by Lexi Whitlow
I’m allowed to reach inside the warm box and stroke the babies’ heads, hands, and feet as long as I don’t touch their ventilators or disturb the cords and wires attached to their little bodies. I talk to them, telling them how loved they are, telling them about today, and the cathedral’s bells, and all the people. I tell them how much I love their mother.
After an hour passes and they’ve settled, demonstrating that they can breathe on their own, a nurse comes to me smiling sweetly. “Would you like to hold them?” she asks. “It’s good for them, and they’re not nearly so fragile as they look. They’re breathing really well.”
The next thing I know I’ve got two tiny babies on my bare chest, all of us covered in a blanket while I rock them, singing a soft lullaby I remember from my own childhood. One of them presses his small palm to my chest while kicking rather firmly with soft feet. The other nuzzles my skin, quietly breathing.
They’re the smallest things I’ve ever seen, and I’m fascinated by them. I breathe in their scent, falling in love with them, rapt by the folds of their ears and the way their small fingers grip mine when I press into their palms.
One of the babies opens his liquid blue eyes, looking up into mine as if with genuine recognition.
“Hi there, little prince,” I say softly. “Welcome to the world. You’re so beautiful.”
He smiles rudely with a gummy baby grin, making a low-volume but high-pitched pinched sound that causes his brother to pay attention. Another set of liquid eyes peer up into my face, and another baby smile melts my heart.
I’ve never loved anything or anyone so hard; I might sob just being in their presence. But this is different—this is soulful. I’m holding two brand new creatures. I’m the first person to talk to them and tell them stories, to lay them against my skin—and they’re smiling at me. They like me. They know me.
An hour later, Norah joins us. She takes the babies to her breasts, warming them against her skin, talking to them. Feeling her, catching her scent, hearing her voice, the two of them fall fast asleep on her chest, their arms and legs touching, fingers on opposing hands entwined. I snap a picture of that with my phone for the sake of national history.
A few minutes later the NICU nurse comes back. “They need to go back in the incubator,” she says. “They’ve both lost a degree of body temperature. We must keep them warm.”
Norah watches closely as our babies are replaced inside their box and reconnected to oxygen. She’s as haggard-looking as you might expect, but still beautiful, with glowing soft skin and bright, curious eyes.
A little while later a doctor comes by, introducing herself as the senior resident in charge of the NICU. “The attending will be down for rounds shortly,” she says. “But I just wanted to update you. Your sons are strong, and all their bloodwork and vitals look good. They’re breathing better than most do at this stage of their development. Their kidney function is good. Liver function is a little low, but we expect it to pick up in a few days. They should be just fine. A year from now, barring something unforeseeable, they’ll have no lasting effects from premature delivery.”
Norah brightens considerably. I feel a massive weight lift off my chest. I can breathe again.
“You should name them,” the doctor says. “Preemies like hearing their names.”
Norah smiles. She’s known their names for a long time. She swore to me that she knew she was having boys, and that she already knew their names.
“Ellis is the rambunctious one,” she says, touching his little hand. “And this is Henry.” She strokes his small head while he sleeps.
“Prince Henry and Prince Ellis,” I remind her, slipping my hand over her shoulder, stroking her back. “Crowned princes.”
I’ve never been so damn proud of anything in my whole life, and so proud of their mother, my queen.
27
Norah
I find myself almost hypnotized sometimes with baby eyes and tiny fingers, little baby ears and noses. I’ll be doing something useful, like changing a diaper, and the next thing I know an hour has passed and I’m just entranced, staring at my sons, stroking them, talking to them, coaxing smiles and approving coos out of them. People say they love their children, but I’m in love with these two. Having them is falling in love all over again, every single day.
“I’ll take him, ma’am,” Sally says, smiling, holding out her hands.
Sally has been promoted from maid to nanny. She wanted the job, and with nine grown children of her own and none of them in jail, she’s certainly qualified for it.
I reluctantly hand Ellis over. She’s already got Henry tucked into their stroller.
“Have you seen Owen?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No ma’am. The last I saw of him, he was headed to his offices. He said he had something important to do before we leave.”
“He’s always headed to the office, especially when we have to be somewhere,” I say, smiling with resignation. “I’ll go fetch him.”
The twins were only released from the NICU a month ago and we’d rather stay home, but duty calls us to work. The four of us are departing Cymrea this morning for the Royal Tour of Anglesey. Whenever a new monarch is crowned, by tradition he visits all eleven of the nation’s counties, staying at the homes of the most prominent nobles in each one. A few hundred years ago, touring was necessary for the nobles to meet their new king. Today, it’s more of a PR thing. We’re going to take the opportunity to meet with a lot of different people from all walks of life while we’re out in the provinces.
Sally takes the boys away while I go in search of my missing husband. I find him just where Sally said I would: in his office, at his desk, silently pondering some official-looking document.
“It’s time to go, King Contemplative,” I say, leaning in the doorframe, arms crossed.
He looks up. His face is impassive. He sighs.
“What’s going on?” I ask. He only gets pensive like this when it’s something really serious.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” Owen asks.
