He did that thing again where he silently mouthed her words to make sense of them. She loved that he did the work of applying basic context clues to understand her Brooklyn and her AAVE. It was often hilarious, but she loved it all the same.
“She did in fact ‘shoot her shot,’ as you say. She hasn’t stopped shooting it since then, no matter how many times I tell her it will never happen.”
It was time for her to puzzle the pieces together until his words solidified their meaning in her head.
“Katia is Farah’s sister?”
He closed his eyes and let his head sink in emotional exhaustion.
“Tell me the rest.”
He laced their fingers together, rubbing his thumb against her skin, causing electricity to flow through her. It tethered her to him, connecting them on more than a physical level. He was drawing strength from her.
“Less than a year later, my mother died, and I became king. Two years after that, my head of security walks into my office and tells me he has news. Apparently, when you become king, at least in the first few years of your reign, royal investigators search for threats to the monarchy, including but not limited to illegitimate children. Evidently, right around the time my mother died, Farah had a baby. My baby.”
She could see the weight of those words bearing down on him, cutting through to his core. It made her squeeze his hand in return, a silent reminder she was here.
“I confronted Farah. Came down on her with the full weight of the crown. I demanded she bring my daughter to me, or I would take the child from her because she’d stolen the girl from me. She tried to explain that she’d kept Charlie a secret because she didn’t want her to have to live as my bastard child at court. I reminded her that Charlie wouldn’t have been illegitimate if Farah had married me like I’d proposed. She said she couldn’t. A gilded cage was still a cage, and she didn’t want to feel imprisoned for the rest of her life.”
His eyes began to redden as he continued.
“I was so pissed with her. She’d stolen my daughter from me. Charlie was born three weeks before my mother died. She robbed my mother of knowing her grandchild. I gave her a week to return to Obsidian Island. If she missed the deadline, I would have an arrest warrant issued for her. She was on Nyeusi, with whom we have an extradition agreement. She knew I had the power to realize those threats, so she agreed.”
The anger slid away, and sorrow crept in. She could see the ache of loss begin to eat at him, and she wanted so badly to comfort him, to tell him it was all right. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t ignore this thing that had been cutting him to the bone and taking more and more of him away from her and their baby.
“The day she was to leave, weather reports warned of a coming storm. As soon as I learned of it, I told her not to leave, that she could come after the storm without penalty. But she was so angry with me for forcing her hand that she wouldn’t listen. She told me she’d already packed up her place, and she was leaving early enough that the storm shouldn’t be an issue. They’d be here in an hour.”
A single tear slid down his cheek as he looked at her, reaching for a lifeline to help him get through this last part. The worst part.
“The storm came early.”
The impact of those words hit her square in the chest.
“They lost control of the vessel.”
Again, another thump in the middle of her chest as the staccato of his cadence beat against her like a drum.
“The boat capsized, and they were lost at sea. Search teams from both Nyeusi and Obsidian Island implemented every rescue plan available. Soon, however, rescue turned into recovery. They were gone.”
She reached out for him, pulling both his hands into hers and pressing her lips against them.
“Dear God, Aléx, I’m so sorry for your loss.”
His head snapped up as his gaze landed on hers.
“My loss? You don’t blame me?”
Regina was a very smart woman, there were few things in the world that she didn’t understand or couldn’t figure out easily if she dedicated her attention to them. This, however, had her stumped.
“Why on earth would I blame you? It was an accident.”
He shook his head and stood up, pacing back and forth in front of her.
“Because of my selfishness, my need to reclaim what was mine, I led the three-year-old daughter I’d never met and hermother on a path that ultimately led to their deaths. This is my fault.”
She sat back, trying to take him in, seriously trying to follow his logic, and she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Too raw from all the emotions of the night, she just didn’t have the stomach for any of what was happening. There was only one way she could handle this situation and him. She would shoot straight from the hip.
“That is bullshit, Aléx, and you know it. Are all kings this arrogant, or is there some sort of stupidity gene that runs in royal bloodlines? I swear, between you and Jasiri, I don’t know who has it worse, me or my sister.”
