by s. Behr
“It’s so much better than it was,” Lily had said, her words full of encouragement, but her eyes spoke the truth. The entire right side of my face was crisscrossed with streaks of scars resembling tiny lightning burned into my skin. Wispy ends streaked onto the left side of my face across my forehead and my nose, but left my lips and eyes mostly unscarred. When I touched my face, it felt like mountains of blistered skin and valleys of charred muscle. I hadn’t looked in a mirror for days until Leo insisted.
“I want you to see what I see,” he’d said.
Holding the mirror in my lap, my fingers had gripped the handle like a vise. “Leo, really, I’m good. I don’t need to do this.” I had tried to explain it wasn’t vanity. I didn’t know what it was, but every time I touched my face, I could still feel the burn of that moment.
“I understand,” he’d said. He took the mirror out of my hands. “It was never what you were on the outside that I love.”
He’d taken my hand in his. “It was always in here.” He touched my temple. “And here.” He’d pressed my hand against my heart. “I have always seen you for who you are and believe me, you are even more beautiful now, than when we first met.”
I eyed him. “I was a baby.”
He shrugged. “I know.”
With a deep breath and his hand holding mine, we’d held the mirror up to my face together.
With the aid of the healing pods, my hair though still splotchy and missing in places had already grown a couple of inches or so in the weeks I had been unconscious. That day, as I really looked at myself in the mirror, I could see the blisters were healing, and the streaks of scarring had begun to smooth out. It was better than it had been even a few days earlier, but I could see the face I knew below the surface, and I sighed.
“See, you are beautiful,” he’d said. That was the first day I left my room and I didn’t look back.
My new necklace sparkled, catching my eye and making me feel a little less damaged than usual. As Lily had said, it was a step in the right direction.
I held still as the scanner read my eyes and DNA markers. “Accepted.”
Hailey let Leo hold my hand on the ride down, and when the doors opened, I kissed Leo on the cheek while he waited in the lobby with a projection of Hailey.
“I think your father is making him nervous,” she said, materializing next to me as we walked down the darkened halls. “You’re supposed to be back there with Leo, that’s why we upgraded the projectors here, remember?”
“I know, but I can still be more than one place at a time. Especially if you need me.”
I stopped outside the doors at the end of the hall. “Thank you, Hailey, for everything, truly. But I need to do this by myself.”
“You have been trying to do too many things by yourself, Princess.” She paused, and with a tender tilt of her head, she said, “Just remember, I am here if you need me.”
“How could I forget? It’s how I can sleep at night.” I walked through the doors as they opened and stepped into the darkened room with only one pale light shining down from the center of the ceiling.
As I came around the bed that faced the panoramic view of the sun setting, I saw my father holding my mother’s hand, both of them achingly still.
“Father. I’m here.” I rubbed his back as I sat down on the bed next to my mother, who had been in stasis since the attack on Empire.
“Is it time already?” he asked, sitting up and scrubbing his face.
“Yes.”
He looked at my mother and kissed her lips. That moment he lingered, waiting for her to kiss him back, made my heart break every time.
“I won’t be gone long,” he told her. To me, he said, “Give me two minutes. I will be ready.”
“Take your time.” I waved as he walked into his ready room.
“Good evening, Mother.” I smiled and kissed her cheek. The smell of roses filled the air as I curled up next to her. I had found that despite everything I knew about what she had done when I was growing up, I still had to know her heart was beating. I needed to feel it for at least one minute a day to be sure.
I counted the beats, and when I reached sixty, I sat up and checked her vitals on the wall behind her. In the last couple of weeks, I had become an expert on what every number displayed and every beep that sounded meant. The light overhead illuminated her skin, and there was not a mark on her. Not anymore. Since she was in stasis, she had been under round the clock restoration, and she looked perfect. Her hair was growing back in, our lengths were similar, but hers was growing back fuller and more evenly. My father brushed her hair every day, and it was shiny and bouncy, making her look a little more like herself. A little more alive.
I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I am sure you will be displeased to read the reports from this week when you wake up, but when you do, I think you will agree it was good enough. Ten hours a day seems extreme. I think six or five is just fine. Healer River is just being cautious for father’s sake. Lily says it would help my hair grow back faster, but it’s not worth taking up precious hours that someone else could use.” I rubbed my hand over the side that had not grown back evenly.
“Lily decided to shave part of my hair, she found it in a picture in the archives and says it looks edgy.” I laughed. “I think it makes me look bald.”
The rest of my hair was short, but the front had survived the volts of electricity a little better, and my bangs had grown long enough to cover the worst of the damage on my right cheek.
Despite my determination to not be vain, I had developed a bad habit of checking to make sure everything was in place. Leo always seemed to try to hold my hands and reassure me that I had nothing to worry about. But he wasn’t here now, and my fingers lightly touched my skin, feeling for my bangs to make sure they covered my cheek.
“It’s only temporary,” my father said from behind me. I turned and saw him dressed in his best suit. “Father, you look dashing.” I clapped, changing the subject as he spun around.
