Chapter Two #2
“You are with me now. You don’t have the power.
Let me explain this to you. We have an agreement.
Your father is on the losing end of this.
And I do not wish to make trouble for your country.
But what I have done, what I have survived, is simply too high-stakes for me to leave any loose ends.
This marriage was meant to happen. I need a wife.
I need a queen. I can fight a war, but I do not know how to act on the throne, and I do not know how to… ”
“Diplomacy?” she asked, her tone dry.
“Yes,” he said. “That. I’m not a negotiator.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You’re not in any danger,” he said.
“I’m not scared of you. If you care at all about public perception, then I don’t think I have to worry about you hurting me. You should find another princess. I’m sure they would line up for the opportunity.”
“But it’s Cape Blanco that I want an alliance with. I need their trade agreements. Our country was increasingly isolated with that despotic dictator in charge. We were left devastated. And it is up to me to fix it. This is the only way.”
“Surely it isn’t the only way.”
“It is the easiest way. And given that I have done everything up until now the absolute hardest way, a marital alliance seems like a good route to take.”
“Marriage. Really. That’s the only thing you can think of?”
“You say that as if I should have some sort of respect for the institution. As if it carries some kind of weight. I don’t care about marriage. It means nothing to me. Family means nothing to me. You mean nothing to me. Nothing but a symbol. Get some rest.”
And then he turned and left her.
It might seem cold to some. But he knew the truth. She would be better off without him near her.
It took about half of the plane ride for Fern to realize that she didn’t have her phone. She didn’t have any way of contacting anyone.
She had become so sporadic in her use of it that she hadn’t been carrying it with her when she had been out today.
She hadn’t even touched it. But then the second thing that she realized was that she wasn’t really in regular contact with anyone outside of the convent.
She didn’t have a network of people away from there.
Of course, the sisters would do whatever they needed to to save her.
She was confident in that. But she didn’t know how they would do it.
There was nothing that she could do. She was physically outmatched. The man was more mountain than human. And on top of that, he had a whole team of men on board the plane.
She wasn’t scared of him. Not physically. She knew exactly what King Ragnar had done when he had taken control back of his country. He’d dismantled the previous regime, sent the leaders to prison for the rest of their days.
He’d taken back the military—banishing all generals who opposed him.
He’d restored freedom that had been lost, abolished oppressive laws.
What he’d done had been for his people.
Which couldn’t be said about the man that her father had intended to marry her off to.
Ragnar was still older than her. Though in his thirties, she suspected.
She thought of the way he had looked at her with those cold, ice-blue eyes.
He wasn’t like the other president. He wasn’t like the other man she had been promised to.
But it didn’t make her any more thrilled about being a spoil of war.
Or whatever he had decided that she was.
A chip to be used against her father. To keep him in line.
She suddenly felt very small. Impossibly so.
Because this had been her fate for as long as she had understood it.
She was nothing more than a bargaining chip.
She was nothing more than a conduit for something else.
And she wanted to be firm. She wanted to be inconsequential. Yet somehow larger in herself.
It was such a strange thing. She could be a political figure. She could be the queen of this country, but that had so much less meaning to her than waking up in the morning and tending a farm. Collecting eggs. Gathering honey.
She suddenly felt bereft about the honey that was lying in what was likely a broken jar, somewhere away from the convent. A waste of what they cultivated.
Emblematic of the last three years of her life.
It meant nothing.
No. It meant something. You learned about yourself. You know who you are.
She bolstered herself with that.
She knew who she was and what she wanted. She knew more about herself now than she ever had, and she knew more about the world. Funnily enough by being removed from it.
She was not in the same position that she would’ve been if she had been married off to a dictator at eighteen.
What a strange thing, that in many ways Ragnar’s timing three years ago had saved her from something, and now he had come to collect.
She wasn’t prepared to be a queen.
She didn’t want to be trotted out all over the world, onstage, trussed up and living her life for public engagement.
And as the plane began to descend, she had a second thought.
