Chapter 71 Mother Of An Heir

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Aaliyah was demanding then, her hands on her hips and a distracting high color on her cheeks. “How dare you drag my son into this mess? In front of all those people and cameras? In this palace that isn’t fit for children in the first place!”

“I was raised in this palace,” he said very mildly. “Though I’m guessing you won’t think that much of a draw.”

He turned away from the view, leaning back on the rail so he could look at her instead. And also so he could practice that indolence that had once been such a part of him, because it no longer felt like second nature.

That impossible prettiness of Aaliyah’s seemed to infuse everything, even the dusk settling around her shoulders like a shawl.

That deep gold thread inside him pulled tight.

That longing in him was something more like a roar—

“Hear me,” she bit out, and whatever he might have been about to do disappeared, lost somewhere in the way she held her hands on her hips, her censorious gray