He sat next to me and noticed my necklace. “Something new?”
I held my necklace in my hand. “An early birthday present. I was just about to tell Mother.”
“He has good taste.”
“He knows me well,” I said, still fidgeting with my hair.
“I wasn’t talking about the necklace.” My father took my hand and said, “You are the most beautiful Petal in the entire realm.”
“Papa. You have to say that.” I squinted. “I think it’s a law.”
He laughed for a moment, then his face melted into the same sorrowful expression that he’d had since I had woken up four weeks after the attack on Empire. “There are so many things that I wish I could change. For all of our gifts, abilities…” He shook his head.
“Papa—” I started, but he quieted me with a gentle shush.
“We should have talked about this sooner. Let me say this for your mother and me. We are so sorry that we didn’t have more faith in you. That you had to suffer for so long because of our fear,” he choked out.
“Papa, please. Mother and I, we spoke before.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to think about that day, so I continued. “You don’t need to say anything. We both have things to be sorry about, and I know it was difficult.” I knew some days the truth was still difficult. But difficult wasn’t devastated, and that meant I had stepped toward healing more than just my body. That when my mother woke, I would be ready to heal and work for the family my siblings deserved.
He chuckled, and I looked at him, confused. “It’s your job as a teenager to be difficult. Up until you decided to bring home a boyfriend, you had been doing a very poor job.”
I flushed, remembering the way Leo had asked my father for permission to visit me with the intentions of courting me when I was of age. My father reminded him that I had one year and one week until my nineteenth birthday, and he would give Leo his answer at that time. That was four days ago, and ever since he had spent the entire time havin
g Hailey re-sequence the security codes to the palace.
“Come on, let’s go see if we can’t get you into more trouble. I enjoy giving the future king of Phoenix a hard time while I can still make him a little afraid.”
After one last kiss for my mother, he offered his arm to me, and we left my mother and the twins to continue healing.
We met Leo in the lobby, still chatting with Hailey. His spine got noticeably straighter when he saw us coming.
“Your Majesty,” Leo said with a bow.
“Son.” My father smiled. “Let’s get this night started. Shall we?”
The banquet began as all banquets do. Everything was almost as it had been when we’d first received the Yzer family and the Hg-1 delegation. However, there were a few things that were markedly different.
For the first time, all eighteen courts were gathered together in one place. All ruling kings and queens were in attendance, as security had been upgraded to the likes that hadn’t been seen since before the ice age. The Yzers again led the human delegation, Ambassador and Lady Yzer bowing respectfully and introducing their children the same as they had the first time, but with a little more familiarity.
When Kai had the chance, he kissed my hand and winked at Leo, making Lily laugh as well as the little girl beside him identical in looks to her sister, but like Lance, completely herself. This Penelope, whose real name was Iolani, was a little more timid than her sister. Her smile was not quite so wide and free. But she was polite, and according to both her brothers, equally as bad a dancer as Pen. The young girl bowed precisely, reminding me of Lance, and she stepped aside to allow the rest of the greetings.
A twinkle of charms clinked against crystal, the sound chiming through the hall as Leo squeezed my fingers. Crest Ryans stood below the dais as a spotlight found him. The hall was deathly quiet as he smiled. “Good evening, Your Royal Majesties, Your Highnesses, Ambassadors, ladies, and gentlemen. Thank you all for being here tonight. It is an honor beyond honors to be able to be standing here today. There are so many here in this room, as well as out in the realm who deserve our thanks and gratitude. But if you might indulge me, I would like to take a moment to give a special thanks to Ambassador Kai Yzer for his heroic efforts, not only with all the people he saved in the lifts at great cost to himself but for saving my mother. As a son, I can never repay that debt. You will always have a home with me.”
Crest bowed with his hand over his heart. The crowd applauded and cheered, while there were a few of us who knew he had really been speaking of Lance, who had found Crest Ryans’ mother as he made a last pass to clear a level. At first, he wasn’t sure she was alive, but he heard a heartbeat and carried her a dozen stories to the healers who were able to revive her before he went back in the tower as many times as it was needed. Those of us who knew the truth clapped a little harder and a little longer.
As I made the last clap, Crest continued. “As the Master of Ceremonies for Neyr, I have never had a prouder moment than tonight when I can present our Princess Violet. Your Highness.” He bowed.
The ballroom rallied in cheers and applause. But as I stood, I held up my hands to silence the audience. I tried to remember what Lily had said to me as I looked around at the shining faces, waiting for me to speak.
“Good evening.” I coughed, clearing my throat. My fingers wrapped around the jewel settled by my heart, and I tried again. “Excuse me. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this historic evening. Never since the inception of the Council of Amera’s Courts have we had all the reigning monarchs together in one room.” I swept my arm out. “Thank you all so much. All of you who have traveled so far, for your aid and for your kinship, not only when your brothers and sisters of Neyr needed you most, but our honored guests as well. We can never truly express what this means to so many of us who lost so much.”
