by Susan Stoker
“Dead?”
I nodded.
“Well, then champagne for all of us.” Gunnar stood and almost before the words were out of his mouth, the corks were popping in the corner of the room. The beautiful woman walked around again, with fresh bottles. When the woman in the red dress brought Gunnar a glass, he instead reached for the bottle, lifting it to his mouth and taking four long pulls from it.
Again, I refused to feel anything about this.
Not one thing.
A woman brought me a flute and I took it, thanking her.
“You’re welcome,” she said, slightly surprised as if it had been a while since anyone had made eye contact with her.
Gunnar lifted his bottle in the air. He was taller than me by a few inches, and with his arm up like that he looked every single inch of our Viking ancestry. The suit couldn’t hide it. The thousand-dollar watch. The throne or bar. None of it hid who he was.
A king.
“To my father!” he said. “May the asshole burn in Hel!”
I saw many of the men and women look at each other before drinking from their flutes. I did not drink. There was no love lost in my heart for Frederick, but I would not wish him to Hel.
“You always were squeamish,” Gunnar said, his lips twisting, and I recognized the pain in him that made him cruel. So cruel. He took another swig from the bottle and then wiped his mouth with his hand.
“Your father is dead,” I said, not rising to his bait. “I’m here to bring you home.”
He shook his head, his eyes bottomless pools of pain he never wanted anyone to see.
But I saw. It was my curse. I always saw him.
“To King Gunnar of Vasgar.” I lifted my champagne flute into the stunned silence. “Long live the king.”
Chapter Five
Gunnar grabbed my arm and all but dragged me back across the marble floor to a closed door set in the opposite wall. I was, in that moment, his hand gripping my elbow, so glad for the cashmere and the fur.
I could not feel him. Not at all.
Though I could smell him. Whiskey and cologne, and beneath that, him. The smell of Gunnar that had seeped into my skin and bones years ago. I could outrun a lot of things, burn the memories of him to ash, but the smell of him… that I could not ignore. And it went through me like a spear.
He opened the door, all but shoved me inside a small office, and slammed the door behind us. The office… this space I recognized. While that outer room might be for show, like any good throne room, this room was all Gunnar. Wood walls, bookshelves. A leather couch. A desk covered in coffee cups and notebooks.
And books. Books everywhere. So many books.
The dam trembled again, but I sniffed and put my back to the books and the memories, facing Gunnar like our history wasn’t breathing down my neck.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Heart attack,” I said. “If you’d answered any of the emails or calls you’d know he’d been sick for a while.”
“How is your mother?” he asked, surprising me.
“Fine.”
He smiled…or sneered? It was hard to tell with him.
“And you?” he asked.
“Also fine.”
“Why are you lying about your feelings?”
“Because I will never again give you a weapon to use against me, Gunnar.”
The words came out unbidden, cracking in the air like ice in spring. I had not meant to say that. To reference in any way our past. I was here to do a job.
Bring him home.
He blinked at me and then nodded. “Probably wise.”
He stepped past me, deeper into his office and I didn’t turn, gathering myself for a moment, so I heard rather than saw him sit in a squeal-ly chair and open a drawer, and I knew without turning that he’d be taking out the bottle of Akvavit.
The champagne and the whiskey—they were for show.
Akvavit was for him.
I turned and saw him pouring clear liquid into two shot glasses.
He lifted one toward me but I didn’t take it.
“Really?” he asked.
“I’m here on official business,” I said. “Not to drink your aunt’s burnwine.”
“You stayed at the palace?” He sat back in his chair, the old springs squeaking at the effort. “What am I asking, of course you stayed. The dutiful citizen.”
“You left. Someone had to stay and make sure your father and his brother didn’t sell Vasgar to the devils.”
His brow furrowed. “The council members we worked with? Agatha, John? Alec?"
“Resigned or fired. And then replaced by your father’s minions.”
He swore under his breath and it was a relief to see he still cared. After three years and from the bottom of this New York City club—he still cared.
“And so you stayed to fight the good fight?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, his shirt shifting to reveal the snarling mouth of the wolf on his chest.
“I’ve been running the country in your father’s illness. I’m all but queen.”
He watched me for a long time, unreadable, and then nodded.
“But not queen.”
“The council members would not hear my petition.”
He gaped at me. “You petitioned council?”
“They know I’ve been running the country. They know I’m more than capable.”
“And yet?”
The decision of the council still burned. The misogyny and sexism of our government was a rock I could not roll aside on my own. No matter how hard I fought. My mother—she could help, but she was working far too hard on her role as grieving widow.
“They rejected my petition.”
“And sent you to come fetch me, the black sheep prince. Oh, this must be a humbling moment for you.” I said nothing, because the pride lodged in my throat would not allow it. “I meant what I told you years ago; you are not meant for the throne of Vasgar.”
I’d been expecting it in some way. For him to throw that moment in my face like an animal kicking up dust.
