by Anne Marsh
“Go.” I interject a note of steel.
Edee goes.
Queenie watches her leave. “That’s your wife?”
“Did you want me to introduce you?”
Queenie ignores that question. “We have a situation.”
Whatever plan Queenie has, he needs me to make it work or he wouldn’t be here. He stands at the top of the steps, staring out at the garden, but I don’t think he’s admiring my new hydrangeas. Frankly, I can’t imagine what reason would be big enough, important enough to tear him away from Vale and bring over an ocean. He watches as Edee disappears into the house, examining her like she’s an oddity. Or—worse—not terribly important.
I . . . don’t know what to say.
And despite the hundred-plus degree Vegas weather, I’m cold. My instincts scream for me to grab Edee and seek cover. To run. To hiding like the fucking coward I am because this isn’t going to end well. Whatever’s brought Queenie here, it involves me. He needs something so important that it can’t wait for my return to Vale. Worse, it has to be something he feels the need to tell me face-to-face.
Because Queenie loves me. He always has, just as I’ve always known it. He’s shown me—all three of us—that love over and over when we were younger. And his caring hasn’t stopped just because I’ve gotten taller, older. He loves all of us, perhaps even more than he loves Vale, so something’s really wrong if he’s here.
My body feels like an iceberg—cold and sluggish. Just call me the Titanic because I’m about to hit hard and sink.
“Here’s the deal,” I start up the steps. “I’m going inside and you can come, too. I’ll listen to what you have to say and you’ll ask me for the help you need. If I can do it, it’s yours because I know you wouldn’t ask if it weren’t for Vale.” For the first time, I sound like the king he needs me to be. Commanding, in control, authoritative.
This wins me a brusque head tip. “You’ll make a good king.”
Over my dead body.
“Nik is our future king.”
“He’s not.”
“Bullshit.”
Why I give a shit about the water dripping off me and onto the floor I have no idea. I should look for a towel, right? Not fuck up the pretty finish? Yeah. Fuck it. This is my house and I’ll drip water all over the floor if I want to. I go right on in.
Queenie falls into step beside me. He’s a big man, burly and broad-shouldered. He may be well into his fifties now, but he could still beat the shit out of any challenger. Underneath the veneer of elegance and the expensive clothes is a predator. And let’s be honest. If it comes down to a fight, if your country and your freedom are on the line, this is the man you want at your back. All the fancy crowns and manners in the world can’t stop an ass kicking—but Queenie can.
Of course he can also deal one out, which is why he’s here, riding my ass into the house. I’d like to tell myself I don’t care, but I do. If he’s come all this way, it’s important and that means it’s about what’s best for Vale. I take the stairs to the second floor two at a time and Queenie follows. He’s obviously decided not to let me out of his sight.
“You agreed to listen,” he says.
“I did.” I shove open the door to my room. Edee sleeps here most nights, but technically we have a his-and-her suite. She’s probably in her bathroom, putting on a suit of armor. I head into my dressing room, drop my swim trunks, and wrap a towel around my waist. I don’t want to have this conversation buckass naked.
Queenie looks at me. “Nik had an accident.”
The second he says those words I want to demand he takes them back. I’ve already had my share of accidents in my life. I lost my parents to a goddamned accident and I’m not losing anyone else. But life doesn’t work that way. There’s nothing fair about it. There’s no quota on the bad shit that can happen.
All I can do is try not to fall apart. To hang on and not fall off the goddamned Mount Everest of emotions that I’m perched on.
And now that I’m looking, really looking, Queenie’s not so calm. New lines cut into his face, creasing his forehead and either side of his nose. His color sucks, too, and there’s an air about him. Like he’s . . . worried. Concerned. Holding himself together because if he lets go for even one second he’ll fly apart and everything will come crashing down around him.
He seems . . . old.
And that more than anything hurts me. Because Queenie’s always been larger, louder, bigger than any monster in my closet or under my bed.
