Chapter One #2
But he hadn’t left her alone in her grief. He’d held her while she wept, maintaining his own solid strength while she dissolved. Onyx had been the king, and while he’d been there for her as much as he could be, he’d been consumed with managing a whole nation rocked by the death of its monarchs.
Only Andrei had been able to concern himself singularly with her.
Theirs was a bond that defied words. And beneath that bond were feelings in her that defied what was possible.
“Of course I will,” he said. “I will be a nonnegotiable addition to this envoy.”
“But you live here,” she said, panic rising inside her. “You can’t uproot your entire life to follow me to another country.”
“My service to the Crown is my life, Princess. Whether that service takes place here or in Alabria is of no consequence. You are my mission.”
He was always doing things like that. Always undermining the emotional connection they felt they had with him. Always making it about duty and honor and his place. He wasn’t royal, that much was true, but he was their friend. To her, he was a great deal more, whether he would ever know that or not.
Whether he would ever admit it or not.
You are my mission.
If he were any other man, it would be easy to take that as a declaration of some kind. But Andrei just meant that literally. She was a mission. A task for him to see to.
And he was ruining this. She needed to be away from him. She needed an ocean between them, a potentially psychotic husband between them. She didn’t fear Lucian, because she’d gotten to the point where being near Andrei was the real source of her fear.
How long could she bend before she broke?
She was hoping to never test it.
“This is ridiculous. He’s not going to make a political alliance with us and then kill me.”
“I will assess the situation,” Andrei said. “With your permission, Your Highness, I will send a missive to the Crown and let them know exactly what the princess will require as she evaluates whether or not she truly wishes to enter into this union.”
“I’ve already agreed,” Emerald said.
“And we shall add stipulations,” Onyx said.
She threw her hands into the air, rage, desperation and her own throbbing heart making her lose control. “God spare me the interference of relentless alpha males.”
She meant that in the most derogatory fashion possible.
Storming from the room didn’t really help her case. She was trying not to be childish. But she had brokered the deal herself. It was a triumph of international relations. She was throwing herself on this altar, a sacrifice for the greater good of the country.
Well. That was exactly what Onyx was objecting to.
But he didn’t have the right. She wasn’t weak.
She knew that her duty was to the country.
She knew where they were having difficulty, and she knew where she could make things better.
Easier. King Lucian was the most difficult ruler spread across all the islands in this little belt of countries and principalities.
She could tame him, then she could help everyone.
She remembered her mother, so beautiful and serene.
She truly believed that her parents had loved each other, but she also knew that her mother had left a small village on the farthest end of the island that previously hadn’t been joined together with the nation of Basilia.
She had united the tribes there and the rest of the country.
Had brought services to them. Had changed the lives of everyone for the better.
She wanted to be like her mother. She wanted to do something that mattered. Wanted to unite the nations. She had the opportunity to do that on an even grander scale.
It was her purpose.
What she knew about life was that it could be short and cruel. Even if she did meet her fate at the hands of King Lucian, she would’ve tried. Would’ve tried for a legacy that was bigger than herself.
The need to be her mother’s daughter in this way was an almost desperate drive inside her. She’d lost her so long ago. This felt like finding a connection to her.
I’m the woman you would have raised me to be. If you had lived.
She heard heavy footsteps behind her, and she didn’t even have to turn to know who it was.
Her brother walked on top of the floor. He was silent.
Years of royal training had turned him into an elegant panther.
Dangerous, certainly, to some, but smooth.
Andrei did not bother to conceal his presence, ever.
He was a blunt instrument. A weapon. And he wore that proudly.
“You are making a mistake,” he said.
She turned around, trying to steel herself for the impact of him.
Even though she had just been looking at him, she knew that he would make her heart beat faster now that they were alone.
Now that he was closer. She turned, and she was right.
Her heart leapt into her throat like it was trying to escape. “That’s not for you to decide.”
“Perhaps not, but I’m telling you all the same.”
“I am a princess,” she said. “And you are nothing. You would do well to remember that.” She immediately regretted those words the moment they came out of her mouth.
She didn’t mean them. But she was angry.
Angry at these men for undermining her. Angry at Andrei for making her feel things that were so at odds with what she knew she needed to do.
It was the worst of both worlds. Not only was her plan being hijacked by the most controlling men she knew, but she wasn’t getting the reprieve from Andrei she desperately needed.
She didn’t look at him again. She refused.
She was going to prepare herself for the sea voyage to Alabria.
King Lucian did not allow flights in or out of the country, unless they were his own.
Everyone, including the citizens of the country, had to travel elsewhere by boat if they wished to fly somewhere.
It had always been rumored that it was a show of strength.
A way that Lucian let everyone know that in his country he even owned the sky.
She didn’t care what it was. She wondered if the ship’s journey would deter Andrei.
That made her feel guilty too. But she didn’t ask, and she didn’t look back.
She had made her decision. Whether her brother and Andrei supported her or not didn’t matter. She was selling herself into marriage.
It was a choice that only she could make. And she had made it.