I could feel my cheeks blushing. My neck. And he noticed, his eyes narrowing, which only made me blush harder. I felt underneath my coat, every inch of my body, all my skin. Those women out there, they were the opposite of me in every way. Nubile and thin. Window dressing. I could break them over my leg.
And once upon a time, for my people I would have been the height of desire. I would have been praised and had my pick of men. I would have, in fact, had all the men if I wanted.
But the world has changed, and the strap of my bra cut into my skin, reminding me that I was too big for the modern world. Too big for this man except to toy with.
“They didn’t send me,” I said. “I’ve come on my own.”
I watched Gunnar now, with the same cruelness on his face, pour another shot of Akvavit and hold it out to me in his elegant fingers. “Nothing goes better with pride than my aunt’s burnwine. Go on.”
“I am a far better ruler than you will be,” I said and took the shot because I felt my walls crumbling. It burned down my throat, cleared away the memories. Focused my intentions.
“Of that,” he said with a sigh, “there has never been any doubt. But why are you here for me, when the council didn’t send you?”
“Because if you don’t come back, the throne will go to your uncle.”
He knew that, of course. His uncle was second in line. I was third. The world was so unfair.
But he sharpened, that lazy indolence he’d perfected to hide the fact that he had a thinking brain and a beating heart, vanished for the moment and it was him there. The man I’d loved.
“And my uncle? He’s making an advance toward the throne?”
“You’re not there to stop it,” I said.
“How bad is it?”
“He has made no secret of his plans to sell the oil drilling rights to Agamar and Vesti,” I said. “He’s already brought the American and Russian presidents in f
or meetings. Exxon has bought a building in the capital.”
Agamar and Vesti were the heart of our little country. Ancient lands with burial grounds and ruins. Most of our people still believed there was magic in the ffordes and mountains. Gunnar’s uncle would see it all covered in oil drills so he could line his pockets.
“All that work three years ago, those things you started. I’ve kept them going,” I said. “But if you don’t come back, it’s all over. I can’t fight your uncle and council.”
And the truth was, I had a million reasons to hate Gunnar. The way he’d treated me, the way he abandoned me. His casual cruelty. His vanity and ego. All of them fuel to the fire of my anger and hurt and resentment.
But he poured himself one more shot, drained it and then stood. Tall and strong and more than enough to defeat his uncle. Gunnar might have hated his father—and with good reason—but he loved his country.
“I assume you have a jet waiting?”
“At JFK,” I said. “A car is out front.”
He took a deep breath and then smiled, like this was all just a lark. “Then let’s go make me king.”
From a hook behind him he grabbed a long black cashmere jacket and swung it over his shoulders, already looking so much like a king it made my heart pinch in my chest.
Chapter Six
New York City was too loud for me. Too bright. But from inside the back of the town car I couldn’t look away from the window. All that neon was hypnotic and alarming.
“I assume,” Gunnar said, settled in next to me, so close I could feel the electricity from his body like the electricity out there in the night. I forced myself not to shrink back, to hold my space. To fill up my space. I was no longer the shrinking girl hiding in the back of that library. “You have some reports I need to look over? Or are you going to catch me up to speed yourself?”
I pulled from my leather briefcase an iPad and handed it to him.
“Our budget is balanced for the first time in twenty years. We have doubled down on renewable resources, particularly wind. We’re building turbines on Tyre.”
“That won’t bother the sheep?”
I smiled, only because I was sure he couldn’t see me. “The sheep don’t seem to mind. We’ve committed forces to NATO. As well as renewed our monetary pledge. And we’ve taken in two thousand refugee families. We’re committing more money toward financial aid for students who want to study abroad."
“What about farming and fishing?”
I turned. “They are in decline.”
“And you’re not worried?”
“Of course I’m worried.”
“You’re sending our young people off to Scotland and Sweden to get an education and they won’t come back?”
“But the ones who do will be educated, and they’ll help our fishing and agricultural centers flourish.”
I turned to face him, surprised to find him watching me.
“It’s everything we planned,” I said. “In the library three years ago.”
“You’ve made it happen,” he said and I looked away. Uninterested in his approval and disbelieving his reverence.
I’d been working my tail off while he’d been sitting in the basement of some club fondling women in spandex.
His approval meant shit.
“Read the report. You have a lot to catch up on,” I said.
It was silent as he read and I continued to look out the window, the snow falling in thick white flakes to melt on the glass.
“Had things gone differently this would have been your home,” he said. “New York. The internship.”
“It never would have been my home.” Already I missed the mountains and the snow. I even missed the wind. “But how fitting that it’s become your home,” I said. “All this light hides any number of sins, I imagine.”
“Yes, and I have done my best to exploit them all,” he said rather predictably.
“What’s going to happen to your bar?” I asked after a few minutes.
“Bars. Plural. I own three and two restaurants. As well as some apartment buildings in Brooklyn.”
