But Her Majesty Queen Aurelia had just fully broken down, her white gloves covering her face. So Thea stood and put her hands on Big Gran’s shoulders.
“What’s happened!” I demanded this time. If I was part of this family, even on the outskirts, I deserved to know.
Thea looked stricken as she recounted the news. “It’s Father. He’s had an attack. He needs urgent surgery right away.”
“Oh my God!” Sophie cried.
Henry pushed back his chair. “Where? What hospital?” he shouted at a security officer. “Sinclair! Tell the helipad to get ready.”
“He’s at Ceillis House or…he was. He’s being flown into St Mary’s now. The Ören wing,” Thea added, but it was almost unnecessary. It was the section of the hospital that was organized and prepared for royal visits—emergency or routine.
Henry checked his watch. “Still, this time of night, we’ll do better with the helicopter.” He signaled to the men and held his hand out for Sophie as she got out of her chair.
Queen Aurelia’s voice rose above the sounds of pushing chairs and rushing bodies. “Thea stays.”
The pronouncement startled all of us until we remembered…
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said in his military manner. It was appropriate; he was taking an order, after all.
But Thea looked like she didn’t want to obey. She even went as far as to say that one word that would have earned any of us a sharp reprimand when we were children. “But…”
“The Crown Prince is in mortal danger. As next in line, you must stay here.” Big Gran’s voice was shaky but carried all her authority. No one argued.
Henry, Sophie and I rushed from the room but, down the hall, I stopped when Henry started to turn left toward the courtyard, where the helipad was located. He said my name. “What is it?”
“I’ll join you there,” I promised. “I have a stop to make first.”
My twin gave me a brief nod, snatched our little sister’s hand and moved on. In the entire family, Henry was always the one who had always accepted my decisions without argument. Frankly, it was a relief.
I spun and went back toward the stairs, where I would find the drivers and the cars. A few minutes later, I was in the back of a palace Mercedes, speeding along the Corsicair toward the Hotel Ilysium. I told the driver to call Agent Konnor and let him know where we were going. He was back on regular duty and his place was with the rest of the security staff, but I still wanted him to know I was safe.
If the whole family had to gather at my father’s bedside, then I was determined that Thea would be the only one left out.
The hospital had staff waiting for us and there was a private underground entrance for the SUV to pull into, but I knew that all the precautions in the world wouldn’t stop this news from getting out. That not only was Prince Albert in the hospital, but that his disowned daughter and ex-wife had rushed to his side.
I had dragged my mother out of a pre-theater private dinner party for ten that she had been enjoying in her suite, so she was dressed in her brightest peacock-blue plumage. The two of us in our evening clothes rushing out of the hotel and then into a hospital wing would automatically draw attention. It was only a matter of time. Everyone would know soon.
The memories of Stavros’s death came crashing back to the present. The press, the photographers. The gruesome things they shouted as I stumbled from vehicle to building to vehicle to hotel. I hadn’t even known where I was going, who was leading me, I had simply trusted people to take me where I needed to be.
It was much the same tonight. The staff led us to the fourth floor. Palace security had already stationed themselves at the entrances. Doors opened as we approached. I didn’t stop and smile or thank anyone. I had one mission.
To see my father one last time.
The waiting room was probably fancier than the rest of the hospital, but I noticed none of it, seeing only the faces of Sophie and Henry and a team of white-coated doctors. “Mama!” Sophie cried, running to Felice’s arms. Henry excused himself from the doctors to come and give our mother a hug as well. We were dysfunctional, perhaps, but in this fishbowl we needed each other more than ever.
“Thank you,” Henry said with a kiss on my cheek. “For bringing her,” he added.
“She’d never forgive herself if she wasn’t here.”
“And we’d never stop hearing about it,” he added with a small bit of deadpan humor.
Then Henry led me back to the doctors to hear the news I had dreaded. It would be a miracle if our father survived the night.
Chapter Thirty-Six
It was just after dawn the next morning when the doctors came into the private waiting room with the news. Father had stabilized, which was good, but they had determined that the best course of action would be heart surgery.
Among the doctors who had entered was the chief surgeon of the palace, Dr. Fabian Lao, whom I knew reasonably well. It was nice to see a familiar, trustworthy face among the white coats, who were surely very self-aware that their patient could only be the next king of Drieden if they didn’t mess up.
The doctors told us what to expect, how long it would be and what the surgery would entail. “Do whatever’s necessary,” Henry said, as if he was gruffly giving orders to a young soldier.
Dr. Lao paused. “There is a question of consent.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “We trust you.”
“No.” For the first time, Dr. Lao looked out of his element. “In this particular case, with the patient being a member of the royal family—”
“What, do you need an Act of Parliament or something?” Henry burst out. “No one is objecting to the surgery.”
“The palace has an official protocol for this—”
“Goddammit, there’s always a fucking rule, isn’t there?”
I put my hand on Henry’s arm. It had been a long night, but he could zip it while we finished this up. “Go on, Doctor,” I said.
