by Parker Grey
“My father,” I choke out, standing in the doorway. “He’s sick, he’s in the hospital, it’s my fault and I need to—”
Julian just steps back into the room, away from the door, and behind him I see a small suitcase, standing upright, and my heart seizes in my chest.
“Go,” he says, his voice deep as ever.
I just look at him for a long moment. I know there are tears streaming down my face, my nose is running, and my chin is wobbling the way it always does when I cry too hard. I’m clenching my teeth to keep myself from sobbing in front of him, but it’s not really working because my whole body is shaking.
“You’re free,” he says. “Go see your father. You’re not my prisoner.”
I sniffle and sob at the same time, a big ugly noise tearing itself out of my chest, and I cover my face, wishing that he of all people didn’t have to see me like this.
“Thank you,” I manage to whisper. “Thank you.”
Before I know what’s happening, Julian’s strong arms are around me and he’s holding me close. I’m sobbing into his strong chest and he’s stroking my hair, just letting me cry and shiver and sniffle and generally be a huge, disgusting mess.
“It’s my fault,” I manage to choke out between sobs. “I knew he was forgetful, I knew he was— I knew he wouldn’t—”
“Shh,” Julian says, his firm, steady hands still holding me.
“I should have been there for him and I wasn’t,” I whisper-sob. “He needed me, and I was here instead, with you…”
I bite my lip until I nearly draw blood, tears still raining down my face. I can’t finish that sentence, not out loud, but I think I was here with you, thinking of nothing but myself, forgetting my own family in favor of getting spanked and getting off…
“It’s not your fault,” Julian rumbles. “You can’t blame yourself.”
I just sniffle, take a deep breath.
We stay like that for a few minutes, and then I finally pull back, shake my head, try to wipe my face with my hands until Julian gives me a tissue.
“I have to go,” I say again. “I’m sorry.”
He just points at the small suitcase.
“That’s everything you brought and everything you’ll need,” he says. “There’s a car waiting downstairs, at the private entrance.”
I wait, wondering if there’s going to be something else, some reason that I have to come back, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“That’s all,” he says quietly. “Go see your father.”
“Thank you,” I manage to sob-whisper, and then I grab the suitcase and practically run through the door and down the stairs before I can think about this anymore.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Julian
I watch the car drive Belle away, standing at an upstairs window. She ran away from me so quickly that I didn’t even get the chance to walk her out, give her a proper goodbye.
Belle just bolted and left me here, feeling like a splinter of my heart is lodged within hers and it’s getting farther away by the second.
I want to understand. I do, in a fashion. If I’d had a chance to say goodbye to my mother, I’d have done almost anything to take it — I’d have bolted away from anything like Belle just bolted away from me, but I didn’t get that chance.
I knew she was getting sicker — ovarian cancer — but I was in the hospital myself, barely hanging onto life and newly half-blind after a roadside bomb nearly took me out, when word came that she had died.
Understanding doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, watching her run away from me like this. It hurts far worse than I thought it would or could, and I swallow hard, scarred hands gripping the windowsill as I watch her go.
I have no idea if she’ll come back. For all I know, she’s escaping me forever right now. She didn’t say anything about returning, and of course I didn’t ask.
I’m a beast, not a monster.
“I’m certainly not implying that Griskold is some kind of incompetent backwater,” the man says, smoothing his tie against his chest. “I’m merely pointing out that your border security is somewhat last-century, and your guards rely on outdated tactics to determine danger.”
He folds his hands in front of him, the enormous signet ring on his left hand shining in the light.
For several moments, I indulge in a fantasy: of ripping it from his finger, possibly taking his finger with it, and shoving it down his smug, ugly throat, then choking him with his expensive tie until his face turns purple, right here in this massive conference room.
“Of course not,” says a far more reasonable voice than mine, that of my Petrovian Ambassador. “However, we have in fact found our security methods, however out of date they may appear, to be quite accurate when assessing threats to…”
I flex and release my hand, over and over, watching the scars strewn across my knuckles whiten and then turn flesh-colored again as I do.
I haven’t heard from Belle since she left. The driver who took her told me that he let her off at the hospital where her father is a patient, then watched her run inside. He told me that she cried quietly the whole way there, but it’s the last thing I know she did.
Not a peep. Not a whisper. I’ve forced myself not to call her, not to call the hospital and demand an update. I told her she was free to go, that I wasn’t holding her any more, and I meant it.
Even if it feels like I’m ripping my own guts out and stringing them down every hallway in this palace.
After another thirty minutes of polite bickering, during which the smiling motherfucker from Petrovia repeatedly insults my country and my ambassador insults him right back — politely, of course, that’s why it’s diplomacy — we finally leave the meeting as the sun goes down over the forested mountains.
I’m the first one out of the room, already striding down the hall toward my private gym, where I can get out of this ridiculous costume and go a couple of rounds with a heavy bag, maybe work out some of this—
“Your Highness,” the ambassador’s voice says.
