“It’s called matching energy,” she said. And with that, he left her there. Then on shaking legs, she walked over to the bed.
Then she threw herself down on it, and cried until she couldn’t breathe.
Chapter Seven
Onyx sat inhis study, a glass of whiskey in his hand. His sister hadn’t allowed him to dismiss her quite so easily, and that was, yet again, an issue with having his brother-in-law as his chief of security; there was no keeping her out. Because Andrei was never going to side with Onyx. Not on matters that included Emerald. Onyx was already sitting there, awash in a strange sort of shame.
Because he hadn’t known that the woman who had come to him that night was a servant. And he had immediately gone to the power that a person with bad intent could hold to ruin his reputation. But what she had spoken of was the disparity in their actual power.
Had she wanted to have sex with him? She said that she had.
But when she put it that way, it was… It was grim, was what it was.
He held power over her, not just as the king of the nation, but direct power to end her job.
Had she been forced to say yes to him? Had that entire night been something that he viewed through the wrong lens? And then he had… Well, he had been awful to her. Emerald was there in his office, looking at him like he was as low as he felt like he might be.
“I have never known you to treat a woman this way.”
“You have never known that part of me,” he said.
In truth, he had never known this part of himself. This was sharp and jagged, with no control to be found at all. A disaster, in short.
He’d been so careful with his assignations when he was younger, and then he had been married. This was him, and the consequences of passion. It was something he’d never navigated before. Something he had no experience with.
And apparently, he didn’t react well to it.
“What if she is pregnant with your child?”
He hadn’t been worried about that. He had been solely focused on his anger. He had been convinced there was no way that it could be his child, and he had only convinced himself further in the days since the ball.
Now he was actually grappling with it. In these hours before the test results came in.
What if she was? Well, then there was no question; he would have to marry her. He was not the sort of man who would keep a mistress. And he was definitely not the sort of man who would keep a child in the shadows. Who would make a bastard out of an heir. And he needed an heir. So there was no point to it besides. But it would lay bare his own failings. There would be no covering this up. The entirety of the kingdom—the world—would be able to do the math on this. There was no rescuing the optics.
And there was quite possibly no rescuing the relationship that he had now begun with Birdie.
Birdie. Roberta. A commoner, who may very well end up being his next queen. A woman who would hate him just as much as his first wife.
And it was his fault. Perhaps all of it was his fault.
He had handled this in all the wrong ways, but he had no idea what else he might’ve done.
Not been a raging dick?
Well. There was that. But everything felt so…precarious. He was afraid to hope that it was his child, and he was also afraid that it might be.
“You could’ve handled it differently.”
“Really? Thank you. I appreciate you jumping in in the eleventh hour to lecture me.”
“It isn’t a lecture. It’s a truth. You could’ve been better.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you. But I am not… No matter how much I might try, I am not a figurehead. And I’m not someone that should’ve been up on a pedestal for you. I’m a man. And I made a mistake. Maybe.”
She stayed with him. Even though she was furious. Awaited the results of the test. And when they came in, he didn’t know if he was relieved or filled with shame.
Because the child was his; there was no doubt about it.