“You have a kingdom of your own, it seems. You worked fast in three years.”
He smiled with half his mouth. “I bought most of the properties before I left.”
“You were planning this all along?” While I’d been imagining us on the throne together, he’d been planning to leave Vasgar.
“Everyone needs an escape route.”
“Not me,” I said defiantly. Even as I had several planned for the next few months. Oh, what a hypocrite I was.
“You have to sell them,” I said. “The bars. You can’t—”
“I know.”
“Will it be hard? I mean… did you like it?”
He shook his head. “It was just nice to have something of my own, you know. Something that had nothing to do with my father.”
“You can make Vasgar your own.”
“You’ve already turned things around,” Gunnar said, lifting the iPad. “The work you’ve done. It’s amazing. More even than we’d dreamed.”
“Thanks,” I said, shooting him a quick smile, weakening despite all my efforts. I looked out the window, burning my eyes on all the light.
“Have you ever been to New York before?” he asked as the car drove us through the neon night.
“Why?”
“You’ve got that wide-eyed I’ve never been to New York before look on your face.”
“That’s a thing?” I asked, smiling reluctantly.
“It is.”
“It’s just… how much money does it cost to keep this city lit up like this?”
“More than our gross national product for ten years.”
“Do you like it? The city?” I regretted the question as soon as I asked it, but as his silence went on and on, I turned to find him staring out his own window. His face pensive.
Don’t care, I told myself. Do. Not. Care.
“I missed home every day,” he finally said. And I stiffened at the longing I heard in his voice.
“Banishment was your choice.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was.”
That was how badly he didn’t want to be with me. He left the home he’d loved to live in the middle of this neon island as far from me as he could get. I knew it was more complicated than that, but that’s how it felt. In the dark night in my bed.
It felt like he never wanted me at all.
“Well, it worked out for you, didn’t it?” he asked. The words cutting but his tone soft.
That was the nature of Gunnar. And I’d chosen, years ago, to believe his tone and not his words. And it had been a mistake. Now, I would hear his words and ignore his tone.
“I’m not interested in slinging mud with you, Gunnar. You’ve been sitting on a false throne in the bottom of a night club. I’ve been running your country. I owe you nothing.”
“You’re right,” he said after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
I narrowed my eyes, waiting for the next blow. Because Gunnar did not apologize.
“And thank you,” he said, catching me off guard. “Thank you for taking such good care of the country. It could not have been in better hands.” He pressed his hand to his lips and then his heart, a common salute in our country. A sign of respect.
I looked back out the window, shaken by his tone and his words.
***
The jet was the royal family’s and I had grown accustomed to it, I hate to say. I was spoiled. All these years I’d resisted but as I sat down in my usual seat in the jet, the soft sweet leather all around me, a latte with just the right amount of sugar brought to me within moments… well, I was going to miss it.
“Thank you,” I told Melinda, the head flight attendant.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Erickson. And for you, your highness?” she asked Gunnar who blinked, wide-eyed for just a moment at the title.
“Coffee,” he said. “Black.”
Melinda nodded and was back
in a moment, like the cup had been waiting for him.
Gunnar said nothing because he was used to this kind of treatment. And I’d never grown fully accustomed.
My phone binged and I checked the messages from my assistant. Two more job interviews for Monday. Good. Fine. I put my phone away with a shaking hand.
“What’s wrong?” Gunnar asked.
“Nothing.”
“Your hands are shaking… is it flying?”
“I’m not scared of flying, Gunnar, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You told me that story about flying out of Edinburgh in that storm."
It was my turn to gape at him, slightly stunned he’d remembered. I’d completely forgotten.
“I’d be scared to fly after that, too,” he said with a shrug.
“As a representative of Vasgar, I’ve flown plenty,’ I said. “It’s not that.”
“You’re not going to tell me why your hands are shaking?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“All right,” he said, swiveling in his seat. The iPad on his lap for a moment. He’d been glued to it for the last part of the drive. He’d asked a few questions that reminded me he’d been training to be king his entire life. The last three years of debauchery and indifference hadn’t seemed to change that.
He’d have a learning curve, but the council would help him. The country would be fine.
“Can I ask you something else?”
“You can ask me whatever you want, I don’t guarantee I’ll answer.”
“Excuse me,” Melinda said, coming to stand in the doorway. “We will be taking off shortly. Please buckle your seat belts.”
Gunnar shrugged out of his black cashmere coat and handed it to Melinda, who stood beside my seat waiting for me to shrug out of my jacket. And for a moment—a split second—I was the naked girl on the bed. Rejected and vulnerable and so embarrassed by her body. But I felt Gunnar’s eyes on me and I wouldn’t admit that he’d hurt me. Not for anything.
Not even the throne.
And fuck that guy. I was a goddess.
I stood and took off my coat, revealing the black pencil skirt and red silk shell I wore beneath it. It was rumpled and a little sweaty.