Chapter Seven
Onyx sat in his study, a glass of whiskey in his hand.
His sister hadn’t allowed him to dismiss her quite so easily, and that was, yet again, an issue with having his brother-in-law as his chief of security; there was no keeping her out.
Because Andrei was never going to side with Onyx.
Not on matters that included Emerald. Onyx was already sitting there, awash in a strange sort of shame.
Because he hadn’t known that the woman who had come to him that night was a servant. And he had immediately gone to the power that a person with bad intent could hold to ruin his reputation. But what she had spoken of was the disparity in their actual power.
Had she wanted to have sex with him? She said that she had.
But when she put it that way, it was… It was grim, was what it was.
He held power over her, not just as the king of the nation, but direct power to end her job.
Had she been forced to say yes to him? Had that entire night been something that he viewed through the wrong lens? And then he had… Well, he had been awful to her. Emerald was there in his office, looking at him like he was as low as he felt like he might be.
“I have never known you to treat a woman this way.”
“You have never known that part of me,” he said.
In truth, he had never known this part of himself. This was sharp and jagged, with no control to be found at all. A disaster, in short.
He’d been so careful with his assignations when he was younger, and then he had been married. This was him, and the consequences of passion. It was something he’d never navigated before. Something he had no experience with.
And apparently, he didn’t react well to it.
“What if she is pregnant with your child?”
He hadn’t been worried about that. He had been solely focused on his anger. He had been convinced there was no way that it could be his child, and he had only convinced himself further in the days since the ball.
Now he was actually grappling with it. In these hours before the test results came in.
What if she was? Well, then there was no question; he would have to marry her.
He was not the sort of man who would keep a mistress.
And he was definitely not the sort of man who would keep a child in the shadows.
Who would make a bastard out of an heir.
And he needed an heir. So there was no point to it besides.
But it would lay bare his own failings. There would be no covering this up.
The entirety of the kingdom—the world—would be able to do the math on this. There was no rescuing the optics.
And there was quite possibly no rescuing the relationship that he had now begun with Birdie.
Birdie. Roberta. A commoner, who may very well end up being his next queen. A woman who would hate him just as much as his first wife.
And it was his fault. Perhaps all of it was his fault.
He had handled this in all the wrong ways, but he had no idea what else he might’ve done.
Not been a raging dick?
Well. There was that. But everything felt so…precarious. He was afraid to hope that it was his child, and he was also afraid that it might be.
“You could’ve handled it differently.”
“Really? Thank you. I appreciate you jumping in in the eleventh hour to lecture me.”
“It isn’t a lecture. It’s a truth. You could’ve been better.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you. But I am not… No matter how much I might try, I am not a figurehead. And I’m not someone that should’ve been up on a pedestal for you. I’m a man. And I made a mistake. Maybe.”
She stayed with him. Even though she was furious. Awaited the results of the test. And when they came in, he didn’t know if he was relieved or filled with shame.
Because the child was his; there was no doubt about it.
And Birdie was right. He was now the villain in the piece, and there was no other way to look at it.
He, who had always tried to be a hero in one manner or another, had failed on that score, horribly. There was no way around it.
And now he had to go and face her. And tell her that she was going to marry him.
“What is that look on your face?” Emerald asked.
“I have to take another queen who hates me. And I cannot waste another moment.”
“I would gently suggest that you not go in making demands to someone you have already treated so appallingly.”
“I must make this final demand,” he said. “I have no other choice. My child cannot be born a bastard, and she has to be my wife.”
“Or, hear me out,” Emerald said. “You could practice being decent.”
“There is no decency when it comes to matters of the throne and succession. I will find it later.”
“Will you? Because I thought that you were going to find something nice with Circe at some point, but you never did.”
“How dare you? My marriage is off-limits.”
“All of this needs to be within bounds, Onyx, because somebody needs to speak to you directly. Somebody who doesn’t fear you.”
“Apparently nobody fears me. Did you not hear all of the things that Birdie said to me?”
“Well. I’m not sure if I like you at the moment. But I have a feeling I’m going to like her.”
“I don’t need you to like me. I don’t need anyone to like me. I have to lead this country. And I will do it now.”
He stormed out of the office, and up the stairs. And then he realized he didn’t actually know which room they had installed Birdie in, which meant that he was sent down the corridor, knocking on empty rooms. And by the time he arrived where she was, he had never been so angry.
She made a noise, and he shoved the door open, not waiting for her to tell him to enter.
“The test was positive. The child is mine.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, her face pale, and he could tell that she’d been crying. But she looked at him with all of the steel that he knew was inside her. “You might be surprised by that. I’m not. But thank you for letting me know.”
“There is no question now of the path forward.”
“And what is that?”
“You will marry me. You will be my wife.”
“Will I?”
“You know it makes sense. You know it is the only thing that makes sense.”
“I thought I knew what made sense. And I will tell you, I thought that night that we…”
“What did you think? Were you afraid to say no?”
