ANDREI WOKE UPsitting by the fire. The sun was filtering through the sky, and his face was sore from where Emerald had slapped him. Deservedly. He had slept in the library all night, though he hadn’t meant to.
Was this to be their life? Their marriage?
He owed her better than that. He was angry, still, but… To what end?
And what was he angry at?
It wasn’t her. Not truly. If they were going to raise a child together, then they could not live like this.
He had lost his grip on himself. He might’ve embraced aspects of his father’s ways, but one thing he would not do was raise a child the way he had been raised. He would not raise his daughter to be a pawn. He wouldn’t raise his son to be detached and deadly.
Emerald’s family was royal, she had treated herself in much the way the mafiosi’s daughters did. That grim determination to use what she had available to her to make things better for the family.
In her case, the country. And yet the end result was the same.
He got up and walked into the dining room. There she was, seated already. Drinking a cup of warm liquid, and eating a pile of toast. “Good morning,” she said.
She looked up at him, almost shyly. There was none of the antagonisms from the night before. “I’m very sorry that I hit you.”
“It is nothing,” he said.
“It wasn’t nothing. It was a total failure of maturity on my part.”
“I antagonized you.”
“Yes. You did. But that doesn’t mean that I get to behave that badly.”
“Sleep seems to have restored some of your civility.”
She nodded. “We’ve known each other too long to fall apart.”
He made a short noise in the back of his throat. “I suppose so.”
“I realized something. I don’t know how to live when it isn’t for the greater good. You are right about that. I am ill-equipped to handle my emotions because I have never allowed them to take center stage. That is… It’s very difficult. And I don’t know how to do this. So, I’m going to make mistakes. And occasionally be deeply unpleasant.”
“I am always deeply unpleasant.”
“You didn’t used to be.”
“I was doing my job.”
“Yes. And part of your job was suppressing yourself, as a man.”
He nodded. “I have long thought that it kept the world safe for me. Because if I carry elements of my father with me—and these last days have proven I do—it is best to keep it under wraps. But I will not be like my father with our child. And to that end, we must find a different way of being, you and I.”
She put her elbows on the table, put her head in her hands. “This is so complicated. Because even if we make peace with each other, we might have plunged my country into war.”
“Trust Onyx. He’ll figure out a way out of this. You and I must focus on each other. On our child.”
“You very casually put all this on my brother.”
“Only because I devoted so much of my life to him. Asking him to devote a small portion of his to me, to you, is not entirely unreasonable.”
She looked like she was considering that.
“All right. So what are we… What are we to do then? We are just in hiding?”
“We have all of these grounds. We can do anything you like.”
