If I let him talk, then I’d forgive him. He would get to me. He was suave, and he knew how to look sincere, and he had a face that, honestly, was probably carved by Mediterranean angels. He was way too easy to forgive, so I intended to make it as difficult for him as possible. He was going to have to work for it – really work for it. Because I also needed time to sort out exactly how I wanted to respond when he inevitably brought up the several incidents that shall not be named.
Sonia and Nik’s mother greeted us when we entered. My parents had already found their way down to the plaza and dug in on the appetizer wine and the cheese plate worthy of several Instagram posts. I took the seat next to my mother’s and, unfortunately, Nik sat directly across from me.
Dinner was going to be a nightmare.
* * *
Just as I feared, his eyes haunted me throughout dinner. It wasn’t in a threatening or scary way, but it was off-putting to raise my eyes every few minutes and see his already, unabashedly, on mine. He didn’t look away when I caught him, either. He was content to stare me down openly. I think it was a tactic to get me to talk, but all it did was make me angry. He had no right to give me sullen glares from across the table.
After dinner I practically burst away from the table at the first moment my mother mentioned going to bed. But Nik had anticipated that, and was standing up almost as fast as me.
“I’ll walk you back to your room.”
He said it as a statement, and left no room for me to say no. So, with a heavy frown that probably bordered on a pout, I walked out of the room and silently tolerated him holding the door open for me.
“I know you’ve been avoiding me,” he said evenly.
“So does like, the entire palace, congrats,” I spat.
“I can’t exactly apologize for everything if you won’t give me the chance.”
“It’s kind of hard for me to stand to look at your face long enough to hear what you have to say.”
I took several steps to get ahead of him and heard him let out a frustrated growl. He wasn’t allowed to be angry about this. He had no right. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself as his shoes clicked behind me.
“You being incredibly stubborn isn’t going to make everything go away, you know,” he said, trotting to catch up with me. His legs were longer and once we were shoulder to shoulder he easily kept stride with my attempts to set a faster pace.
“No but it certainly makes me feel better.”
“Does it?”
It was my turn to growl as I crossed my arms over my chest and continued moving, putting all my energy into getting my legs to move fast enough to get ahead of him. Forget going to LA Fitness after school, all I had to do was picture Nikolas following me around and I could get a mile done in no time.
“Fine,” he said.
And with that I felt his hands on my shoulders steering me to turn a sharp left. Before I could even cry out he swung open a door I didn’t even know was there and ushered me in, himself coming in behind me. The space was pitch black until he yanked on the small chain dangling from the ceiling and a flickering bulb came to life illuminating shelves of cleaning supplies and tools.
“Charming,” I said.
“I am sorry.” He said it with a tone of exhaustion and exasperation and I almost felt bad for him. Almost. “But you have no idea what any of that was like,” he continued.
“No, but your sister and mom do and they didn’t exactly have some kind of Lost Weekend over it.”
“No. They don’t know what it’s like.”
That took me back, just a bit. I stared at him. His face had gone from annoyed to suddenly very lost, and he seemed younger. His eyes lost some of their fire and his eyebrows loosened up. He dropped down onto a storage container sitting on the floor. The quarters were so tight his knees brushed against my shins as he sat there. I felt the small spark I had been dreading.
“My mother lost her husband, yes, and it’s terrible because she knew him a lot longer than I ever did – or ever will,” he said. “My sister lost her father and felt like the world was suddenly much darker. And I did all that too, but neither of them had to stand up and take his place.”
“If this is some poor-me masculine identity—“
“It’s not that,” he said. “I became king when my father died. Yeah, we have a coronation to make it official and all that but the second one king dies, the next one ascends, in the eyes of government and God. Spiritually. Divine right.”
“Well then, your first act as king was really impressive.”
I had to keep pulling at this thread. If I didn’t, I was going to slip back into forgive-him mode. After all he had put me through and all I put myself through, I couldn’t do that, not without a real fight.
“Yeah I know, I effed up big time,” he said. “And no one feels bad for me because nobody had to do what I had to do. My father died and I wasn’t even in the room because I was already being briefed for a speech and given a rundown of the topics on international relations and the daily security threat to the nation and all these other things. So forgive me for wanting to find a way to get away from it all.”
“And I’m part of the ‘all’ you had to get away from?”
It was the first time my voice lacked any vitriol. It was quiet, and vulnerable, and it phrased a question I really did want to know the answer to. I understood him wanting to shut out the world, and even going on his bender. But pushing me out with everyone else? That was not something I had anticipated. What was worse, he let that bimbo from Paris take my place – or at least it looked that way.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said, looking up at me with tired eyes. “I know it must have been like whiplash to go from…well, to go from that weekend to…this. And all I can do is say how sorry I am.”
I nodded, but I was pretty sure I did know what he was thinking – that our situation was not possible. I didn’t want to talk about the future now, though. And there wasn’t much more I could get out of this while stuck inside a cleaning closet. I needed time to process my feelings, to think things through, and maybe even sound it off against Jess or Jennifer or my mom.
“I’m going to bed,” I said, moving to the door and opening it before he could object. “Goodnight, Nik.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked, sounding like what I imagined those sad puppies on the ASPCA commercials would, if they could talk.
“Well, there’s no way we won’t run into each other,” I said nonchalantly, walking away. It wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the only one I could give at that moment.
I ignored the glance from one of the maids who walked by, clearly forming her own conclusions as to why we were cooped up together in a closet. I didn’t even blush. I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep it all off and hope that when the sun came up tomorrow, it would come up with solutions.
* * *
“Yeah, sure sounds like you’re avoiding him.”
“I was!”
“And ended up right in a broom closet? Classic.”
