“It is my first night as master in this home. Yes. I will dress for dinner. And I will see you there.”
And with that, he walked away and left her, in this bedroom, in an unfamiliar home, in an unfamiliar country.
For the first time in her entire life, Princess Emerald felt stripped of everything. Her power, her status.
And perhaps worst of all, of any certainty in her relationship with the man that she had known for most of her life. The man she had always depended on. Trusted.
She was pregnant with his baby, and right now she had no idea what they were.
Or what would become of them.
Andrei knew he couldn’t avoid the phone call when it came through.
He wasn’t a coward. And when it came to this, he would face up to what he had done, even though it was going to destroy everything. He had known that it would. From the moment he had taken hold of her and carried her away, he had known it would. Hell, he had made that calculation when he had decided that taking her was the only thing that could be done. After he’d had her in front of the vanity, a punishment for them both, he had decided that they would both end themselves over this.
But that was before.
And now, there was this conversation.
He answered the phone. “Hello?”
“That’s what you have to say to me?Hello. As if this is a call to discuss the weather, and not you taking my sister at the altar and causing an international incident.”
“Is it an incident? We are blessedly free from the news.”
“How nice for you. I am slowly boiling to death in the consequences. Lucian wants a war.”
“There is nothing I can do,” he said, realizing what he was saying. He did not think that Lucian would actually start a war over this. Perhaps a trade war. And he understood that there would be long-term consequences to that, but he had given up on the greater good.
There was only Emerald. Though his heart felt dark and scarred where she was concerned. Perhaps it had always been that way.
“Why did you do that?”
“I had to.”
“Andrei, you have never done anything that would put our country at risk. You’ve never done anything that would put Emerald at risk. And so I am asking you, what insanity overtook you that you would steal her from the altar? Was Lucian a threat to her? Because I can accept that. If Lucian had put her in danger, then you did what you had to do. But there is nothing else short of that which justifies your actions.”
“He was not a threat to her,” Andrei said. “But she’s mine.”
“This is what I feared. Are you telling me that you… Did you lay a hand on my sister?”
“I laid more on her than a hand, Onyx, and I will admit that before a firing squad if it comes down to it.”
“I trusted you.”
“And I was trustworthy. Until I was not.”
“This doesn’t explain anything to me.”
“I can’t explain it to you. What happened on the yacht is between Emerald and me. The decisions that were made… You are a good friend, and a good king, Onyx, but you don’t know everything. Not about your sister, and not about me. We have our own relationship, and have all these years.” It felt disingenuous for him to say that now with all of the acrimony swirling inside him where she was concerned. But that was his business too.
“Are you going to marry her?”
“I haven’t decided. There is the complicating factor of her pregnancy.”
“What?”
“She’s pregnant. The baby is mine. She was going to marry him and keep the child from me. I think you can see where that has put Emerald and me in a difficult position personally.”
