“No. You love me?”
“Yes. I love you. And I am sorry that I didn’t tell you before. I was afraid. I was afraid of what it meant to be in love with you alone.”
“You’re not,” she said. “I promise you that you’re not. I love you. I… I was going to tell you this tonight. I wanted us to have a wedding night too. I swear it. I was going to keep giving myself to you, throwing myself at you until you believed it. But I knew that I needed to give you the words. The reason that I went ahead with the wedding to Lucian was because I was scared. Not of what he would do, but of my feelings for you. What I accused you of, that was me. I was so comfortable pining for you.” She swallowed hard. “I told my brother that the reason I couldn’t be with you because you weren’t royal. He reminded me that he never would’ve cared. I knew that.” She choked on a sob. “I knew that. It was never why. It was always because I feared that if I had you, I would love you in such a way that I would lose myself, and Andrei, I struggle… Even with the memory of my mother.”
She buried her face in his neck, crying in earnest now, and he simply held her. “The reason that it has to be a mission is because if it’s not, then she’s just someone that I miss. And I miss her so much. Every day. I remember when she died, and she’d been gone a week, that it was the longest I’d ever been away from her. And every day… It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from her. And time just keeps going on, but the pain doesn’t go away. So it’s better to turn it into action. And then there was you.” She looked up at him. “I loved you from the first moment I saw you. And it was a relief, because I knew that I couldn’t marry someone who wasn’t a king or prince. Don’t you see, it protected me from everything. Making my mother’s memory a crusade. It kept me from grieving her, and it kept me from being hurt by you. But what I didn’t anticipate was that our feelings were just too strong for that. It broke down my walls. It broke down all of my defenses.”
“Emerald,” he whispered. “My princess. You broke down all of mine. I have never wanted anyone else. Not really. I’ve never loved another. And you are right. There was something deeply comforting in that. But I think we know how to love each other. We have worked together, helped each other. We have passion. We have friendship. Over every stage in our relationship, we have found these things, and now all that is left for us is to put them together. As husband and wife. As parents. Lovers. Friends.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Here they were, newly married, half naked, and filled with love for one another. “I can’t wait to tell Onyx.”
He laughed. “Maybe he will be my friend again.”
“He better be. You are, after all, going to be the father of his very first niece or nephew. And you are his brother-in-law now.”
“And we are family,” he whispered.
“Yes. Forever.”
Epilogue
WHENHONORAROSEwas born, named for her two grandmothers that she would never know, no one was happier than her mother and father.
Though her uncle was close behind them.
Onyx held his precious niece, and smiled up at Emerald. “Thank God she favors you. If she had looked like Andrei…”
“A pity,” Andrei said. “That she is so brilliantly ginger like her mother, only because that is part of how I convinced Lucian to extricate himself from the situation.”
Onyx laughed. It was all funny now.
His relationship with Andrei had repaired itself fairly quickly after the wedding. He had seen how happy Andrei and Emerald were together, and he couldn’t stay angry.
The issue really had always been the violation of his trust, but once he realized how wrecked Andrei and Emerald had been over the whole thing, how much they had hurt each other in the process, he hadn’t felt like he had the right to stay angry.
“You are ready to be a father,” Emerald said.
“Yes,” Onyx agreed. “It is time for me to have an heir. I… Circe and I have been discussing it. I… It’s time.”
She felt bad, but the idea of her brother being even more tied to his wife than he already was made her feel sick for him. That was silly, she supposed. They were married.
But he wasn’t happy.
She could only hope that the addition of a child to her brother’s marriage would do something to break the wall of ice between the spouses. But she had her doubts.
Then again, she and Andrei had found their way to each other. After everything.
After Onyx left their quarters, it was time for Honora to have her nap, and Emerald lay down in the bed holding the baby, with Andrei beside her. This was what she had always imagined was impossible. This happiness. The simple joy.
This was what Emerald, the woman, not the princess, not the symbol, had always wanted. This sweet, simple happiness with the man she loved.
She smiled.
“What?”
“Oh, I was just thinking. Love is so simple. When you can heal from all the things that kept you captive all your life.”
Andrei laughed. “Yes. Such a simple thing. And a miracle.”
He leaned in and kissed her, and she had never been so grateful. For everything. Even the pain. Because it had brought them here.
And there was nowhere else she would rather be.
