Chapter Twelve
The next day, Birdie was still turning over her dinner with Onyx in her head. She could think of nothing else.
Not just his physical beauty either. But the way he’d actually been vulnerable with her last night. The way he’d shared with her. But then also there was his physical beauty.
Which was vast indeed.
Pretty embarrassing to admit that level of fixation with someone who thought so poorly of her. When she came downstairs in the morning, he was already sitting there eating breakfast.
She smiled. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
Last night he’d actually shared with her, and that had stuck with her. Maybe she should try vulnerability instead of just honesty.
“It’s so quiet here. You know, I’ve never lived by myself.
And I’ve never even really gotten to spend a substantial amount of time without people around me.
I’m often by myself. Lonely in the palace, moving through and doing my chores without chatting to anyone.
And then, it’s the same at my stepmother’s house.
Everyone ignores me. Unless they need something from me. Then it’s all commandments.”
“I know what you mean.”
She smiled. “I guess you do. Though, I would venture to say that people speak to you with a bit more deference.”
“Not Andrei or my sister.”
“No. I suppose they don’t. I was very impressed with your sister for taking my side when you first brought me into the palace.”
“Emerald is like that. And she certainly doesn’t do what I say.”
“No. When she left that convenient marriage you set up for her and married her bodyguard instead I think the whole kingdom was scandalized.”
“I did not set up that convenient marriage for her,” he said.
She was shocked by that.
“You didn’t?”
“No. I would never have married my sister off to somebody that she didn’t want.
She did that. She was so convinced that she needed to do something to help consolidate the power in the kingdom.
She wanted to make herself as useful as I made myself, at least, that’s what she said.
I tried to stop her, but once Emerald makes her mind up on something, nothing dissuades her.
Except Andrei. Who seduced her, and got her pregnant. ”
“So it runs in the family.”
“Getting trapped into marriage by her pregnancy?”
She snorted. “Something like that.”
He was uncomfortable with the comparison between himself and his sister.
Obviously.
“I want to go explore more on the island today. Go to the beach. I found some snorkeling equipment in one of the rooms.”
“Are you sure you should do that while pregnant?”
“This is my very first adventure, Onyx.”
It was the first time she called him by his name like that. Not trying to wound him or strike out at him. Not trying to be difficult. But just called him by his name because that’s what felt natural.
“Obviously, I will accompany you.”
“You sound so excited for your afternoon at the beach.”
“Recreation is—”
“Not something you usually engage in?”
“However did you guess?”
He looked very nearly amused, and she fetched some herbal tea, and fruit, and joined him at the table.
“Let’s go,” she said.
That’s how they found themselves down on the beach, with the picnic basket, and snorkels and flippers.
He was in that very brief swimsuit again, and she would be lying if she didn’t say she very much liked it.
But she didn’t have to say it out loud. The water was like a bath, smooth and clear and warm. The sea life was more plentiful than she could’ve imagined, and she felt like she was living in a dream. It turned out snorkeling while pregnant was a lovely activity, regardless of what Onyx had said.
He stood resolutely on the shore while she swam around, looking at fish and manta rays, and it was just such a strange thing. Because it felt like a beautiful thing that this was her life, all of a sudden.
She didn’t hate him.
She didn’t hate him, but it was frightening to think that she could develop feelings for him again.
Because at no point had he professed to wanting that.
No. In fact, even though he had been perfectly cordial for two whole days now, she still felt extremely guarded around him.
Like he might turn on her at any moment.
It was almost as if not only did she have a lifetime of experience with that, but he had done it to her just like everyone else.
She took her snorkel off, and rolled over so that she was lying on her back, floating there in the water. She looked up at the fathomless blue sky and then stood. The water was shallow, even as far out as she was, only coming to her waist.
She looked up at him, and he looked away.
She didn’t want to ask herself if he was looking at her. But unfortunately, it was then all she could think of.
