“Get down from there.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“You are absurd. And pregnant.”
“A pair, we make then. For you are ignorant and arrogant, and I am absurd and pregnant.” She reached out and plucked a fruit off the end of the branch. “And I am also in possession of a guava. You may envy me now. Something to add to your list of adjectives.”
“Get down.”
“If I died, you would find yourself short one problem.”
And that was when he crossed the empty space between them, and gripped hold of the branch she was standing on, hauling himself upward, wrapping his muscular arm around her waist and pulling her down. His skin was bare, slick and wet from his time in the waterfall, and he was also hot. The heat coming from inside of him, a raging inferno of intensity and hard muscle.
She did her best not to yelp as he nestled her against his broad chest and brought her back down to the ground.
“You are foolish,” he said, plucking the guava out of her hands. “That’s mine,” she said.
He looked down at her, those dark eyes fierce. Her heart began to beat harder, faster. She became so acutely aware of where her breasts brushed against his hard wall of muscle, where his arm was wrapped around her like an uncompromising steel band. And how much it reminded her of the last time he’d held her like this. In the garden. Before he’d discovered the pregnancy. Before he’d decided that she was his enemy.
“You are silly,” he said.
“I am not silly. I want a guava. I would beg that you haul your royal ass up the tree and fetch me another one, since you have stolen my bounty.”
He stared at her, his expression unreadable.
“Well?”
“It is not befitting for a king to climb a tree.”
“Remember, you are not a king here.”
“I fear that I am a king always.”
“No,” she said. “Only if you want it to be true. Have you ever just been a person? Even before you were king? Were you ever just… Onyx?”
“I was the heir,” he said. “There is a set of obligations that come with that from the moment you take your first breath.” He stepped away from her. “Our child will bear the same fate.”
She frowned, a heavy sensation settling in her chest. “Oh. I hadn’t really thought of that.”
“It’s the truth. Our child will meet the same fate once I die.”
“Don’t die anytime soon.”
He laughed. “Believe me, making it longer than my father is a goal of mine.”
“You became the heir when you were sixteen?”
“I did.”
“So before that did you ever…?”
“Climb trees? Pick fruit? Live even a moment when I wasn’t aware of the crushing weight of the responsibility of what lay before me? Not especially.”
“You’re not any more free than I am, are you?”
In fact, he was significantly less free. Yes, she could leave. And the consequences of that would’ve been a struggle. A life of poverty, most likely. But the entire weight of the nation didn’t rest on her head.
Though, she supposed it did now. At least to an extent.
