Chapter Fourteen

Crown Prince Vincent was not feeling up to par as he presented himself at Crown Princess Olivia's breakfast room, as requested, a few moments before eight bells. He had two of his guards out since first light, trying to find out where Orion might have gone. They reported that the prince and his valet had spent the night at the Carntan Inn on the outskirts of town, but he had left before the guards had tracked him down. No one at the inn had any idea where he was going or even what direction he'd gone.

After a sleepless night, Vincent had also spent more than an hour drafting and redrafting a formal apology to the King and Queen of Carntan. He had spent most of his time with Jaxon and society family members during previous visits, but his mother's message made it quite clear his appalling behavior had reflected badly on the country of Faast as a whole, and it was up to him to make amends.

Neither the king nor queen were available for a private audience - which was disconcerting in itself as Vincent had never been denied an audience with anyone before - but Vincent applied his best penmanship to the letter he'd crafted with Morgan's help. That would have to do. Vincent asked Morgan to send a copy to his mother as well by the fastest means possible so she could see that he was doing his best.

At least it was Jaxon who opened the door, and although his expression was grim, he indicated a chair at the table where an extra place setting had been laid. "You might as well eat," he said.

"I'm not sure I can." Vincent entered the room bowing at Olivia. He didn't dare greet her as an equal, she was likely to slap his face if he got close to her. "Thank you for seeing me," he added as he slid into the chair.

"If your new husband had been anyone else except my brother I wouldn't have bothered. I would've done the same thing my father apparently did and banished you from this court." Olivia was in fine form. "As a newly married man, whose nuptials were being celebrated by this court, your behavior during the reception dinner was reprehensible. If you'd been married to anyone else and behaved the same way, I would have banished you and got your spouse a decent lawyer. However, you married my brother. Why?"

Vincent, who was in the process of pouring himself a cup of coffee, looked at Jaxon. "I told you why I married Orion yesterday."

"You explained how you came to organize the marriage contract, and that you'd been thinking about it for months, but you never actually said why it was Orion you were interested in."

Jaxon clearly wasn't going to be any help. Vincent explained, for what felt like the hundredth time what attracted him to Orion and why he felt the need to marry him.

"And you never thought to discuss those reasons with Orion?" Olivia asked.

"Not before the wedding, but I did once he agreed to travel with me on our wedding day." Vincent was getting a little tired of explaining his past actions. They weren't going to bring him any closer to finding his husband now. "My situation was no different to countless others who get married every year. I was the ranking prince. It was my place to negotiate the marriage contract with King Oscar, seeing as Orion was living under his roof, and I did that."

"Vincent has got a point, sweetness," Jaxon said quietly. "We didn't get much chance to get to know each other before we exchanged our vows."

"Agreed." Olivia smiled. "But if you had done one tenth of what Vincent did last night to me, I would've removed your equipment with a rusty knife and fed those worthless bits to the castle pigs." She was laughing, and while Vincent was shocked to hear such words from a lady, Jaxon was chuckling along and patting his wife's hand.

"I would totally deserve it, sweetness, but then I'm not that silly. I've been proud of you since the day you agreed to marry me."

"Hey, I'm proud of Orion. I introduced him to my friends after we'd eaten dinner and people were mingling."

"When was that? In the five minutes before you started dancing with one partner after another. None of those partners being the husband you apparently were proud of."

Vincent sighed. "Talking about my behavior last night is not helping me find my husband now."

"I'll be honest. I'm surprised you'd even want to." Olivia clearly had the same blunt speaking methods as her brother. "Orion left because you humiliated him – you made it plain to everyone at the reception last night you had no intention of keeping your marriage vows. So I am failing to see why you want to find him now.

"When he turns up here again, and I hope that will be soon, I fully intend to help him petition the World Court, who will insist that you maintain my brother in a lifestyle he is entitled to. But I doubt that means he will live in Faast, even if he is now the crown prince consort. If you learn to keep your affairs discreet and private, I see no reason why you ever have to see him again."

Vincent tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. "I married Orion because I wanted to leave that life behind me. I made one little mistake…"

Olivia's glare had him quickly amending his words. "I made a gargantuan mistake, one I am genuinely sorry for. I will pay penance for my errors for the rest of my life if that's what it takes. But, regardless of what you thought you saw, or what people are saying, I was genuine in my desire to marry Orion, and I want our marriage to be as successful as the one you enjoy with my friend."

