Chapter Twelve
ANDREI WOKE UP sitting by the fire. The sun was filtering through the sky, and his face was sore from where Emerald had slapped him. Deservedly. He had slept in the library all night, though he hadn’t meant to.
Was this to be their life? Their marriage?
He owed her better than that. He was angry, still, but… To what end?
And what was he angry at?
It wasn’t her. Not truly. If they were going to raise a child together, then they could not live like this.
He had lost his grip on himself. He might’ve embraced aspects of his father’s ways, but one thing he would not do was raise a child the way he had been raised. He would not raise his daughter to be a pawn. He wouldn’t raise his son to be detached and deadly.
Emerald’s family was royal, she had treated herself in much the way the mafiosi’s daughters did. That grim determination to use what she had available to her to make things better for the family.
In her case, the country. And yet the end result was the same.
He got up and walked into the dining room. There she was, seated already. Drinking a cup of warm liquid, and eating a pile of toast. “Good morning,” she said.
She looked up at him, almost shyly. There was none of the antagonisms from the night before. “I’m very sorry that I hit you.”
“It is nothing,” he said.
“It wasn’t nothing. It was a total failure of maturity on my part.”
“I antagonized you.”
“Yes. You did. But that doesn’t mean that I get to behave that badly.”
“Sleep seems to have restored some of your civility.”
She nodded. “We’ve known each other too long to fall apart.”
He made a short noise in the back of his throat. “I suppose so.”
“I realized something. I don’t know how to live when it isn’t for the greater good.
You are right about that. I am ill-equipped to handle my emotions because I have never allowed them to take center stage.
That is… It’s very difficult. And I don’t know how to do this.
So, I’m going to make mistakes. And occasionally be deeply unpleasant. ”
“I am always deeply unpleasant.”
“You didn’t used to be.”
“I was doing my job.”
“Yes. And part of your job was suppressing yourself, as a man.”
He nodded. “I have long thought that it kept the world safe for me. Because if I carry elements of my father with me—and these last days have proven I do—it is best to keep it under wraps. But I will not be like my father with our child. And to that end, we must find a different way of being, you and I.”
She put her elbows on the table, put her head in her hands. “This is so complicated. Because even if we make peace with each other, we might have plunged my country into war.”
“Trust Onyx. He’ll figure out a way out of this. You and I must focus on each other. On our child.”
“You very casually put all this on my brother.”
“Only because I devoted so much of my life to him. Asking him to devote a small portion of his to me, to you, is not entirely unreasonable.”
She looked like she was considering that.
“All right. So what are we… What are we to do then? We are just in hiding?”
“We have all of these grounds. We can do anything you like.”
“I just need to rest right now.”
“Fair enough.”
He sat down at the table. “Have you experienced symptoms of pregnancy?” The question felt stilted and stiff, but that was fair enough, because so did he.
“Not really. Though, I might be having a little bit of nausea, extra tiredness. But it’s very hard to say. You know, given everything else.”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Even when I went to university, I got a degree that was about making me the best leader that I could be for the country. It was never about what I wanted. Because there has only ever been one real thing that I thought I could do. I was destined to be a political leader.”
“And is that what you want?”
“Well, I think I would enjoy being a diplomat more than a queen.”
“I’m going to say this to you gently. You have done a terrible job with diplomacy between the two of us.”
She laughed. The humor in the moment deeply unexpected.
“Well. Yes. I suppose I have.”
“But that is what you would prefer to do.”
“Yes. I got such a thrill organizing the marriage deal. And if it had just been a trade deal, I think it would’ve been such a triumph.
I probably could have enjoyed playing games on Wall Street.
Rogue trading deals and that sort of thing.
I love it. The strategy. But, what I’ve loved always had to be within the confines of where I was headed. ”
He nodded. “Yes. Well. Becoming someone who guarded others was a stark contrast to what my destiny would’ve been had I simply stayed at my father’s house.”
“You would’ve taken over the crime empire.”