She wasn’t prepared to be a wife.
That thought made her face suddenly grow hot, made her stomach clamp tight.
She had intentionally never thought about that.
She had been promised to a man that she didn’t want from her birth, so she didn’t think about marriage and intimacy, and the fact that she was meant to carry a dictator’s baby.
She didn’t think about it because it was important. Because it couldn’t be borne.
But now that she was here, on the edge of it, she couldn’t release the thought.
He wanted to marry her immediately. Like he had said, he could stand in the center of the throne room and simply pronounce them married and they would be.
And then what? Would he want to consummate it like a medieval conqueror?
Is that what it would take? To make sure that the marriage took.
To make sure that she was trapped with him.
Because that was what he would want. For her to be stuck with him.
For her father not to want her back. And the truth was, him taking her virginity would go a long way in making her useless to her father.
Her father wouldn’t be able to simply farm her out to another world leader, would he? She would be damaged goods.
Men really were so boring.
She hated them. Every last one of them. And by the time the plane touched down, and Ragnar opened the door to the bedroom, she was nearly overflowing with hatred. Where was her peace? Where was all that peace that she had found in the convent? Where was the diplomacy that she had learned?
She was ready to fling herself right at him and attack, but the immense impact of him stopped her. It wasn’t fear coursing through her veins. No. It was something else entirely.
He was big and broad, masculine in a way that nearly made it impossible to gaze upon him directly.
Perhaps it was simply because the convent was a female place. No men at all. Perhaps that added to the intensity of his impact. Of his…
Beauty.
The word sent a pang of fear through her.
No. She wasn’t her mother.
She would not offer a brittle smile while she was broken into pieces. And she would not trade herself for the attentions of a man, simply because she found him beautiful.
“I’m not getting off this plane until we come to an agreement.”
“I am perfectly capable of carrying you off the plane, little one.”
“But not without the entire world seeing you manhandling me, pendejo, so I would assume that it’s in your best interest for me to walk off here on my own two feet.”
She glared up at him, resilience making her stand straight.
“What is it you wish to negotiate?”
“If I’m to be sentenced, then I want a term limit.”
“Marriage is for life, my queen.”
“Why?” The image of her mother, a beautiful, frozen emblem who lived in a house full of men who neither loved nor respected her, galvanized her now.
“This is simply to cement trade agreements. To help you become the ruler that you want to appear to be. Why do you need me forever for that? You can find a new queen once you get rid of me. One to bear your children. To give you an heir. I don’t want it. ”
“You don’t want to be queen?”
“What I want is to be free.”
“You want freedom from your father?”
“Yes. I will do whatever you ask of me as far as your image, as far as helping you with your present issues. I will not have a child. I will not share your bed. But I will get off this plane on my own, and I will look for all the world like a beaming bride. I am the only one who can give you the public-facing victory that you want. I am the only one that can give you your lavish, public wedding, because I have to look happy to be there. So you have to give me something.”
“Two years,” he said. “Or until the agreements feel eased. We may have to extend.”
“Fine. That is fine with me. But you will not… I will not…”
Those blue eyes looked her up and down. “Do you think I’m about to fall on you like a lust-crazed animal?”
His words were so scathing, and she felt like she had been lit on fire.
“I know how men are. I grew up in a house filled with them. I know how little they respect women. I certainly know how little I’ve been respected.”
“I didn’t take you because you’re a woman. I took you because you were useful to me. If the agreement was between me and the oldest son, then I would have taken him.”
“Oh,” she said, not certain of what to say to that.
“But alas, we live in a very traditional society, and you were the offering. But you are a worthy opponent. And I would prefer to have you as an ally.” His eyes were sharp and clear as he looked at her. “You’re very smart, aren’t you?”
No man had ever said anything like that to her before. The nuns recognized that she was intelligent. But her father hadn’t. Her brothers hadn’t. If her mother had, she would never have said.
She had to resist the urge to feel pleased with her kidnapper.