I don’t pause my stride.
“What?” I ask, my voice coming out half-feral.
“Sir,” he says, nearly tripping over his own feet trying to keep up with me. “I don’t mean to undermine our argument with the Petrovians, but I do have to admit that when it comes to zone security and our border in particular, they do have some good—”
“I don’t care!” I shout, stopping so suddenly that he skids past me.
The ambassador, a man about ten years my senior with slicked-back hair and wire-rim glasses, stops and looks at me.
“Those fucking river monkeys can do whatever they want on their side of the border,” I seethe. “They can put in tiger-filled pits with spikes, they can map the DNA of everyone who crosses, they can make full plaster casts of them all and then smash them one by one, I don’t fucking care. They’re here because they want to call us out on the world stage for being a bunch of backward hicks, and I won’t fucking have it!”
“Your Highness,” he starts again.
“I won’t!” I shout, my fists curling into balls at my side, my roar echoing down the hallway. “They’re here to make fools of us and nothing more, and I will not have it in my own fucking house! Now get them out of here before I see to it myself, because if I do it, it certainly won’t be diplomatic.”
I sneer the last word and then turn on my heel, stomping down the hall. The ambassador doesn’t follow, and I’m left to storm on my own, taking the steps to my basement gym two at a time, tearing my tie off as I go.
I slam open the door, and the attendant behind the desk looks up, smiling brightly.
“Hello, Your Highness—”
“Go fuck yourself,” I snarl, already stalking for the changing room.
She doesn’t come back the next day, or the next. My mood only goes from bad to worse, until I’m snapping at everyone in sight, roaring at the kitchen staff, trying to pick fights with the guards outside the palace.
Finally, after she’s gone for four days, I don’t go anywhere. I don’t even leave my quarters. I have my servants leave me food outside the door to my suite and then grab it once I’m sure they’re gone, wolf it down in near-darkness.
I keep the TV blaring day and night, just to distract myself. I can’t look at the bookshelf with the secret room behind it.
The nightmares come back, only now it’s Belle getting blown up by a roadside bomb. It’s Belle’s head rolling away, across the dusty road, her limbs flying bloodily through the air.
So I stop sleeping. I don’t bother to change my clothes more than once every forty-eight hours, but it doesn’t matter that much because all I do is pace around my living room, stare out the windows, or sit on the couch and watch endless sitcom reruns.
Sometimes people knock. I ignore it.
Everything has stopped mattering.
Chapter Thirty
Belle
Time doesn’t exist in the hospital, at least not the circadian times that humans are used to. The fluorescent lights are always on, the machines are always beeping steadily along, and nurses come in every couple of hours whether it’s day or night, so those two concepts stop mattering.
After the initial panic of getting to the hospital where my father is, after getting into his room and seeing that he’s asleep but at least his chest is rising and falling, at least his heartbeat monitor is registering strong and steady, there’s… nothing.
He’s asleep. In a coma. The doctors think that he’ll almost certainly wake up, but they’re not quite sure when — they just keep saying “He’ll wake up when he wakes up,” so I just hang around the hospital, sleeping on the chair next to his bed.
The suitcase is a surprise. Julian gave me back all the things I showed up at the palace with, but there weren’t many. He also put in a few books, pajamas.
Shampoo and conditioner that matches what he has in his shower, and my heart twists. The past week feels like a strange, faraway dream, but smelling his shampoo somehow brings it all crashing back. It makes me miss him.
In the mornings I read my father the paper, front-to-back, because I think that maybe he can hear me in there. I do the crossword and ask him the clues I don’t know. The hospital gift shop downstairs has a small selection of paperbacks, and I read at least one per day, telling him the exciting parts out loud.
But mostly, I wait.
There’s a cough, and my eyes fly open. For a moment I’m not even sure what woke me: it’s the middle of the night, only one of the ugly overhead hospital lights glaring down over the sink in the corner of the room, the readouts on Papa’s equipment glowing a dull green.
But just as I’m about to go to back to sleep, curled under a hospital blanket in this vinyl armchair, he coughs again and this time I sit up straight, staring at him.
He hasn’t coughed since I’ve been here.
“Papa?” I whisper.
He takes a long, rattling breath in, and then coughs again as he exhales. I stand and take his hand, heart beating an erratic rhythm in my chest like it’s skipping every third beat, refusing to thump properly.
His hand twitches, his fingers closing jerkily around mine, and I squeeze back, terrified that I’m watching some sort of death throes.
“I’m right here,” I say, barely able to whisper.
He draws in another long breath, and I squeeze his hand, unable to move or think or breathe.
And then, his eyes open. He looks at the ceiling, blinks, then looks over at me.
“Isabelle?” he murmurs, clearly still out of it and dreamy.
I swallow hard, tears already coursing down my face.
“It’s me, Papa,” I whisper.