He nodded. “A certain amount of brute strength, hypervigilance, all of that, was required. I suppose I’ve always used elements of that with security detail. But there has never been a thought given to what I wanted. It has always been about what is right.”
“I feel the same. Neither of us knows how to be people, you know. We are just symbols.” Symbols that had finally reached their breaking point, given in to their desire for each other, even though it had been a very bad idea. Imperfect, broken symbols, who now found themselves without a mission.
“I couldn’t deviate from the mission,” she whispered.
“Don’t you understand? I was so terrified in that moment, and so sad, and I just couldn’t make a different choice.
I could only do what I knew to do. Part of me felt like you would understand.
” Her throat went tight. “Because what am I doing anything for if I’m not doing it for Basilia? ”
“I know that,” he said, the admission heavy because he had been clinging so desperately to his anger and now he knew he needed to let it go. To listen to her. “I know you did not act with maliciousness. I know you didn’t intend to hurt me.”
“But I did. I hurt you. I’m very sorry. I didn’t intend to. I didn’t mean… It doesn’t matter. I was thinking of everything in terms of the cause. Not the personal. And now that I’ve pulled away from it all, I can see that what I was doing was shortsighted. I would’ve left him.”
“But not until he had you.”
She nodded slowly. “I would’ve tried. But I know that I would’ve regretted it. I know that I would’ve called for you. Because you are right. I have idealized this. This idea of living for duty and honor. But I don’t know how to live.”
“These things that you love about your mother. You love them in hindsight. What did you love about her as a child? Surely it wasn’t the things that she did for duty and honor.”
“No,” she said. “I loved her softness. Her laughter. I loved it when she read me bedtime stories.”
“Your mother is not only a symbol.”
“I know.” Her eyes filled with tears. “But it’s so hard to… You might remember her even better than I do.”
“It is possible. My memory of her is that she was extremely kind. Extremely soft. If I’m honest, Emerald, you remind me more of your father.
He was very determined. Always excited about another plan, a diplomatic gain.
He enjoyed the game of it, but in a way that was always generous, and considerate of others. He was a very good man.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “He was.”
“But they did live. They did have lives that weren’t simply symbolism.”
She nodded. “I do know that.”
“Why don’t you rest?”
The idea of rest was foreign to her. She was always doing things. Always spearheading a committee, starting another project.
“It feels… It feels wrong.”
“It is not,” he said. “You are having my baby, and I have thoroughly antagonized you. I would prefer that you took your rest.”
It was his form of an apology. He had never truly had to admit that he was wrong before. And with her, he knew he had been. His treatment of her had been unfair. And had been about his own feelings. Not about her.
“Rest,” he insisted. “And maybe, for the first time, try and figure out what it is you want.”
She was beginning to feel lazy.
She had spent days lying in bed since that strange, conversation she had with Andrei.
She felt tender, thinking about her mom as a human.
As her mother. Especially thinking about becoming a mother herself.
It made her think about legacy in a very different way.
She’d made it less of a personal thing because really remembering her mother hurt.
Andrei had offered her so much insight into her parents, and he had been so kind and… She didn’t know where it had come from.
She also didn’t really know how to get deeper than that.
He was such a strange brick wall.
There was an inherent goodness to him, she was sure of that. But there was also difficulty.
The man was difficult.
Her feelings for him were no less difficult.
The trouble was lying around like this, with no royal duties, with nothing, was that she had the opportunity to examine images of different kinds of futures.
And there was one that she had never let herself hope for.
Not really. One where she married Andrei.
Where she had love. And maybe she wouldn’t be written about.
A princess who married her bodyguard. Maybe it was no kind of legacy.
Maybe it would make headlines, but nothing deeper than that.
She had lived her entire life for what would happen after she died.
She had no idea how to live.
It was that thought that finally got her out of bed on a supremely sunny day, and outside.
Rebecca told her that there were berries along the trail, and if she wanted a cake, she could go and pick some.
So, she found herself out on a sun-drenched trail that wound through a field, picking fat, red berries and putting them in a basket.
It was a delightfully slow, rustic thing to do, and she had never lived a slow or rustic life.