexei had loved his Eleonora, then there would never have been the betrayal that destroyed her for any other man. She would never love again because love required trust. And trust was dead in her.
    She pulled herself from Andre’s arms. “No,” she said, the ice in her veins bleeding into her voice. “I will never forgive you.”
    He drew back and his face hardened at her cold, unforgiving tone. “Go, then. I will not keep you against your will.” When she hesitated, he said forcefully, “Go! Go before I change my mind.”
    She walked away quickly then, back toward the cemetery entrance. But when she reached the point where the path veered she turned around for one last glance at Andre. She told herself not to, but she couldn’t help it. He wasn’t watching her as she had suspected. Instead he was kneeling on one knee in front of the tomb, a hand braced against it in an attitude of...dejection? She couldn’t swear to it, not from this distance, but it looked as if his eyes were closed and his lips were moving. As if he were praying.
    It was an intensely personal moment, and she felt guilty, as if she’d walked into someone else’s confessional. She looked away before he could catch her at it and hurried toward the gate, her emotions swirling in confusion. She smiled at the wizened gatekeeper and thanked him in Zakharan, waiting for him to let her out. He responded with a flurry of words too quick and colloquial for her ears, and she shook her head at him, puzzled.
    â€œThe king, he comes after you, yes?” he said, still in Zakharan but slowly, distinctly. Juliana nodded reluctantly. “He tells me to bar the gate, to let no one else in. But he says nothing about your departure.” He took a large key from his pocket and stared from it to Juliana, obviously uncertain what to do.
    â€œI don’t think he meant for you to keep me a prisoner,” she told the man, but he stubbornly refused to unlock the ancient gate.
    Frustrated, Juliana knew she had two choices. She could go back and fetch Andre, or she could wait here for him to show up. Neither choice was palatable. She didn’t want another encounter with Andre, not now. Not anytime soon. She wanted to go somewhere to lick her wounds in private. She wanted to rebuild her walls against him, the walls that had been shaken by the sight of him praying at the tomb. She didn’t want to think of him as a mortal man, she realized. She’d painted him as a callous villain in her mind for years, and she didn’t want to see him as vulnerable because then it would be difficult—if not impossible—to hate him.
    Hate?
The word bounced around in Juliana’s mind and she caught her breath at the sudden realization. The opposite of love wasn’t hate; it was
indifference
. Hate meant Andre still had control over her emotions. Hate meant those feelings of love weren’t dead; they were merely suppressed. Pushed