“Tell me,” I repeat hoarsely. “Christ. What am I missing? When did I miss it?”
“Three months ago.”
“I’ve been playing in Vegas while my brother was in the hospital?”
My voice rises. I’m yelling, I realize. But it’s not anger that makes me want to rage. It’s shame at how badly I suck. At how much I’ve failed Nik.
“You ran away to Vegas,” Queenie corrects. He’s not yelling, but he doesn’t have to. “You left. And yes.”
“Fuck.” I punch my hand into the wall. Drywall shatters, plaster flying everywhere. Do I feel better? No. All I’ve got is a stinging ache in my knuckles that can’t begin to match the burning in my heart. “The health retreat was a lie?”
“Technically, no. Nik has certainly been focused on recovering his health since his accident.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Because I had hoped that Nik would bounce back,” Queenie snaps. “You would have rushed to his side in some big, dramatic fashion and the entire world would have known that Vale’s heir apparent had suffered a traumatic brain injury. Even if he had been fine, he would have spent the rest of his life trying to convince the world of that.”
Traumatic brain injury.
“What happened?” I . . . don’t know what to say. Something has gone horribly wrong, and I need to fix it. I grab a bag from the nearest shelf and start stuffing shit into it. I’ll get the facts while I pack. Then the next steps in my half-assed fix-it plan will magically materialize inside my selfish, stupid head.
Queenie starts pacing up and down my dressing room as he explains. He doesn’t say anything about the bag I’m packing, but he has plenty of shit to say to me. The details unfold, one cold, tight word after another. Not because he doesn’t care about Nik or me, but because he cares too much. He’s trying to hold everything together and I refused to help him.
I suck so badly.
“Nik went on a charity mission to the mountains in the north.” The area there is mountainous the way a saber-tooth tiger is toothy. You can’t turn around without running into a peak or a gorge. It’s gorgeous but it’s also deadly. People die there on a weekly basis—cave-ins, mudslides, avalanches, slips, falls, and crashes of all kinds because road is a euphemism for bloody muddy mountain goat track. But Saint Nik is Saint Nik. If someone needed his help, he’d have gone. He believes in making a difference.
“The weather turned after he was airborne,” Queenie continues. “His helicopter went down in a particularly remote region. No one found him for days.”
“Fuck,” I say quietly.
Queenie rests his palm over the ragged hole I’ve made in my brand-new wall. Our hands are the same size, but we’re two very different people. He’s so much more.
“A backpacker found him wandering around the mountain. She took care of him until she could get him to the local monastery.”
Nik would love the irony in that. I’ve always accused him of being monkish,
“Is he okay?” It’s a stupid question, one we both know the answer to, plus it makes me sound like I’m five, not twenty-eight. People blurt out those three stupid words in movies all the time, and I’ve always chalked it up to bad writing. But I ask because what I want—no, need—to hear is that yes, my brother is fine. Or he will be. Or all I have to do is scale an active volcano to retrieve
a rare flower that only blooms once in a blue moon and that then, yes, he’ll be totally fine. Magically cured. Fixed.
I don’t need Queenie to tell me that there’s no fixing this. Not really.
Queenie fixes me with his trademark stare. The one that promises deathly retribution if I disagree. “On the outside? Yes.”
I zip the bag up and sling it over my shoulder. “Tell me what you need from me.”
“He doesn’t remember who—or what—he is.” Queenie watches me as he says this. I don’t know what he’s looking for or what I can say to make this better. I just need the universe to give me a clue. A cue. A big fucking do this, idiot arrow.
“He doesn’t remember he’s Nik.”
Queenie nods. “He does not. He doesn’t remember that he’s the crown prince of Vale and he has no idea what that entails. He’s Nik but not.”
I move to the door. Nik’s damaged, not dead. I can work with that. Queenie will have a plane on standby. I’ll be home in hours. I’ll watch over him, protect him, fucking breathe for him, or gift wrap a kidney, a lung, and any other body parts he may need a replacement for. That’s what brothers do. That’s what he’d do for me. I’ll—
“I need five minutes to talk to Edee.”
