Chapter Two #2
“I need you to go with me,” she said, finally, the closest thing to admitting she needed him that she would allow. “I see that now. Though, I do think you’re going to have to look a little bit less suspicious of everyone and everything.”
“I am there as your personal bodyguard. I don’t think I need to look less suspicious at all.”
“I do. Don’t you think it would be better if they underestimated you. I mean, if there is going to be a problem.”
“Perhaps. But if you’re suggesting that I should play incompetent, I should warn you that I do not know how to do that.”
“Incompetent at being incompetent? That sounds about right.”
He made a short sound in the back of his throat and reclined in the chair. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and she thought not to linger and notice every detail.
The strength in his shoulders, how his suit jacket pulled on his muscles. Andrei and her brother were addicted to the gym in the palace. They spent hours lifting weights and doing hideous amounts of push-ups and burpees.
They enjoyed pushing themselves to their limits.
Emerald did not.
Occasionally, she would watch a movie while walking on the treadmill. That was her version of fitness, and she was comfortable with it.
She often felt like Andrei and Onyx were attempting to sweat their demons out. Her demons took a different form. They didn’t dog her physically. They were in her head, swirling around continually, day and night. Asking what her value was. Asking what she had done to make her life worthwhile.
At twenty-four, her mother had been a mother. She had been a queen. By thirty-one, she was dead. She wondered if all of that had felt like enough for her mother. All the things she’d done. By comparison, Emerald hadn’t done very much.
“What do you see your legacy as, Andrei?”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but otherwise didn’t move. “My legacy?”
“Yes. Surely you feel like there’s something you need to accomplish.
Something you want to leave behind. We both experienced death at a very young age.
I feel like it makes you think about it.
And you experienced two times what I did.
It makes me think. About what it is I’ll leave behind, because the simple truth is we are only here for such a short time.
Some of us much shorter than others, but there is no guarantee. ”
“My legacy, my hope, has always been in preserving your family. Keeping you safe. Keeping your brother safe.”
“That’s all? What is it that your parents wanted when they came to Basilia?”
“Safety,” he said, his words hard. “They were on the run.”
He’d never told her this before. The idea of him being a boy, running away from one danger and sinking in another…it burned.
“They saw Basilia as a potential safe haven,” he said. “Though they never reached the shores, it was a safe haven for me. And because of that I fight to preserve the royal family.”
“And because you like us,” she said.
“Some days more than others,” he said, his voice hard.
She was sure that he almost smiled. That the corner of his mouth moved upward just slightly. Just slightly.
“Today?”
“A trial.”
“You don’t ever plan on getting married? Having children?” It was a perverse question to ask, but she wanted to try and imagine his life without her in it. Wanted to make a picture in her mind of how things would be after she took this husband, after she left her home and him.
Any ghost of a smile disappeared. “No. My line ends with me. I know my father would have wanted me to carry on this line. Survival was paramount to him, as was the carrying on of his…legacy. He didn’t succeed, except on one count.
I feel sometimes that the sea was trying to take us all, but didn’t quite manage.
I have a mission, and that is to repay the kindness that your family showed to me, that your country showed to me. But that is all.”
She frowned. “Why… What did your father do in Romania?”
He’d never said. Maybe she should have asked before, but she had a sense of Andrei, of certain closed doors in his soul, and she’d always felt like this was one of them. She’d assumed because of how traumatic the wreck and losing his parents had been.
But now she wondered how much more trauma there was in his past.
“There’s no purpose to talking about the past. Especially, I don’t wish to speak about my family right now.” He looked around, and out at the ocean all around them.
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Though you are the reason I’m here.”
“I know I—”
“I was teasing,” he said, very nearly smiling. “I insisted on coming.”
“It’s a very dark thing to tease about.”
“My life has been very dark so far.”
She made a scoffing sound, and pushed herself up out of the lounger. “Will you join me for dinner, Andrei?”
He often refused to do that. He was very strange about his protocols. There were times when he would agree to take a meal with her and with Onyx in the palace, but there were other times when he was hard-line about staying with staff.
His eyes met hers, and her breath caught.
You are everything to me.
“Yes. I will take dinner with you tonight.”