I raise an eyebrow, trying not to smile. “More than a barrel full of monkeys?”
He puts down the paper and holds out his hand. “Come here, Duchess.”
“That’s Queen Duchess to you,” I remind him, coming forward, laying my hand in his. He pulls me onto his lap, settling a hand on my thigh, circling my hip with his other.
I peer up into his lovely blue eyes, waiting for him to tell me what’s on his mind. He stares back, his wheels turning quietly in his head.
Finally, Owen says, “I love you. I love our little family we’ve made. I love what we’re doing. You’re my best friend, and a partner to me in every way, and I would be absolutely lost without your steady hand and your resourceful mind.”
“Alright,” I say. “Thank you. And I feel exactly the same way. And you’re not hard to look at either, which is a bonus.”
Owen smiles sadly. “I’m struggling with something,” he admits.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“What’s that?” I ask him, as I fiddle with one of the buttons on his shirt. “Let me help.”
Owen leans forward. He retrieves the document he put down a moment ago. “I haven’t wanted to bother you with this,” he says, worry furrowing his brow. “I wanted to just protect you from it, make it disappear, and maybe you’d just forget about it. But you deserve better than that. And I don’t want to make a decision either one of us would regret, so I’m going to let you make this one.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He hands me the document. It’s an edict rendered by the High Court of Cymrea, a guilty verdict for the crimes of assault and attempted murder. It’s from Eric’s trial. I never even knew there was a trial. I never asked. He isn’t someone I like to think about.
I scan through the document, looking for the sentencing part.
“Page three,” Owen says.
“Oh my Lord!” I cry when I find it. “The death penalty?”
I look at Owen, not understanding. “How can that be?” I ask.
He shrugs, shaking his head. “You’re the wife of the king,” Owen replies. “A physical assault on any member of the royal family is an automatic death sentence, if convicted. But the jury—all of whom I’ve spoken to—had several other motivations behind their decision. You were pregnant, and you’re very popular with the common people. They’re starting to like me a little, but they liked you from the first moment they saw you. Their decision is as much vengeance as it is justice.”
“This is awful,” I say. “It’s terrible.”
“Is it?” Owen asks sincerely.
“It is,” I reply, confused that he may have another opinion. “Killing him accomplishes nothing except putting blood on everyone’s hands. What he did is awful, but doing the same to him is more awful because we don’t have the excuse of mental illness or blind rage. This is a cold, cruel thing.”
He nods. “Something told me that’s what you’d say.”
“You don’t feel the same?”
Owen bows his head a bit, taking a deep breath. “I feel exactly the same about every other death penalty case I’ve ever heard of. Except... him. I just can’t shake the image of you, lying unconscious, with him about to strike you again. My anger toward him for almost taking you away from me… I can’t express the rage I still feel when I think about him.”
“You can commute the sentence to life, or something less than death, correct?” I ask.
Owen nods.
“Then that’s what you should do.”
He pauses, thinking. “Life without parole?” he asks.
“Are you asking me what I think is fair?”
Owen nods again.
“Well, King Complicated, if I was dictator—and oddly enough, I might just be—I would sentence him to a term of not less than twenty years in a secure mental health facility where he can get the help he needs. After that, he has to be reevaluated.”
“Duchess, you do tend to think things through with precision. This is why I never want to make a decision without you. Invariably I’ll do it wrong.”
I grin at him, leaning down, kissing him chastely. “Yes, but the beauty of you, among other things, is that you know it. You’ll never make a bad decision now that you made me queen.”
He smiles. “I liked that kiss. May I have another?”
I cock my head to the side, raising an eyebrow. “We have a motorcade waiting to take us on our grand tour,” I remind him. “Can you confine yourself to just one kiss so we’re not keeping the whole country waiting?”
“Just one for now,” he says. “More later.”
I lean in, touching Owen’s lips, tasting his morning coffee, the scent of his aftershave teasing my nostrils. I melt against his circling embrace, my senses surging against the warmth of his skin. He breathes me into him, absorbing me, fingers lifting to brush the side of my face, then threading back into the lengthening curls at the nape of my neck. His kisses and caresses clear my head of every other distraction but him. When we come together like this, the whole world slips away in a vapor, leaving just us and the steady cadence of our two hearts beating in sync together, two sets of lungs breathing the same air, two minds joined in one shared occupation.
Our kisses never stop with just one.
28
Owen
Seven Years Later
“Da, what’s that?” Ellis calls from the balcony.
I look up from my work. Ellis is climbing up on the balcony balustrade like a monkey. He and Henry are not even supposed to be out there without an adult; it’s not safe.
I put down my report and walk out onto the balcony with them. It’s a beautiful, midsummer day. The sun is high in the sky and warm on my skin. The scent of flowers lingers sweet in the air. “What’s what?” I ask.
Henry and Ellis both point to the west, to the far edge of town where a giant crane has just this week been brought in to work on the construction of Cymrea’s first skyscraper—the first of several underway.