I felt my knees tremble, and I pulled my shoulders back. I stared at the words in front of me that Hailey and I had spent days carefully writing. In my heart and mind, I couldn’t shake the feeling I had carried with me since the attacks on Hearts Cove and Empire Tower, and as much as I wanted to make this a day of celebration, I knew it wasn’t right. I wanted to give the people a moment of joy, a reprieve from the daily challenge of learning to cope with all we had endured. But I couldn’t. Not while our people still suffered, and not when I knew the people responsible were still out there in the world, free and unpunished.
Finally, I looked out at the audience and said, “I wish that were true.” The crowd whispered in hushed confusion. In my ear, Hailey rumbled, “That is not the speech we rehearsed.”
I pushed the button on my bracelet, turning off my teleprompter and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry. What I meant was that I wish it were true that the entire council was here, tonight, in this room. But as we all know, my mother is not here. I know you all have her in your thoughts—we need and appreciate you all for the support. Truly. All of you who have been here for my father, my family. I can’t thank you enough.” The crowd applauded in resounding approval. I waited for them to quiet down.
“I am grateful to be here tonight with you all, but we know my mother should be the one standing here, giving this speech. Not just because of who she is, but because of the amazing person she is and the things she can do.” I paused to swallow. “What she will do.”
I took a deep breath and looked out beyond this room, at the fading skyline, and the world beyond. I began again. “The atrocities that we have suffered here in Neyr are unfathomable to us because we in Amera like to think that we are a nation of peace. Children born in peace from parents who died in peace. That we are unique. Amera is a place that has a thousand names in stories told in countless fantasies over thousands of years past. It was a thought. A hope. Amera, in its glory, is a beautiful dream.
“We have lived this blissful life for hundreds of years, and we felt that we had made it so. That we deserved the peace. Perhaps those who fought for it did. But that was three hundred years ago, and the truth is, we were handed a gift. I do believe we have taken good care of this gift, because now I know. I didn’t before.
“I had no idea what it meant to live here. The Neyr of my childhood was magical. But it, too, was a dream, and now, I, for one, am awake.” I felt my spine straighten. Looking around the room, emotions swirled and simmered within me, and my feelings yearned to be set free. With a sharp inhale I continued.
“Who are we? Human? Genetic mutations? Lab experiments? Does it matter? Not to me. I don’t care what name anyone might want to call me. Our history is what made me who I am. It made you who you are. I am proud to be who I am, what I can do, and you don’t have to have special abilities to be proud of what you accomplish every day. We were witness to it. First and second generations, side by side, we worked together, and again we survived.
“I know some of you think that we invited this horror to our doorstep. That we let it in. But you would be wrong. We opened our hearts to people in need. People we have the ability to help. We are part of a planet. I know some of us might have forgotten that. But there are millions of people that live on this Earth. We may have our borders, our banners, our biases. But it doesn’t change the fact that we share this world.
“After everything that has happened, I am sure many of you think this is proof that we should close our doors and shut our windows. That by doing so, it will somehow make us safe again. That time will wash away the scars of these attacks. Well, I am young, so you will have to forgive me, but I don’t believe that time will ever make me forget. I hope and pray that it doesn’t. Because I want to remember all those who gave everything so we could be here today.”
I paused, swallowing as I gazed out at the hushed crowd. “I was born in a peaceful land, and someone out there in the world sleeping warm in their bed tonight tried to destroy that. They tried to make me afraid. They tried to break my heart, and I don’t really even know why. But what I do know is that they did not succeed. Not yesterday. Not tomorro
w. Because we were willing to stand together and fight for each other, and as long as we remain willing, they never will.
“So, for those who believe this ideology of pain and destruction is the way to solve problems, I have a message for you.
“You are wrong.
“You tried to break us, and you failed. You may have doubt. But I do not.
“It was you who cowered behind your hoods and your distance. You did not witness what your violence truly bore. But I did.
“I stood on the front lines and saw through the ash and fire. The screams and the pain. I was there. I saw it all. I was witness to the single spark that ignited these brothers and sisters that were forged in fire.
“To all my brothers and sisters, stand for those you love, and they will never win. Stand for all those we lost, and they will never win. Stand for the lives we wish to leave for our children, and they will never win.
“We will be the shield they will break against.
“We will be the lightning and the thunder, and there will be nowhere they can hide.
“We will be the hammer of justice.
“We will be the tidal wave that washes away their hatred.
“Only then will we know true, lasting, and united peace.”
I lifted my glass. “In the name of my mother and all those we lost, I challenge you all to stand with me now. Stand with me always.”
I stood there, gazing around the room, hearing only my breath in my ears.
Then like the first drops of rain, my father, then Leo, Kai, Lily, and Siri stood. Like a storm brewing, the courts, one by one, began to rise. As my heart raced, every person in that room stood with them.
And as I held my glass a little higher, the rest raised their own, and the words echoed out into the night.
“Now and Always.”
Acknowledgements