The Queen's Baby Scandal

“I don’t,” he said, the words gritted out through his teeth.

“Just with me, then. But still. I did not trick you. The fact that you assumed fine meant what you wanted it to mean and went along with it speaks to how foolish men are where sex is concerned.”

As if she would have been capable of making a more rational decision in the moment.

“I want my child,” he said.

“It’s my child.” Hers. Her child to love and to raise as she saw fit. To support and protect. And give all the things her parents never had. “By law. I can declare my child fatherless, and I have done so.”

“That might be a law, Queen Astrid, but it is not reality. I am the father of your child whether you speak it or not. And I am not one of your citizens.”

“No. But you are in my country. Which is where my child will be born. And my child is one of my citizens.”

“You underestimate me. You are so arrogant because of your position. You have no idea who you are dealing with. You feel that you face opposition? Do you truly understand what opposition is? It is not a disgruntled cough during a meeting that makes you feel as if someone might be challenging you. No. I will give you so much more than that. If you would like to learn about opposition, I will give you a study in it.”

“You should know that I don’t respond well to threats,” she said, her tone like ice. “Indeed, I don’t respond to them at all.”

“You don’t respond to empty threats. Because that is all the red-faced, posturing men that you’ve dealt with in the past have ever issued. But I will tell you, my Queen, my threats are never idle. They are very real. I might be a bastard of ignoble birth, but the power that I possess is very real indeed. What will the public think if I were to claim my child?”

“Why?” she asked. “It is my understanding that a man in your position will want nothing to do with the child. And that is one reason I selected you, lest you think that I meant you any harm or wanted anything from you.”

“You assumed you knew what manner of man I was based on the press and what they had written about me, and that was your first mistake. Tell me, Astrid, what does the press say about you? How true is it?”

“The press has never had occasion to write about a scandal of mine. And I knew full well going into this that I was inviting that. You cannot scare me.”

“You have imagined the wrong sorts of headlines, I think. I doubt what you want is a long-term custody battle looming over your head. The problem here is that you imagined me as a prop. A means to an end, but what you failed to see as you read all of those headlines, as you examine all those photos of me in the articles and imagine me touching you. Imagine me claiming that body of yours, and we both know you imagined it. That you got wet thinking of it late at night in your bed. You forgot what I am.”

Astrid drew back, her heart thundering. Because he was so close to the truth, it cut her close to the heart. He wasn’t wrong. She had imagined him as a chess piece. Capable of strategy, certainly, but she had also imagined that she could see ahead to every move he might make. That she understood what sort of man he was, and what he might want. But his standing here had proved already that he was not anything like she had anticipated.

She had thought of him as a barbarian, as a conqueror so many times. But in a vague, fantastical sense. In a sexual one. She had not thought in concrete terms about what it would mean to go up against this man.