And all that was left was their memory.
All that you could cling to was… Grief.
Unless you could make it a mission. She was so good at making a mission.
And so bad at living. At feeling. At being a whole person.
“What is it?”
“It’s too painful. I can’t bear it, Onyx. I can’t bear how much I love him. I haven’t been able to bear it or stand it or admit it since I was fifteen. If I were to lose him, I would lose everything. Love is terrible. I pretty much went to the ends of the earth to outrun it, and it came after me.”
“Then why do you look so sad? If the two of you love each other…”
“Because we don’t. Because it… I love him. I do. But I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t even know how to reach myself. It sounds so stupid, but I only know how to be a princess. In Romania, it was different. I was… Angry, and sometimes unstable. I was his friend. Then we decided that we would do this, for the good of our child. We are better when we’re on a mission, don’t you get it?”
“I don’t. I’ve never been in love.”
It spoke volumes about his marriage. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. She wondered how things had been in the months since she and Andrei had left. The answer was likely, not good. Not good at all.
“Well, it’s terrible. I… I hurt him. I think he did love me. I don’t think he ever will again. Our relationship is now in name only.”
“That is the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard,” Onyx said. “And guaranteed to end in destruction.”
“It won’t. We’re both very good at this.”
“Let’s not discuss the severe implosion the two of you had right before your wedding.”
“I’m sorry. That’s really what I’m trying to say. I’m sorry. I am going to marry him. Our child will be legitimate.” Since she was making demands now, she would go ahead and make more. She still wanted to do something of importance for her country, and she would. “And I would like a job in your cabinet. I would like to take on foreign affairs. I know that I can negotiate different trade deals, different alliances. I’m good at that.”
“You are. You know you could’ve always had this, if only you would’ve asked.”
“But I was being the architect of my own impossible love story,” she said. “I couldn’t ask you for this, I couldn’t take it, because then… I wouldn’t have any excuses, and how can I keep myself safe?”
“And how will you do it now, sister? How? Because you will have everything you want, and still deny yourself? You will have the man of your dreams, be married to him, have a child with him, and deny yourself everything?”
“I’ll have him. With me. That’s not denying myself everything. The worst thing is to miss somebody like you’ve lost a limb. At least to have him with me.”
“Hear me when I tell you this. There are worse things than that. Having somebody with you and not being able to reach them, that is the loneliness that you are not prepared for.”
It felt like such a deep, dark warning, and it left her feeling shaken.
“Well, it’s something I’m going to have to get used to, I fear.”
“You don’t have to get used to it, Emerald. You can still turn back from this. I don’t care if there are two thousand people out there and millions on a live stream. Nothing has ever mattered but your happiness.”
It wasn’t a shock to hear that from her brother. He had always behaved that way. It seemed like she was the only person who had a difficult time wanting to be happy. Because happiness on a grand scale felt so risky. It felt like something that could be taken away. Felt like something awful, painful and terrible.
“You can turn back.”
She was in a terrible position now. Because the truth was, she could never fully be happy without Andrei. He was her person. In so many ways. But now that she was looking straight down the barrel of her own cowardice, she realized that there was one thing she hadn’t offered him. Her heart.
She had offered her body, she had offered her hand in marriage, but she hadn’t truly made herself vulnerable to him.
He had done it for her.
He had risked everything to take her from that wedding. He had shown his heart. Because he hadn’t been claiming the baby. All of his anger and his rage after that had been because he had broken his own moral code, his own vows, for her.
Why would he say that he loved her after that?
