No. You’re not dying. You have a child to think of. You have a country to think of. And you have yourself to think of.
Whether it was denial or not, she had felt some form of happiness these past few days, and she would cling to that. She wasn’t meant to be miserable forever. Nobody was.
There was always hope. She wasn’t going to discard it now.
When she reached the head of the aisle, he extended his hand toward her, and her breath caught. He had touched her that day that he had taken her from her stepmother’s house. But it hadn’t been gentle. It hadn’t been like when they had touched that night in the study. This wouldn’t be either.
But it felt significant. Slowly, she let him take her hand. His own was large, calloused and strong. He wrapped it around her fingers, and held onto her tightly.
“Let us begin,” the priest said.
He was saying words, but she was busy focusing on Onyx. She had done her very best not to think of him. Not to imagine him. And now there he was. Looking at her with those fathomless, dark eyes, his mouth set into a grim line. She tried to find something in his expression that reminded her of her lover from that night. But she couldn’t see it.
Maybe it was foolish to look for it now. What would it change?
What would it change?
Well, it might give her the assurance that he was all of these things. The hard, difficult man who had become a villain to her when he didn’t trust her, but also, the passionate lover who had given her the kind of pleasure she had only ever dreamed of before.
Without love, did it matter? Because that night she had given herself to him out of something much deeper than lust.
But maybe it didn’t have to be that way. Maybe she could just enjoy his body. Maybe, if she didn’t want to hold on to her anger they could build something a little bit more like…
No. This was the danger of thinking of the future. She grounded herself in the moment, in her breathing. In him. That was the problem. The thing in front of her right now was Onyx.
She realized now that he was a stranger to her.
That was the real lesson. The one that she had been resisting.
It wasn’t that she had known him before, and then he had changed. He contained multitudes. The ability to make her sigh out with pleasure, and make her weep.
He was hard, and he was soft. He was good, and he could do very bad things.
He could be a man respectful to the one who served him his coffee every day, and he could be a vicious snob.
He would defend his territory, would make it clear that he was not to be trifled with when he felt that he needed to.
Onyx was something much more complex than she had ever allowed him to be. He had been a king that she loved. And she had been a servant. He had been married, out of reach for so many reasons, and now she had to actually contend with the reality of him. So far that reality was difficult. So far that reality was something she wanted little to do with.
And now she was going to have to face it. Head-on. “We will now say vows. Onyx, repeat after me.”
And Onyx did. In low, certain tones, and she was listening to try to divine if there was truth to it, or if this was only ceremony.
Because with him it could be either.
When she spoke the words back, she had to make a decision of her own. Ceremony. It would only be ceremony, these promises. These pieces of herself that she had to give away to this man forever and ever so that she could have her child, so that she could have some peace.
And yet it shifted. Because she found herself digging deep and making those promises for real.
Not so much to him, but to herself. To her child.
That she would try to devote herself to this, to this role, with real sincerity, to try to make a place of happiness and security.
She wished that it didn’t feel profound. She wished that it didn’t feel like she was giving herself to him, because she was still angry, and she didn’t feel that he deserved it.
But it wasn’t about what he deserved. It was about what was real.
This moment was real. This wedding was real.