She began to walk up out of the water, moving toward him. They had done a lot of talking since yesterday. She felt vulnerable. She felt like she was clinging onto the very edge of her sanity. Or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she wasn’t at all.
But what she did know was that the ache for him didn’t seem to want to go away. What she did know was that one thing that made sense was touching him.
Are you an idiot?
She was. She had been the entire time. An idiot for him. An idiot to believe that love and beauty existed somewhere in this world in light of everything that she had experienced.
Ever since he devastated her, she had looked at it as a flaw. Had taken stock of her life and asked herself why in the world she thought miracles could happen.
And many of them had. She was a queen, after all. And how many maids went from cleaning the palace to living in it?
Maybe more in history than she knew about.
But it had felt like too much to imagine that they could be more. That she could have more.
He was so difficult. The only time she had ever seen emotion in him was the night of his wife’s funeral. Or rage. It was only those two things. Passion. Anger.
Choose passion.
It felt so dangerous.
And yet, right then, it was also the only thing that made sense.
She cast her snorkeling equipment to the side, as she walked up out of the water, and moved toward him. And she wasn’t the one who had to close the distance between them, because he did it.
He went toward her, wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her against his body. “I don’t understand what it is you do to me.”
He sounded angry. Well, that was right on track. She had plenty of his anger. Just like she’d had his passion. Maybe now she would get them both. Maybe now she would get them together, she would take that.
She was yearning for something. For everything, maybe. To be loved, to be cherished, to be queen, to be free. It was too much. Too much for a simple girl to hope for, but so many girls had. For so many years. All she wanted was everything. Why not?
She was already pregnant with the king’s baby.
And she was tired. She was tired of not having everything.
Maybe this would hurt. Maybe her mistake was believing that she could find a way to exist without pain. That she could gather up all the good, and it would cancel out the bad.
Maybe what she needed to do was accept that there would always be danger.
Yes. There would always be danger.
She reached up and touched his face, traced the line of his high cheekbones, all the way down to his sculpted jaw.
He was so beautiful.
Her king.
Her husband.
She wasn’t common, and neither were they. But they also were. And there was something beautiful in that. Just two people at the mercy of this intense need. She had to believe that he felt it too.
She had done a good job of convincing herself that for him, it had never been this. For him it had never been this driving, intense need, but rather it had been his need to escape the grief that he was drowning in.
She knew that wasn’t true now.
He was sad about his wife. He grieved her, as one did any young life lost.
But it hadn’t been grief borne out of passion.
It had been something else. He had been reaching out for connection, and she would take that.
She would.
Then he lowered his head, and claimed her mouth. This kiss had a different flavor than any of the ones they had shared before.
It wasn’t tinged with grief. And it wasn’t filled with the kind of reverence that the one in the garden had been filled with.
She had lost that. That moment of pure emotion, and it wasn’t her fault.
It was his fear. She knew that. Understood it.
But she could let it go. For now.
She could just accept this, as it was.
He cupped the back of her head, and deep into the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers, one arm tight around her waist as he held her against the firm, muscular wall of his body.
Out there in the sun. No masks, no one to watch.
They weren’t shrouded in darkness, weren’t hiding in the shadows.
They weren’t shrouded in grief.
Not in fear.
She wasn’t going to have to go home to her stepmother’s house tonight. She could stay with him. They could explore this.
They actually had all the time in the world. To try to sort out what this was. To try to sort out what it could be.
That was terrifying. Comforting.
Because that meant they had a lot of time to hurt each other.
But a lot of time to heal each other too.
Maybe it meant that she couldn’t continue to hang onto that part of her that wanted to protect herself.
Anger, she had found, was easy. Anger insulated you. Anger kept you from being hurt. It allowed you to turn the barbs that were being directed at you onto the other person.
It had been a revelation, because she just wasn’t an angry person, but everything that had happened to her in the last few months had let her brew something vile and toxic inside of her, and she had found it to be a wonderful source of strength and protection.
But it had to stop.
It had to. She had to make room for this.
And for all the endless possibilities in it.