"We are pretty successful, sweetness," Jaxon said with a fond look at his wife. "You know, I was almost as bad in my behaviors as Vincent was before you smiled in my direction…"

"Not after we married, you weren't." But Olivia was smiling too.

"That's because you spoke up and told me what you wanted in a marriage, one of the many happy memories I have of our early courting. To be fair, Orion doesn't seem to have done that on his own behalf."

"And you know there's a reason for that." Olivia's smile dropped. "What have you learned about my brother in the three days it took you to travel from Tyrion to Carntan, Vincent?"

"Not as much as I'd like. I realized that after I got told he left the castle last night," Vincent admitted. "I mean, we talked every afternoon when he agreed to travel in the carriage with me, but the mornings we were both riding and there were people around so it's not like we could discuss personal issues. But see, I learned from that. I learned he was prepared to compromise on things, which I felt was a valuable and rare skill to have. He rides beautifully. He has the knack of asking questions designed to make the listener feel important. I admit I probably confessed my whole life history in those few afternoons."

"Monopolizing the conversation, I imagine." Olivia shook her head.

"No. All right. Probably most of the time. But we did have some really interesting conversations about World Council policies and politics. Your brother is extremely intelligent and not afraid to voice his opinion, so why didn't he tell me he thought I was treating him badly?" But even as he said the words, Vincent already knew the answer. It was as clear as the handwriting on the note his husband had left him the night before.

"He shouldn't have had to tell you, because you should never have behaved badly in the first place," Jaxon said. "Orion has a lot of other issues to deal with right now. Your dismissal of him didn't help."

"The secret project business?" Vincent perked up. "Does this mean you know where he's gone?"

"Wait, wait," Olivia said, but she was talking to her husband. "We won't go disclosing any details yet. I need to know my brother will be safe with this man."

"Olivia!" Jaxon and Vincent both spoke at the same time. Vincent was shocked.

"I would never hurt your brother," Vincent added quickly. "Aside from last night, but that was never my intention, and I'm entitled to one mistake, surely to goodness. I got swept up by the events of the evening and just have to learn to do better that's all. I'm coming to harbor intense feelings for your brother."

"That could mean anything from wanting to kill him to wanting to suffocate him in a romantic bubble," Olivia said tartly. "You don't understand. Orion has been taught his whole life that he has no value. As children, we pretty much raised ourselves, although the staff at the castle were amazing. But when it came to having parents who were proud of us, or who praised our achievements, or made us feel positive about ourselves, all of that was lacking in our upbringing."

"Olivia's right," Jaxon added. "When she and I got married her father sent her here with barely a maid and two guards to protect her on her travels. He never wanted to come to the wedding, although my parents invited him and the queen personally. To say I was shocked about that was an understatement, and when Olivia told me what her brothers were going through, I was deeply concerned. Onyx and I have messaged each other since, and I know both of the boys care about Olivia, but the lack of caring from their parents was and is concerning."

"So what you're saying is that the situation last night made things worse for Orion, not better." Vincent got a sinking feeling in his stomach, and it had nothing to do with not eating breakfast.

"You effectively won your husband in a card game from a man who has never shown Orion any form of caring his whole life." Jaxon reached for his wife's hand. "Orion has created his own life, running various businesses since he was eighteen, working alongside Onyx to try and better the lives of the people of Tyrion.

"He's a prince anyone would be proud of, in word and deed, and yet his father never even asked him to attend functions at the castle, because he wasn't considered important. He was ignored by his own parents. When you said that King Oscar insulted you on your wedding day, claiming he'd won a strategic alliance with a neighboring country over a card game, I guarantee he never remotely cared that his son was the wager. He was basically gambling with an item he would've happily given away for nothing."

"I truly have made things worse." Vincent thought for a moment. It would be really easy to do what Olivia suggested. He could accept his marriage was a mistake. Without Orion around the gossip would die down eventually. His mother would be disappointed in him, but Vincent had never doubted the support that woman had given him his whole life. In essence he could move on, and his life would go on the way it always had. Just without Orion, or any other spouse for that matter, because of course, he'd still be married. Would that be such a bad thing?

But then Vincent remembered why he'd wanted to marry Orion in the first place. He wanted to settle down. To prove he was more than the party boy everyone assumed he was. He wanted to do something worthwhile, to be someone who people came to for advice instead of party favors. He wanted to be the man Orion deserved.

"Please tell me where Orion has gone. I need to find a way to make this right, and I can only do that if I know where he is."