“But they did live. They did have lives that weren’t simply symbolism.”
She nodded. “I do know that.”
“Why don’t you rest?”
The idea of rest was foreign to her. She was always doing things. Always spearheading a committee, starting another project.
“It feels… It feels wrong.”
“It is not,” he said. “You are having my baby, and I have thoroughly antagonized you. I would prefer that you took your rest.”
It was his form of an apology. He had never truly had to admit that he was wrong before. And with her, he knew he had been. His treatment of her had been unfair. And had been about his own feelings. Not about her.
“Rest,” he insisted. “And maybe, for the first time, try and figure out what it is you want.”
She was beginning to feel lazy.
She had spent days lying in bed since that strange, conversation she had with Andrei. She felt tender, thinking about her mom as a human. As her mother. Especially thinking about becoming a mother herself. It made her think about legacy in a very different way. She’d made it less of a personal thing because really remembering her mother hurt.
Andrei had offered her so much insight into her parents, and he had been so kind and… She didn’t know where it had come from.
She also didn’t really know how to get deeper than that.
He was such a strange brick wall.
There was an inherent goodness to him, she was sure of that. But there was also difficulty.
The man was difficult.
Her feelings for him were no less difficult. The trouble was lying around like this, with no royal duties, with nothing, was that she had the opportunity to examine images of different kinds of futures. And there was one that she had never let herself hope for. Not really. One where she married Andrei. Where she had love. And maybe she wouldn’t be written about. A princess who married her bodyguard. Maybe it was no kind of legacy. Maybe it would make headlines, but nothing deeper than that.
She had lived her entire life for what would happen after she died.
She had no idea how to live.
It was that thought that finally got her out of bed on a supremely sunny day, and outside. Rebecca told her that there were berries along the trail, and if she wanted a cake, she could go and pick some. So, she found herself out on a sun-drenched trail that wound through a field, picking fat, red berries and putting them in a basket.
It was a delightfully slow, rustic thing to do, and she had never lived a slow or rustic life.
It was strange to think that only a month and a half ago she had been boarding a beautiful yacht with every amenity she could want, and now she was in a crumbling manor without access to the internet.
Picking berries.
But without the input from the rest of the world, it was like she could finally hear herself.
“What are you doing out here?”
She turned sharply, startling for a moment, because that there would be anyone out here was a shock, and her first thought was that Onyx or Lucian had found her. But it was Andrei. Thank God.
“You scared me,” she said.
“Sorry. I didn’t expect to see you out and about.”
“I’m tired of myself,” she said.
He laughed. “It’s a common malady these days, I fear.”
“Are you tired of yourself, Andrei?”