“And we must not only receive a release from the palace but also a signature from His Royal Highness’s designated medical representative.”
“What do we have to do?” I asked, furiously aware that yet again red tape could be stealing something precious from my life.
“We have the release from the palace. We just need a signature from the Duchess of Montaget.”
Both Henry and I turned slowly and looked at our mother, still dressed in her vivid blue evening gown, curled up on a sofa soundly sleeping. “Absolutely,” I told Dr. Lao as I put my hand out for the paper that would require one signature and three witnesses before anyone would dare cut into the chest cavity of the Crown Prince.
But as I watched my groggy mother sign consent for her ex-husband’s surgery, I felt that silent bond of family again. When my father was better, I would try to have this conversation with him, as awkward as it would probably be. About why he still had my mother designated as his medical representative (and honestly, whether that was a practical idea, since she spent the majority of her time outside of Drieden).
Whatever his reasons—emotional, practical, or, more probably in the case of my father, accidentally negligent—this evidence of yet another way we were all connected hit me hard. When we volunteered to give blood (“Royal blood—the best kind of blood,” Henry darkly joked), I thought of our DNA. The things we couldn’t avoid, the things we couldn’t leave behind, even when we tried our damnedest to.
Yes, so I got a little loopy after a night spent in a hospital waiting room. Who doesn’t?
Thea stayed at the palace, as was required, but she sent Nick in her stead, along with the blood she’d had drawn there (she didn’t want to be left out, I guessed). I caught a few minutes alone with him, telling him all the updates for her to take back to Thea and Gran. Thea didn’t want to use the phones or anything digital, he said, since what happened to me had caused th
em to analyze all their networks again.
I hadn’t thought about the hacking in nearly twelve hours. “Have you heard anything?” I asked Nick, even though my bones ached from exhaustion. “Did they catch the guy yet?”
He shook his head, his mouth a grim line. “He was gone when they got there. We’re pulling surveillance, asking the neighbors and searching his belongings. We’ll find him.”
“Do you think it’s Christian?” I asked, wondering if hope was even appropriate in this situation.
Nick shook his head. “Not unless my brother magically became some computer genius in the past year. Sybil said the security systems this guy could breach were beyond most.”
“Oh.” It was the most coherent response I could muster.
“Are you all right?” Nick said, his Scottish accent sharp. He took one of my hands. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
“I’m fine,” I said as I took my hand back.
Nick gave his eyes a slight roll. “God save me from fine women. You’re coming back with me. You need a decent night’s sleep.”
“My mother is here,” I pointed out, as if it helped my side of the argument. We both looked back at Felice, who had somehow, in the middle of a hospital, procured what looked like cashmere blankets and a satin eye mask.
“Your mother looks fine,” he said, putting an emphasis on the last word. “You do not.”
“What is it with you security types telling me I look like hell?”
Nick did not answer me, he just let his eyes roll down the tourist T-shirt someone had brought in last night and which I had thrown on over my emerald silk dress.
“I’ll let your brother know we’re leaving, if he and Sophie want to come.”
Of course, Henry wanted to stay. It was just like him, another kind of duty, another kind of post. And when Henry said he was staying, Sophie lifted her chin, yawned loudly and announced that she was, too. It was a sweet echo of how they were as children, a relationship built on hero worship and dangerous dares. Sophie, for all her flighty and feminine ways, never let a mere boy show her up. She did everything Henry did—with ribbons in her hair.
I kissed them each goodbye, getting closer and closer to tears with each embrace. It all seemed so terribly fragile. This family was on the brink of falling apart and any minute I could be the first one toppling the fragile pieces.
Nick had been right. I wasn’t fine. And that was probably why I didn’t notice when our car missed the turn toward Harvade, where the Hotel Ilysium was, and plowed firmly into the city center.
To the palace.
When we approached the gates, I opened my mouth to object. I could whine that I had no clothes at the palace or order him to take me to my suite at the Ilysium immediately. Truth be told, I really did love the view from my room there and the mattresses were divine.
But one word shot into my head and stayed there, dangling like a beautiful jewel, promising relief like an oasis in a desert.
Hugh.
Hugh would be in the palace. And that would make up for any fresh clothes, perfect mattress and soothing view of the Comtesse.
Even though the palace had been my home for most of my life, I had no current apartments assigned to me here, so I followed Nick through the halls and anterooms I knew so well. The fact that he also could navigate them so confidently was not lost on me. Once we passed the current familial crisis, and if I still had a relationship where I could enjoy such confidences, I would ask Thea to tell me what their future held.
Finally, we stopped at a door in the tower wing. I would not cry, I could not cry, I told myself, even as hot tears made it hard for me to see.
“Thea told me to bring you here,” Nick said, in a half-gruff, half-soft way as he punched in a code and opened the door to my old apartments.
“Nick, I’m sorry,” I said before he could leave. “For what I said at Dréuvar. I don’t hold you responsible for your brother.”
