“Get to the point,” I growled.
“Evalina wasn’t innocent,” Olivier said carelessly. “She wanted the power the Queen had. The power her son, as a bastard, would never have.”
“Thanks for rubbing that in my fucking face.”
“Shut up. Listen.”
He got up, walking over to me.
“Evalina was unstable,” he said. “Had been since the competition. She wanted the best for her child. So, she made the ultimate decision. Kept here secret for years, until our father found out, and had her killed for it. I suspect the Queen still doesn’t know.”
“Know what?” I asked with my heart pounding.
“Know that Evalina switched the babies.” Olivier’s voice was low, but unwavering. “Put her son in the royal crib and took the heir and raised him as his own.”
“You…” I stared at him in disbelief. “We were switched?”
“Yes. The King admitted it to me seconds before you got in here. Just like he admitted killing Evalina when he found out what she’d done.”
“Why?” I asked, shaking. “Why would he kill her?”
“He chose the Queen once,” Olivier said. “You really think he wouldn’t choose her again?”
He strode closer, crowding my space.
“He couldn’t tell the truth. He was too afraid of the scandal. The traditional, good king. He couldn’t admit to this. Would never fault himself for what Evalina had done. So, he went along with it. The lie. The switch. But he made sure I suffered the consequences. We both know he always favored you.”
“This… this is insane,” I muttered. “Does this mean I… I’m the heir?”
“Not so fast,” Olivier laughed. “There’s another solution. One that involves getting revenge on the Queen.”
“My…”
“Your mother,” he finished for me. “Not mine.”
“Why would I want revenge?” I asked. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
“She’s the one who killed Evalina,” Olivier delivered the final blow. “She’s the one who killed my real mother. Now listen to what I’m going to tell you very carefully. There’s a way out of this mess for us both.”
He grabbed my shoulder and made me look at him, asking, “Are you with me?”
I stared into his eyes, noticing the grey flecks in them for the first time. My brother.
I glanced toward the bed, where the King’s body marked the end of the era.
I nodded.
By the time we were done speaking, Amber was a shivering, pale and pretty mess.
She’d inched off Olivier’s lap, gotten up at one point and backed herself up against a wall. She was scared, eyes wide, arms held out in front of her as if to stop us from going on.
“You killed someone,” she whispered to Olivier. “Your own father. How could you?”
“I think it’s fairly obvious he deserved it,” my brother ground out. “Now we need to talk about the rest of our plan.”
“Plan?” she repeated disbelievingly, shaking her head to get the thought out. “I don’t want to be part of any plan. I don’t want anything to do with this. You two… you’re sick. You’re sick for what you did to your own father.”
Olivier stood up, slowly approached her and gently wrapped his hand in her hair.
“Think about this,” he said, his voice soft. “If you could, would you stop your father from hitting your mother every single fucking night when you were a little girl?”
Amber gasped, tears blinding her vision. I walked closer, joining my brother as he practically held her up. She was shivering, and she’d never looked more beautiful. There was something exquisitely delicate about her fragile beauty.
“How d-do you know that?” she whispered, breaking for us so beautifully.
“We do our research,” my brother responded, touching her cheek with gentle fingers. “You would have stopped him, wouldn’t you, Amber? Didn’t you try? Didn’t you try so many times?”
Her eyes closed tightly, and I tried to imagine what the police report had said happened.
Amber, aged thirteen, with her hand still clasped over the neck of a bottle when the police arrived. The broken glass had left scars on her palms, scars that weren’t the only way she’d pay for her crime. Her father had buddies in the police department, and they made damn sure the case got filed in a dusty drawer forever, forgetting all about it.
But Amber’s father didn’t forget.
He never would. Not until the day he died, clutching a bottle just like the one his eldest had attempted to kill him with, failing miserably. He tormented them until his last fucking day.
“How do you know that?” Amber repeated, her voice panicked.
“Police records,” I replied. “Daddy dearest wasn’t the only one who could get his hands on them.”
She was shivering as we held her. Two pairs of comforting hands on one pretty girl. She would be ours soon enough. She’d been primed and conditioned for this, after all.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice breaking over the voice. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”
“Isn’t that a lie, little girl?” I whispered in her ear. My fingers wandered over her back, her spine straightening when I moved my fingertips over it. “You came here with a purpose, didn’t you, Amber?”
“For O-Olivier,” she stuttered, and we both laughed in reply.
“No, not for me,” my brother said. “For the money. Isn’t that right, chérie?”
She was quiet now, her eyes darting between the two of us, already glassy.
“What do you want?” she repeated.
“What we want,” Olivier growled. “Is this…”
His hand moved over her body, over her generous tits and her smooth navel. He tapped his finger on her dress, so gently. One rip and that dress would be in shreds, and we all knew it. But we were being gentlemen. For now.
“What?” she hissed. “You can’t have me. I don’t feel right… not after what you told me.”
“We’re not going to force you into anything,” I told her, gently trying to reassure her. It seemed to work, and her body stopped shaking for a moment, just until I placed my lips on the shell of her ear. “We just want your submission in exchange for one thing.”
“W-What?” she muttered, her eyes dancing between the two of us. “What do you want?”
I gathered her hair in my hand, pulling on it so her head snapped back. I got fucking jealous when she looked at Olivier for too long, and he knew it.
“An heir,” I told her with a low growl. “We want to fuck a baby into you.”
“What?” she looked incredulous. “How is that going to help with anything?”
“Well, you see, Luxuria is a very traditional place,” I told her. “Just like I told you when you first got here, remember?”
She nodded.
“Turns out, there’s an old law that’s still valid,” Olivier went on. “And it says that the rightful heir to the throne is the firstborn legal son… but it also says there’s a chance of diarchy.”