“It’s a construction crane,” I say, explaining to them in detail what it does and why it’s necessary. “When that building is finished, it’s going to be the tallest thing in the whole country. But it won’t be for long, because there are three more going up near it, and more planned down the line.”
As skyscrapers go, these aren’t terribly impressive. However, fifty floors is something in a city that’s only got a few dozen buildings above four stories.
“What are they for?” Henry asks.
“Different things,” I say. “Apartments for people to live in. Offices for people to work in. Schools, and a very nice, new hospital. As soon as they’re done, you’ll both get to tour them, but for now let’s come back inside so I can get some work done, and so you two don’t fall off the balcony and break your heads. I’m sure I have a sword or something safe like that you can play with.”
They laugh, catching my humor. They’re like their mother, perpetually amused with me. Instead of swords or throwing knives to play with, I set them up at the chessboard. Ellis is black. Henry is white.
“Think hard on your opening gambit, Henry,” I say. “It sets the course of the entire game. Whoever wins gets to choose bedtime reading. Play well.”
I’m a lucky man in that I have two smart sons who enjoy the same kinds of things I do. They’re both remarkably good chess players for their age, and they keep getting better thanks to their competitiveness. Henry is the sneaky one: he found a book on chess in the library some months ago, and his game rocketed ahead overnight. He beat his brother every time they played. Ellis was feeling rather sorry for himself, and Henry took pity and let him in on his secret. Now they’re back to evenly matched, both getting incrementally better at the strategy with every game.
I go back to my work, consisting of our annual economic outlook reports.
It’s been a good few years. Wages are up by 25% over the last five years, with unemployment down to just 4% thanks to the building boom going on and new programs we’ve put in place to bring business and innovation to the country. The expansion of the three largest colleges in the country to full-fledged universities is having the greatest impact: we’re educating the young people of Cymrea, but we’ve also attracted faculty and students from all over the world thanks to generous employment contracts, assistantships, and scholarships. Those foreign nationals arrive with money in hand, eager to spend it on housing, transportation, dining out, and entertainment. The schools have been a boon to the country’s economy all on their own. Everything else we’re doing is just diversification.
We’ve paid for all this by establishing a hefty income tax on anyone earning more than twice the national average income. It worked out just like Norah predicted: the nobles started asking us how they could help with schools, hospitals, libraries, and infrastructure programs, instead of heaving billions into the national coffers.
Remarkably, by making the wealthy pay their fair share, we’ve jump-started a sustainable, thriving economy without incurring much national debt. We’re surging ahead, while other larger, far more developed nations are slipping backwards into a strange, 21st-century brand of neo-feudalism.
“How do you do that?”
I look up. Norah’s standing in the doorframe, studying our sons.
“Do what?” I ask.
“Make them sit down so quietly and behave. I sent them in here because they were driving me crazy, tearing through the house like a couple of chimpanzees.”
“I threatened to throw them off the balcony,” I tease. “Just like my father before me.”
She rolls her eyes at me, which is adorable. “I brought this to you,” she says, dropping the morning edition of Today’s Mail on my desk. The front page headline reads, “Crazy Prince Lloyd, Now the Toast of Paris Fashion Week.”
“He’s modeling haute couture for Saint Laurent,” she sighs. “Didn’t we pay him some obscene amount of money to flitter away and play
somewhere below the limelight? Does he actually need a job?”
“He’s not hurting anybody,” I say. “And he’s happy. Let him have his fun. People love him for his eccentricities.”
Norah sighs again. “You’re such a decent human being, I wonder how I deserve you. You have every right in the world to stay furious with him. You can’t seem to hold a grudge.”
Why should I? I wouldn’t have Lloyd as king; I love Anglesey too much. Norah and I have accomplished great things since his abdication, with more great things coming. I wouldn’t change anything.
“Let’s take the kids for a walk tonight,” I say. “Outside the gates, into town. Let’s get out of our bubble and go see how the people are.”
She smiles. “Excellent idea. I’ll let Duncan know. Anywhere in particular you want to go?”
“The new park by the children’s museum. The one with all the monkey bars and slides, and that carousel. The kids will like it, and it’ll be good for them to hang out with other kids for a bit. Then we’ll get some ice cream.”
She comes around my desk, plopping herself on my lap. I pull her close.
“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” she whispers in my ear. “Have I demonstrated it properly?”
Her breath tickles my ear. Her implication stirs a tickling somewhat lower.
“Every day, Duchess,” I reply, slipping my palm over her belly, feeling the small rise that will be our fifth child. “Every single day, and it’s perfect. I love your demonstrations. I never get enough of them.”
“Just checking,” she giggles, nipping my earlobe. “I don’t want you to ever doubt it.”
“Careful, baby,” I croon against her neck, pulling back wildly curled locks of spun gold so I can press lips to her flesh. “You’re distracting me from the nation’s work.”
“Owen, I’m the queen—I am the nation’s work.”
That’s true. Well then, I can’t neglect my duties.
“Boys, your mom and I have work to do,” I say, taking Norah’s hand, pulling her to her feet as I get to mine. “Stay here until you finish your match, then go to the nursery with Sally and your sisters. Understood?”