His Secret Slave to Scandalous Queen

Chapter 173: You Wanted To See Me

Henry was standing. He had risen the moment Stephen announced her. free𝑤ebnovel.com

"Livia..." Henry breathed as soon as he laid eyes on her.

"Your Highness..." Livia curtsied.

"I..." His gaze moved over her face. "You... look..." Henry seemed to realise he had no safe sentence and abandoned the attempt. "You wanted to see me."

"Yes," Livia said. "I just had quite the conversation with the Queen Mother."

"I do not want to know what she said," Henry said, turning away from her.

Livia stared at his back. "You do not?" she asked.

"No."

"I can summarise it," she said.

"Livia..." Henry warned. His head turned slightly.

"She told me I had to break my engagement with Richard, return to London, and live in a house prepared for me so that whenever you required me, I would be summoned. She told me," Livia continued, voice shaking now despite her best efforts, "that you gave her the orders."

"I did not!"

"So I can leave for France with Richard and get married?" Livia asked. She did not give him time to breathe.

There was no space for the king to gather himself. She needed the answer clean. Henry’s jaw tightened.

"No, you cannot."

There was the truth in Henry’s own voice. Henry’s own mouth. Henry’s own order placed between her and the life she had chosen.

Livia went cold. "Then you did give her the orders to ruin my life."

"Ruin your life?" Henry turned back to her, anger flaring fast enough to cover the guilt beneath it. "Is that what I am doing? Ruining your life?"

"What would you call it?"

His eyes were bright, furious, wounded. "It was a life you once wanted." He was right.

Once, in another life, she had wanted him. She had wanted Henry with the foolish, aching sincerity of a little girl. She had wanted his words, his poetry, his hands, his ridiculous confidence she had not understood at the time which makes absolute sense now that she knew he was the king, his impossible promises. She had wanted to belong to the future he had painted for them.

But that girl had died and the woman standing before him had buried her.

"A life where I get to be constantly treated like a whore?" Livia asked. "Called a whore? Hidden, managed, summoned, abused?"

Henry recoiled. "I would never—"

"You already are."

His mouth shut.

Livia’s throat burned, but she did not stop. If she stopped, she might fall apart. "Your mother called me filth to my face. She told me I would be kept in a house and sent for when you needed to fuck me."

Henry’s face changed at that. "I am trying to keep you," he said, lower now.

"You are trying to own me."

"I would protect you."

"You would possess me. Your Highness," she said, "if you do this, only the name and place changes. I remain a slave, your slave, Your Highness."

"I have no other choice," Henry whispered. He had searched every corridor of longing and found only one door left open. The worst one. The one his mother had been waiting behind.

Livia stared at him. No other choice. "So you would let your mother..."

"I said I do not want to know!" Henry yelled.

"You must know," she said.

Henry turned away, dragging both hands through his hair. "No."

"You must!" Livia stepped toward him, anger burning. "Because I want to know if you would truly allow it."

He spun back to face her. His eyes were wild now, dark with all the things he had refused to name. "I allow it!"

Livia went still.

"I allow everything!" he shouted. "To keep you, I would sell my soul."

The words sounded rotten. Livia felt the last fragile thread between who Henry had been and who stood before her begin to fray.

"This is my life." she whispered. "You will listen...You will have to listen to the cruelty the cost of your soul would bring."

"I said stop. Stop talking, Livia!"

Livia’s pulse pounded so hard she felt it in her throat. "You would have to cut out my tongue or kill me for that to happen...I am not just going to sit still. Not again!"

"I am your king!" Henry thundered.

Yes, he was king. But that was the whole damn tragedy of it. He had a crown, a throne and yet he stood before one woman and felt more powerless than he had ever felt in his life.

"You will listen," he said, voice shaking with rage. "You will do as you are told because so help me God—" He stopped. His hand had lifted toward her, fingers clenched in the air.

Her eyes moved from his hand to his face, and whatever remained of the girl who had once loved him seemed to retreat farther from him.

He had become exactly the sort of man she had spent years surviving. Slowly, Henry lowered his hand halfway.

Livia’s voice came cold and clear. "What will you do?"

He said nothing.

"You," she pressed. "Not your mother. You, Henry. What will you do?" She was asking the man beneath the crown.

He did not know what to say because he did not know what he would do.

Order her taken? Have guards drag her to the house? Lock her away? Ruin Richard? Force Livia into a life she would hate?

What would he do? He would love her still. Even now. Even with fury burning in her eyes. He loved her painfully and helplessly.

He loved her enough to destroy himself. His hand dropped defeatedly to his side.

"Then I shall tell you what I will do," she said. "If your plan is to keep me and treat me like your whore, then a whore I shall be. I will not be hidden while you summon me when your cock stirs in the middle of the night. I will not sit waiting to be used and forgotten."

(Brought to you by Mar King 1/3)