“You could forbid her to go.” Andrei was leaning against the doorframe, rage churning in his stomach.
Emerald was being a fool. Very unlike her. She was the most devoted, levelheaded person he knew apart from Onyx. This was a rare miscalculation on her part, but it was one.
King Lucian was a monster. The very idea of that man laying claim to her…
He could not bear it.
“Certainly, I could. And then what? Lock her in the dungeon? You have met my sister. She is the smartest person I know. Smarter than the two of us combined when it comes to matters of negotiation and the economy. The trouble is, it is a very good deal that she’s brokered.”
“Fuck the deal,” Andrei said. “What does it matter? If her safety is compromised…”
“She is also right about the fact that it has never been confirmed he is responsible for the deaths of his previous wives.”
“They’re also all dead,” Andrei growled. “So they can hardly testify.”
Emerald was the most precious thing in his world. He would kill for her. Die for her. Whatever was required of him. His devotion to her was complete.
He had cared for her, looked after her from the time she was young.
This family meant everything to him. When he’d been taken into the palace he’d seen love for the first time.
Real love that wasn’t filled with trip wires and toxicity.
Unconditional, beautiful love like they wrote about in stories and songs.
He’d loved his parents, because he knew nothing else.
He’d loved his parents because he didn’t know children shouldn’t see violence—passionate or otherwise.
He didn’t know a father shouldn’t strike his son, or expose him to the dark, twisted dealings of a criminal empire.
His father had often showered him with praise, and that had made up for the times when being in his father’s sphere was hard.
His own concept of love, of family, was so perverted that he’d been completely undone by the purity of the royal family.
It had changed something inside him, and he’d sworn an oath in his own soul to protect this family with everything he was.
He and Onyx were blood brothers. After Onyx’s parents had died, Andrei had cut his palm, and Onyx had cut his, and they had shaken hands, solidifying their connection to one another. Emerald was something else.
His.
And yet he knew that she wasn’t. She never could be.
His desire for her was anathema to him. He did his best to shut it off, to push it down, to push her away.
He’d been put in charge of her after the king and queen had died.
He’d been made her personal guard—though he’d been young.
After all, Onyx was king at that same young age, in charge of an entire country.
Andrei had ruled over Emerald’s safety. He had protected her physically, and had been there for her through her grief.
She had become the person who mattered most to him in all the world.
A connection that was not familial, but felt soul deep in a way he would never have been able to put to words.
Then it had changed. The intensity of the feelings had always been there, but then that intensity had become deadly. Like a knife resting flat on flesh for years, suddenly twisted so the sharp edge sunk in, deep and terrible.
The great and terrible hunger that had taken over him during a dance at her eighteenth birthday party. An innocent touch of her hand against his and he’d been undone. The fierce need to claim her, to make her his, to take her until they were both breathless…
It had dogged him now for six years, this deep caring that had turned into something so much more obsessing.
He exhausted his sexual energies elsewhere, faceless, nameless hookups that he found shameful in the broad light of day, especially when he looked at her.
But there was nothing that could be done. He was not angry now because she was marrying someone else. That had always been what was destined to be. He was angry because this man, this mad king, could put her in danger.
“This is why you need to stay with her. Obviously if you think there is any real danger to her safety, I expect you to put a stop to things. Start a war on your way out if you have to.”
Andrei crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”
“You will gather intel for me. You will tell me everything, about the king, about the country, about the palace. If we have to have an international incident, then we must. If you think that he will be unkind to her, abusive in some way, if you believe that it is a place she will not survive, then at any point during the marriage, you will remove her, bring her back.”
“I promise.”
“I know that I can count on you. I have trusted you with my sister, and her safety since she was fourteen years old. I continue to trust you now.”
He smiled, but it was not a genuine smile.
Because if he had any idea that Andrei’s feelings for Emerald had begun to change years ago, when she had begun to look like a woman, and her sweetness, her care had gotten beneath his skin in a way that no one and nothing else ever had, he would likely have Andrei thrown in a dungeon for the rest of his life. Beheading would be too good for him.
“I’m sorry about the boat trip,” Onyx said.
Andrei shrugged. Yes, he felt cold terror in his veins when he thought about going out on the water.
When he thought about what it had been like when the ship had begun to take on the ocean, until it was more water than boat.
The way that the pressure of the sinking vessel had pulled him down, and the way his lungs had burned as he had swum endlessly in the wrong direction.
How he had washed up on the shore, he couldn’t say.
It was a miracle, he had decided. Because there was no other explanation.
But every other man, woman and child on that boat had died.
And so, he had always found it to be a sharp-edged miracle.
Because if the divine had saved him, then surely the divine could’ve prevented the boat from capsizing in the first place.
He had a long-standing rift with God over that.
“It is nothing,” he said.
Because when it came to the choice between his own comfort and protecting Emerald, he would choose her every time.
And so he would choose her now. Above all else.
If he had to lead her into this marriage that she had chosen, he would.
And if he had to cut her husband’s throat to save her, he would do that too.
The one thing he would never do, was put his hands on her.