He shook his head. “You weren’t wrong. We’ve all made terrible, fucked-up decisions. Some of us are just lucky we get a second chance.”
He took something out of his back pocket and handed it to me. “Speaking of second chances.” It was a thick clunker of a cell phone, probably equipped to make satellite calls from a submarine or a remote island. “Your sister wanted you to have this. For emergencies.”
Then he gave me a nod and closed the door. Leaving me to my demons and my fears.
My old shower still had the sticky hot-water knob (even though this was the palace, some of the plumbing had issues—that’s what happened when the pipes had originally been installed two centuries ago), but I knew exactly how much force was needed to turn it past the sticky part and get all that lovely hot water sluicing over my head.
There were the same shell-pink towels with my royal monogram. How silly that swirls of gold thread could make my throat go tight.
I paused in front of the closet. If my old clothes were still folded on the shelves and hung from the rods, I would know that I was in an alternate space-time reality and I could probably also jump from the roof of the palace and fight like a black-leather-clad superhero.
But no.
This story does not go into the futuristic science-fiction genre at this point.
We were still firmly set in contemporary fantasy—as all modern royal stories should be categorized. The closet was bare except for a bathrobe and one change of pajamas. They were Thea’s, I could tell from her monogram on her bathrobe, and I guessed that Lucy must have picked them out, because Lucy always preferred the men’s style of pajamas and Thea enjoyed more contemporary leggings and sweatshirts.
All of these intimate details, about the lives and preferences and freaking plumbing of the place I was now in, exhausted me. I wasn’t sure if I belonged here anymore, but how could I not? When I could easily walk from the closet to the bed in the pitch black because my feet had traversed the pale blue carpets so many times (and also the furniture had probably not been moved since the Second World War).
I laid in bed and gazed up at the elaborate plaster molding that resembled inverted tiers of a wedding cake. It’s why I had picked these rooms out when I was eighteen. Because the palace had been built and renovated by different rulers and in varied centuries, not all the wings were alike. Thea’s looked out over the city, but the rooms were smaller, boxier there. Sophie had picked a set in the tower. Amazing panoramic views, but the extra flights of stairs was a bitch. (Also, palace staff took longer to get there if one needed them. Because they were only human.)
But these rooms had high vaulted ceilings and architectural details that came out of a storybook and encouraged fanciful daydreaming about fairies and evil witches and bodyguards who were also brave, stalwart knights.
No wonder nineteen-year-old me had dreamed up the most delicious fantasies about her bodyguard. And why I still did so, even as I passed out at twenty-nine.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The sound of my bedroom door opening awakened me. There was a squeak in the hinges that palace maintenance staff had never quite silenced, and when they’d told me the only thing left to do was replace the beautiful, ornate brass hinges with modern, mass-produced ones, I had politely declined.
Because sometimes beautiful things made squeaks. That’s what made them beautiful.
So it was that tell-tale squeak I knew so well that caused my eyes to pop open. Instantly, I knew where I was. My bedroom. In the palace.
Then I smelled the coffee and my heart nearly burst.
It was Hugh, with a bag slung over his shoulder, and then a maid pushing a cart.
“Hello,” I said groggily, with a smile. Seeing him made me feel anchored. Rooted.
“Good morning, ma’am,” the maid said. I didn’t recognize her, so I hoped she didn’t mind me not greeting her by name. I thanked her as she laid out the coffee and th
en left me alone with my bodyguard.
My bodyguard, who, I realized, didn’t look nearly as happy as I wished he did.
My stomach dropped. “What is it?” I immediately feared the worst. “Father?” I threw back the bedclothes and my feet landed on the floor. “I knew I shouldn’t have left yesterday.” Wait. What time was it? Morning? I checked the Limoges clock on top of the fireplace mantel. “How did you let me sleep for so long?” I went toward the closet, where I had left my clothes the night before.
“Everything’s fine,” he said, catching my hand. “There’s just been a lot happening this morning.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“It’s only the press. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”
I saw the paper on the breakfast tray. The screaming headlines were in bold black ink across the top, middle and bottom of the first page. I made myself look. If Hugh had to deal with this, so did I, and it was awful. Terrifying. The Crown Prince on life support. Rampant rumors, specious speculation, and me and my mother making the circus complete. There was even a side column wondering, “Where is Karl Sylvain?”
Because Karl and I were engaged, apparently.
“They’re camped outside the gates, the hospital. I’m not sure if you’ll be able to go back.”
“They’re not keeping me away,” I hissed.
“For your security, I’m not sure that’s wise.”
This was exhausting. This argument, this life. “Are Henry, Sophie, and my mother still there?”
Hugh nodded.
“If they are there, then I should be as well.”
“But you’re different. The press is used to Sophie, they’re not used to you.”
“I’m going back to the hospital, and that’s that.”
Hugh paused for a moment, and I recognized the expression on his face. It was the same one he used when Thea gave him orders.
And I had sounded just like her. Princessy and superior and authoritative.
And…oh God. This was no way to have a relationship. One person constantly submitting to the other.
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