He was angry, and this feeling of shame wounded his pride, but he was going to be clear on this. Because if she had felt coerced in any way…
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t. I wasn’t scared to say no. I wanted you. I had opinions on who you were, from working for you. But I suppose in much the same way that you didn’t know me, I didn’t know you. I very much regret to say.”
“Good,” he said. “But you didn’t feel coerced.”
“Why? Is that the one thing that would’ve made you feel guilty?”
“It would’ve been important to me. I am not a man who would ever abuse my position of power to—”
“You would never abuse your position of power to get a woman into bed, and I do believe that, but what is this if not an abuse of power?”
“It wouldn’t matter if I lived in a hovel, and had no title to my name, you are carrying my baby. And I would’ve taken you regardless. Because no child of mine is going to grow up without me.”
“You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory in all of this.”
“I’m well aware. Thank you.”
“You expect that I’m going to marry you?”
“Yes. You will marry me. Because if you don’t, I will take the necessary steps to take the child from you, and I will find someone else to stand in as that child’s mother, and you will have no power against me.”
It was the most despicable thing he had ever done, the most vile thing he had ever said.
But he had no other option. He had power, and he was going to abuse it in this moment.
Because the stakes were too high. He didn’t think that he would ever have to do that, because he knew that she would respond to the threat.
He was everything he had ever despised. Everything his father had never been. A bully of the highest order.
All because he had created a situation that he had no other way to get out of.
He had allowed his emotions to cloud everything.
And that was the truth of it. He had been too afraid to believe in the connection between the two of them.
Too afraid to believe that there was any sort of good intent behind her hiding herself and the pregnancy all this time.
And so, he had begun this as a monster, and he would have to finish it that way too.
The disdain in her gaze scorched him. “I’ll marry you.
But God, I wish you hadn’t done this. Do you have any idea how it could have been?
” Her lower lip trembled, and she looked away from him.
“But no. I guess it couldn’t have been. Because this is who you really are.
This is who you really are. You are a man who gives no quarter.
You have no faith in the people around you, and you definitely don’t trust yourself.
Not what you feel, not what you want. And so, maybe it is a good thing that you handled it this way, because I got to see the very worst of you from the outset. ”
“It remains to be seen if it was the worst of me,” he said. “But I do suppose we’ll find out.”
“And when will the wedding be?”
“As soon as possible. You’re visibly pregnant, there is going to be no hiding any of this. Everyone’s going to know when we slept together.”
“I can see that that is a concern for you.”
“Of course it is. It’s not so much a concern for me as it is…my wife’s memory.”
He didn’t think that he imagined her face softened just slightly. “I didn’t know your wife well. But what happened that night, on my end, had nothing to do with disparaging her memory.”
“No. It didn’t for me either.”
He didn’t like sharing his feelings with her, and he could see that she wasn’t going to share hers with him either. She was guarded now. It was his fault.
But it also worked, because he had no desire to give anything of himself.
He didn’t even know what he had to give.
The only thing he could feel right now was anger. Nothing emotionally had caught up with itself. There was just that burning outrage. Though he had a feeling now it was mainly directed at himself.
“The wedding will be announced tomorrow,” he said. “And will take place at the weekend.”
“That’s outrageous. There’s no way that it can all come together in time.”
“It can, and it will. Because I’m the king, and I will it.”
“I hope that you know, we will never have a relationship. Not again.”
“We don’t need one. We already have a child coming. And so, you will be free.”
And he would be trapped again. In the same sort of marriage.
In the same sort of life. He’d experienced one brilliant moment of passion, and he had extinguished it.
So he could take the punishment. He would have to.
He would have to spend the rest of his life working toward being the figurehead that his father was.
Working toward building a legacy that spoke well of his parents.
They had been dead in their mid-thirties.
There was very little space now between his current age and the age his father was when he died.
There was no guarantee that he had years and years to create a legacy. To do his father’s legacy proud.
“Tomorrow the announcement will go out.”
“Is this one of those things where we have to stand up on the balcony and make a statement? Do I have to stand behind you and look grave?”
“No. There will be no announcement. We will get married, you will wear a gown that is discreet regarding your pregnancy, and then we will announce the birth of the child when he is born.”
“Or she.”
“Either one.”
“People will count.”
“Yes. They will. They will count, and that is just fine. But in the meantime, we will buy space from that. In the meantime, we will keep a low profile.”
“Wonderful. Subterfuge. With the man of my dreams.”
“You’re angry with me,” he said. “But now you’re a queen. If you can’t find something to be grateful for in that, then maybe you are never destined for much happiness.”
“That will be a change. Living with someone who despises me? That just seems like more of the same.”
“I don’t despise you.”
“And yet.”
He turned to leave the room, and wondered if there was something else that he could say. There was nothing. But he knew how to live with a contentious wife.
She was right about one thing. It was only more of the same. And it seemed like the two of them had hungered for something different. Now they were going to get it. But he would have a child.
His life wasn’t his own. It belonged to the kingdom.
He could accept that.