“But my parents have a legacy,” she said. “A legacy of kindness. Of care. Of sacrificing for their people.”
He said nothing, but he looked around the room, and then at her. “And what is gained by that? So they can be written about in the history books, but where does that leave you?”
“I will go back and serve my country.”
“Do you believe that your parents loved each other?”
She blinked. “Yes. I do.”
“So was your mother’s act one of self-sacrifice?”
“Yes. She couldn’t have known what was waiting for her in the palace.”
“It wasn’t the Dark Ages. She had seen pictures of your father. Certainly she knew that there was an attraction there.”
“Well, I saw pictures of Lucian. And I went anyway.”
“You have so romanticized martyrdom. It would do you well to romanticize the martyrdom that you will find here. Martyring yourself for your child.”
She gritted her teeth. “You’re blaming me for this,” she said. “And I don’t deserve it. You think that if you hadn’t found out I was pregnant, you would’ve taken me here, and we would’ve what? Married, been blissfully honeymooning by now? Tangled around one another, saying sweet words to one another? No. Because the only thing that you are equipped to do, Andrei, islong. Pining is what you’re most comfortable doing. For the things that you can’t have. Now that you have me, you don’t actually want me. Because there’s something… Broken in you,” she said, completely losing track of the rule that she had made not to fight with him.
She continued on at him. “You know how to want. Not how to have. You do not know how to experience happiness, joy. Nothing. And it suited you, to make me the object of your desire and have me ever out of your reach. I just tested the limits of your self-control, and I think that’s what you’re really angry about. Your lack of self-control put you in this situation. Because you would have let me go. If you weren’t so jealous, because you had touched me, because you knew you had taken my virginity, then you never would’ve taken me from that altar. You would have enjoyed your life fantasizing that you love me better than he ever could. Better than he ever did, without ever actually having to do any of the loving. Because now that you have me, you despise me. That isn’t just about what I did. That’s about your own inability to feel.”
She began to turn to walk out of the room, but he was lightning fast, out of his chair, grabbing hold of her arm before she could do so. “You do not speak of me that way.”
“What? Don’t speak the truth to you?”
“I don’t love you,” he said. “You are right about that. But I wanted you. I wanted you with such a ferocity that it made my bones ache, and the reason that I didn’t take you was that I knew nothing could ever come of it. You speak as though I am afraid, I am not afraid. I did you a favor. I could never have offered you marriage. I could never have offered you what you wanted, not and continue to let you live the life that you had before. Princess Emerald of Basilia could not marry the son of a crime lord. There is no noble blood in my veins, there is only selfishness. But it didn’t change because I have you. Lust is not love.”
He had succeeded in hurting her, and she despised him for that. It shouldn’t hurt. Not when he was lying. “You said that I meant the world to you.”
“You have to understand what that means coming from a man like me. My own father never loved anyone or anything more than himself. That is the life I know. I know how to swear allegiance and loyalty to a cause. I am very good at that. You were my cause for so many years. And so, there was no more glorious torture than desiring you. Than desiring to break that vow that I made to protect you. To keep you safe above all else. Yes, that’s who I am. A man who only enjoys the sacred because they are forbidden. And perhaps you are right about one thing. I was ill-equipped tohavethe forbidden. And now I do. But don’t turn it into something more beautiful than that. Do not adorn it with the flowers of love, when it is only base, common lust.”
She slapped him. She didn’t even think. Her hand was flying through the air, connecting with his face. She had never committed an act of violence in her life. But she had loved this man. With all of herself. And he was doing his level best to dismantle it. To dismantle everything. Because not only had he taken away her legacy, he had taken away her ability to do the one thing that she had needed to do in order to sit secure in her place in her family tree as one who had done well, but he had taken away the strength of what had happened between them. He was destroying it. Undermining it. Making it into something that she knew full well it was not.
He held the side of his face, glared at her, his dark eyes filled with rage. But he did not make a move toward hurting her.
“What would your father have done?”
“He would’ve given you as good as you gave,” he said. “But I have no appetite for hitting women. Even if they are spoiled brats.”
“Yes, because the act of a spoiled brat is to sacrifice herself for the greater good of the country.”
“You keep telling yourself that. But you stand there, and you accuse me of not being able to have emotions. Are you any different? You have no idea what it means to be alive. No idea what it means to be human, apart from your sense of honor. And so what do you do now, Princess Emerald, if you have no one to live for but yourself.”
“I have my child,” she said. “I will live for them.”
“So comfortable with a cause. You are but a vessel. For justice for your kingdom, for our child. What else are you?”
“Whatever I am, at least I’m not a monster.”
Then she did turn, and he didn’t stop her. She put her hand to her chest and tried to still her throbbing heart.
How dare he?
How dare he ask those questions and lead her down roads that she didn’t want to go down. Because they were…
Because they were right. Because he was right.
