“It sounds to me as if you’ve gone to him more than enough times.”
“I think that’s the exact advice that I would give to a friend,” Birdie said. “But I just can’t help feeling that…that I can’t afford to cling to pride at the expense of what we could have.”
“Well, I would hope that I would extend the same grace to my husband. If he were being such a fool. And he’s been a fool in the past. Believe me. But now… If he did it now I don’t know what I would do.”
“You love him. Just like I love Onyx. There is something simple and uncomplicated about that. Yes, making myself available to him makes me vulnerable. If I could get angry, then I could protect myself. If I cut him off, then I could shield myself, but to what end? I want to be with him. I don’t want to leave him. When we were on our honeymoon I was the happiest I’ve ever been. That’s what I want. And you know, if I really thought the issue was that he didn’t love me—”
“He loves you,” Emerald said. “I’m honestly certain of it. The way that he has treated you has been appalling, and the way that he’s afraid of emotion leads me to believe that’s definitely why.”
“Well. Good to know, I guess.”
She was willing to go to him. She was willing to fight for him. Just like she was willing to fight her way out of the attic she’d been locked in. She wanted everything.
And she wouldn’t settle for the crumbs.
Neither should he.
Chapter Fifteen
He was holdinghis breath, he realized two days later. Waiting for something to happen. Something awful. Something unexpected.
Because he didn’t trust anything. How could he? When life had proved repeatedly to be cruel. He’d found this passion with Birdie, they were having a child together and he would never be able to keep her safe. He would never be able to keep their child safe. Life could always have dominion over them, the power to crush them at any moment.
He was a king. With all the power in the world, and he lived his life in abject fear.
For his parents had been stolen from him. He’d had to rearrange all his life to be the man the country needed him to be. He’d married Circe, and then she had died too.
There was no magic key. There was no loving enough or too little or just right. People died. They were stolen away with no notice, and there was no throne, no title, no money, nothing, that could change it.
If he was not safe, if the people in his life were not safe, no one was.
It ate at him. Threatened to tear him apart from the inside out.
Yet Birdie had lost. So much. Her parents, just as he had. Her freedom. Her autonomy. She wasn’t afraid. How?
He thought of what she had said to him, about her mother.
Her mother, who had known she was dying, and who loved anyway. But then what good was she? Because she had died, and her daughter had been subjected to a terrible life. A miserable upbringing.
She was loved. And that love had made her who she was.
It was astonishing. Miraculous.
And she had said that she loved him. He’d turned her away.
He was filled with regret.
He was no stranger to the harsh cruelty of life, but…he didn’t know what to do when he was caught between his fear of the cruelty, and being the cruelty.
Little Birdie, the maid he’d taken no notice of for so long, was braver than a king. She knew how difficult life could be and yet she didn’t flinch.
From the moment she’d found herself pregnant with his baby, she’d been braver, more honest, more forthright, than he’d ever been.
Birdie was miraculous. If there was a key to living, then she had it.
If there was a way for him to heal, it might be through her.
And he’d pushed her away.