“Sit,” Queenie barks. He stabs a thumb at the bed. I wonder if he knows that my knees are weak and my insides are squirmy with shame and nerves. He probably doesn’t want to have to scrape me off the floor.
“You are the heir to Vale,” Queenie continues. “You. You asked me to tell you what I needed from you, what Vale needs. We need a crown prince and Nik needs a distraction.”
“Okay.” My throat is dry, but I get the word out.
“No more American bridal jokes,” Queenie says quietly. “You know the law as well as I do. The king of Vale must marry a citizen of Vale. Your Edee won’t do. Even if she were willing, it would take years for her to become a citizen of Vale.”
“She’s not a joke.” I have to say it. Sure, Edee and I started out as a game, a chance to thumb my nose at Queenie. But somehow we’ve become more—and now I have to give that more up.
“Why didn’t you tell me when you ordered me to get married?”
Yes, that’s sympathy I see in Queenie’s eyes. He doesn’t want to explain, which means that I’m completely fucked.
“I didn’t want you to worry. I hoped—”
Eventually, there comes a time when even the most stubborn, grubbiest, foulest little boy has to grow. And that’s now. “Don’t dress it up.”
Queenie nods. “Pick someone from Vale to marry. The quicker, the better.”
“I’m married to Edee.”
“You’ll get an annulment or a divorce,” Queenie says. “Palace lawyers are already looking into which one is quickest.”
“Why not keep Edee?” I ask.
God knows, the men in my family have a hard time hanging onto the women they love. Queenie’s learned this firsthand, as did my father. Which only strengthens my resolve to be different from them in this one regard.
“Because she’s all wrong for the job. She’s neither Valeian nor aristocratic.”
If Queenie hadn’t served first in the military and then on the throne, he would have made an amazing barrister. He lays out his argument like pieces in a puzzle.
Me? Not so much. “Edee’s great.”
If this is a puzzle, I don’t have the corner pieces or even the first clue how the pieces fit together.
Queenie moves to the door. “I’m sure she’s lovely, but she’s an American. She’s a photographer. She has no idea of—and no training for—what being a queen entails. It’s a job, Dare. Being great doesn’t qualify her. It doesn’t even get her in the door. Explain to her if you must, then make sure she signs an NDA and give her a lovely parting gift.”
I rise. “I’m not marrying one of your perfect princesses.”
And that’s when Queenie turns around and levels what my brothers and I call the Sniper Stare. It’s the one that sees through you and finds your soft spot, no matter how much distance you’ve managed. “Why not?”
Ready . . .
“I’m married.”
Aim.
“You think you’re in love, don’t you?” Queenie asks.
“I love her.”
And fire.
“Feelings.” Queenie looks me over. “You’ve got feelings for her. Fine. Wait a discreet period of time and bring her to Vale. Have a relationship with her on the side if you must, but you are going to give Vale the royal bride it needs. The bride Nik needs. Make beautiful babies and give our people something else to think about besides where Nik’s been and why he hasn’t been seen since.”
“No.”
“You agreed to help. For Nik’s sake, you should rethink that no. Do you want him locked up somewhere safe where the doctors can prod him endlessly, trying to fix whatever’s gone wrong in his brain?”
Nik would hate that. He may be saintly, but he’s also restless. He hates sitting still and he hates enclosed spaces.
“Are you threatening Nik?”
Queenie shakes his head. “Threatening? No. But if you can’t, he has to. We both know that Luca can’t.”
I’m next in line. Vale has a thousand years of tradition to uphold. Everything rests on my shoulders . . . and my dick. I’m not the spare anymore—I’m the goddamned star of the show and the pressure’s on to find me a genuine leading lady. I can’t say yes. I won’t. But I do need to go back with him and sort out the mess.