It’s another few days before they let me take him home, out of the hospital. When I finally do there’s so much to be done that my life is a whirlwind — just figuring out Papa’s medication schedule is a task in and of itself, not to mention scheduling doctors’ visits, making sure he’s okay, watching that he takes his meds on time, everything involved in taking care of someone who’s just gotten out of a coma.
But even so, even with every waking moment accounted for, I can’t help the pang in my chest that says, quietly, I miss Julian.
I keep using his shampoo and the conditioner he sent. I sleep in the pajamas he sent, back in my own room and home. Every night before I fall asleep I can’t help but slide my hand under them, rubbing myself slowly until I come, thinking of him, deep inside me, pulling my hair while he growled in my ear.
He said I was his.
I still am, even here.
I keep the plug in my ass. I think about taking it out a few times, of course, but I never do except for when I have to. It reminds me of him, the way it shifts when I sit or when I walk faintly arousing, even when I was just walking downstairs in the hospital to the cafeteria.
And I like thinking of him. Once my father is getting better instead of worse, sometimes I’ll stare out the window for seconds on end, wondering when I can leave him to see Julian again.
I ache for Julian. It’s a full-body ache, one that starts in my heart and radiates out, making my chest ache, my toes curl, my breath come in quick little gasps. I long for him, long to get on my knees with my hands behind my back, long to please him and be safe again in his arms and his bed.
About ten days after I leave Julian’s castle, I’m doing the dishes at the house I share with my father. Our dishwasher is broken, and with everything going on I haven’t had the chance to get it fixed yet, so I’m forearm-deep in soapy water, watching a bird family out the window in front of me.
There are three tiny eggs in the nest, a mother bird sitting on them, a father bird who delivers her meals sometimes, and I can’t stop watching. I don’t know why but watching this scene of bird domestic bliss makes me miss him even more than I have before, makes me want to run to him and throw my arms and legs around him, tell him how much I missed him.
“When was the last time you left this house?” my father’s voice says suddenly from right behind me.
I turn, hands still in the water. Papa isn’t much taller than me, and we have the same brown eyes, the same slow smile. We used to have the same hair, only his has gone gray with age.
“I got the mail a few days ago,” I tell him.
“You should get out,” he says, tilting his head slightly to one side. “Go have some fun for a bit. You deserve it.”
I swallow, rubbing a spoon between my finger and thumb under the water. Having fun is what I was doing when he got sick, and I feel a twinge of guilt.
“Papa, I—”
“Something happened with the Prince, didn’t it?” he asks softly.
I’m caught totally off-guard. Papa doesn’t like the prince and doesn’t approve of his place in our government — that’s how this whole mess started, after all.
“That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of the monarchy,” I say, feeling a little defensive.
“You can like the monarch and not the monarchy,” he says, raising one eyebrow. “Belle, whatever happened between the two of you…”
I look back out the window, where the mama bird is sitting peacefully on her eggs.
“…it’s got nothing to do with me, or our current system of government,” he finishes. “There’s a nurse coming to check on me in a few hours and I’ve got automated reminders to take my meds up the wazoo. I’ll be fine. I can manage.”
I just frown, give him a long up-and-down look.
“But you didn’t,” I say, even though part of me wants to sprint out of here and back to Julian right this instant.
“And I’ve learned that lesson,” he says, crossing his arms in front of him. “Being in a coma was terribly boring, Belle. I had the longest dream where I was trying to unscrew a screw that I’d accidentally stripped. It was terrible, and frustrating, and I promise you I’ve got no desire whatsoever to return to that particular hell.”
“Let me finish—”
�
�Just go,” he says, his warm smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I can wash dishes, no matter what you think.”
I don’t even pack a bag, I just grab my purse and my keys and head out the door, leaving before I can lose my nerve.
It’s been over a week. Julian probably thinks that I’ve left him, that I’m never coming back. Maybe he’s already taken up with someone else, maybe he’s so angry that he’ll refuse to see me.
Maybe when he said go, you’re free, he really meant I never want to see you again.
But I have to try. I’ve never felt like I did when I was with him, and I don’t think I’ll feel this way about anyone else ever again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Julian
I’m still a prince. Even if I can’t stand to see people, and even if I more than know that they shouldn’t be forced to see me, I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got work.
I’m in the office in my quarters, angrily writing notes onto the latest diplomatic accords about the amount and types of wheat we’ll import from Voravia, when one of the screens on the wall flicks to life.
It’s the guard shack on the east side of the castle, and the man in it is stiff, saluting me, still as a stone statue.
“At ease,” I growl.
“Sir, yes, Your Highness, Sir,” the man responds.
I hold the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb, already fighting the urge to punch the damn monitor.
“What is it?” I snap.
“Sir, Your Highness, I’ve just allowed a car through this gate,” he says.
“Good, that’s your job.”
He clears his throat. The guy can’t be more than twenty-one, practically still a teenager.
“Sir, my commanding officer informed me that I should let this particular individual in the car in question—”