“Give me my five minutes,” I snap. And then I shove my bag at Queenie. “Take this to the plane.”
* * *
* * *
Edee and I haven’t had a chance to buy much furniture, but the one thing I insisted on was the massive four-poster canopy bed that occupies the master suite. Excuse me. The owner’s suite. Floor plans have gotten all PC in recent years, and apparently mastering is no longer allowed in the bedroom. Whatever it’s called, I took Edee on our brand-new mattress three times last night and each time was better than the last. She looked fucking gorgeous, spread and tied up.
She’s facing the window when I knock and open the door. This is the first time the door’s been shut; it’s also the first time I’ve bothered knocking. But things change. We both know that, even if we won’t say the words out loud.
She turns around and watches me cross the room toward her. Concern lights up her pretty brown eyes and a smile trembles on her mouth. She’s not sure what’s up, but she knows it’s bad. “I heard raised voices. Is everything okay?”
I keep it simple.
“I’m going back to Vale.”
I don’t bother shutting the door behind me. The clock’s ticking and I only have a handful of minutes, possibly seconds, left.
“Why?” One word. So many questions.
I lean against the wall and fold my arms over my chest. “Family emergency.”
She hesitates, clearly not sure what to do. “Do you need help? I could go with you. That way you wouldn’t be alone.”
Queenie didn’t invite her, and I can’t bring her. Not if I can’t make her my queen. I won’t condemn her to that kind of half life in the shadows.
“No. I just stopped in to say good-bye.”
Edee tenses and I feel like shit. Which is good. I deserve to feel like shit because in the kingdom of Turdville, I’m the biggest, stinkiest, sparkliest turd of them all. If I were a better man, I’d tell the truth. That someday she’ll meet someone much, much better than me. Someone capable of loving her the way she deserves to be loved.
“Good-bye?” She crosses her arms over her chest. She’s put on some clothes since she came up here, a T-shirt and jeans. I spot the bikini abandoned on the floor beside the bed. Ordinarily, this is the moment where I’d move in and find out for myself whether or not she’s commando. I
’d make a joke about her being wet. There’s a look in Edee’s eyes and a tension about her lips though—if I make a joke out of this, it’s over.
Whatever it is.
“Is this a temporary farewell or are you trying to tell me something, Dare?”
Just say the first thing that pops into your head. Remember that morning when I speed dated Edee and we asked each other six questions? I told her not to think, to just open her mouth and answer—and she did.
“I love you,” I tell her.
“Why?” She looks me in the eye.
I don’t tell her why I love her. Because honestly? I don’t know. It’s like airplanes and rockets and hot air balloons. I know these things fly, but the mechanics are a mystery to me. I just have to trust when I get in them that they won’t crash and that I’ll reach my destination in one piece. I love Edee, but I sure as fuck don’t know how love works or why I have these feelings for her. I just do. They just work.
So I chicken out and pretend to misunderstand her question. I let go of her waist; I let go of her. “My lawyers will handle the divorce. They’ll send you a check.”
I want to ask her to wait for me—but I can’t.
I want her to come with me—but she can’t.
“I’m leaving,” I say.
She stares at me, her face pale. “Go.”
She takes a step backward. She looks the same as she did this morning, as she did yesterday and the day before that. But there’s a fragility to the way she holds herself, a tremble in her lower lip. She wouldn’t want me to notice.
She seems . . . lost.
And that hurts even more than learning that my brother was hurt and alone while I was off pretending to be Prince Charming. Because I shouldn’t have dragged Edee into this mess. She deserves so much more. I hope someday she finds it—him—even if it can’t be with me.
Seconds. That’s all we have left. I wonder if my father had enough time to count down his last few seconds with my mother before their helicopter crashed. If they had time to hold hands, to kiss, to look at each other. I like to think the actual crash was just a blip, a ripple in a long phone call, and then they just went on with their journey together—somewhere else. Somewhere together.