Jess wasn’t exactly sympathetic the next day when I told her what happened. In fact, she laughed for a solid thirty seconds before she let me try and explain myself. Of course, after that, she really didn’t have any inclination to hear what I had to say. Jennifer was a little bit kinder.
“Well, it’s a start, right? You’re communicating. Isn’t that what you wanted from the beginning?”
I should have known Jennifer was going to be the voice of reason in all of this. While Jess was inclined to make as many jokes as possible and tease me like there was no tomorrow, Jennifer seemed to be very much team Nik. I wondered if she wanted it to work out so she could reclaim her place as friend of the girl who was dating the prince. But even when she told me I could just walk away from the whole situation if I wanted, it was sincere. Maybe it was just hard to believe that a girl I had assumed was so shallow was actually a very decent human being. That one was my bad.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m here to invite you to breakfast in the rose garden.”
“Uhh. Ok.”
“Nik sent me.”
Oh. I sighed
“I know,” she said. “It’s pathetic, right? He’s terrified of you.”
I stepped back, and opened the door to invite her into my room. She came in, and sat down on the foot of the bed, scooping a pillow into her lap. She looked a lot like Jess in that moment.
“I don’t know about terrified,” I said, smiling. “It sounds wrong that the king of a country would be scared of me.”
She laughed. “I know, right? It’s bizarre that our Nik is king…” her voice trailed off, as she thought of her father. She sobered. “It’s not funny, really. Sorry.”
“No, I knew what you meant, and no disrespect to Alexandru.” I sat across from her. “Truth be told, he might be kind of alarmed at the thought of ‘our Nik’ as king, too.”
The thought made her smile, and I was glad. She was only about sixteen, and this was a lot for her do deal with. My stomach rumbled. “Um, what would you say to a cup of tea and maybe a sandwich?”
“That does sound pretty lovely right now.”
She led me to some other room that had a fancy name, some kind of parlor. She opened a window to let in the light, warm breeze, and one of the valets brought in a tray of tea items that smelled like a mix of luscious herbs.
“I know you’re probably sick of people asking and I’ve asked before,” she said. “But have you given any thought to what you’ll study in school?”
“I plan to get into school first,” I said. “Most freshman are undeclared so I’ll probably just do that until something in my gen eds catches my eye.”
“It must be nice, to have that freedom,” she sighed, pouring a curtain of sugar from her spoon and into her teacup. She stirred it methodically.
“I suppose you’ll be tasked with studying poly sci when you get to university?” I asked. She nodded.
“Political science, languages, history…all sorts of things I have spent my whole life learning, getting thrown at me for the five hundredth time,” she said.
“What would you study if you had the choice?” I asked. I took a sip of the tea and it was a tart, but amazing, burst of flowers in my mouth and I had to stop myself from guzzling it and burning my tongue.
“I’ve always liked sketching,” she said. “But I somehow think people would be uncomfortable with a princess sitting in a nude figure drawing class. Especially now that Nikolas has turned into some kind of media party prince.”
I nodded.
“There are always electives?” I offered.
“If there’s time for it, perhaps,” she sighed. “But until Nikolas has children, I’m expected to be ready to be queen. No one wants a leader who spends more time drawing shadow studies than reading Machiavelli.”
“Well, maybe read something a little less archaic—and scary—than that.”
She laughed at that and I laughed with her. We settled into a comfortable pattern of talking about school and life and Sonia told me about all the drawing studies she’d done and how she had anonymously submitted a piece to a local gallery.
I felt sympathy for her. She had a brilliant mind that had flourished as she got older. She had a true passion for her art, but there was little she could do to chase it. She was expected to sit, back straight, and wait to be told what she was supposed to be. Nik had been the same way, and perhaps those nights at the club had been his way of getting free from it, for just a little while. Sonia had been too strong and too responsible to let herself go in such a way. It was almost a shame she was born second; she’d make an amazing queen.
When we finished tea, Sonia decided she wasn’t quite ready yet to return to her day of studies and meetings and all sorts of other proper things. So we took a walk around the grounds.
“You know, that old building over there is haunted,” she said.
“Oh sure.”
“I mean it.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I bet you will, once you go in there at night.” I glanced at her, smiling, but she was serious.
“This area over here used to be an old monastery,” Sonia said, sweeping her arm out to indicate a wide section of the grounds. “Our family used to live in a palace in the town and the Rose Palace was a rural sanctuary, where they spent the summers, near to the monks.
“The story goes that hundreds of years ago a young woman who was to be a nun met with one of the monks. She was an orphan, and he was the youngest son of a family who had fallen on hard times. They fell in love.”
We were approaching the building as she told the story. It was a pale dusty brick, and stood off by itself at the edge of the grounds, partly covered by vines, and in the shade of a very old olive tree. It wasn’t surprising that I had never noticed it.
“They met when and where they could, but the guilt became too much for the young monk to bear. Eventually, he decided to end the relationship. She was devastated. One night she snuck onto the grounds, and she tried to convince him to change his mind. He refused. They argued, and were caught by an older monk.
“The older monk sent the young man to bed, and said he would see the young woman off the grounds. But instead, he locked her in a cellar – downstairs in that building – where nobody else would find her. Then he told her lover that she had gone, and would never be back.
“She died down there, eventually,” Sonia shuddered. “But nobody knows when. Weeks later? Years? We’ll never know. We only know,” and here, she turned to me, eyes alight with a combination of mischief and intrigue, “that she haunts the place to this day.”
“That is the most disturbing thing I have ever heard, and I can’t believe I’ve been sleeping here, off and on, for years,” I said. She laughed.
“It’s very creepy, and sad. When I was a little girl, one of my uncles – he must have been about eighty at the time – told me that he and his brothers came in here one night, on a dare.”
“And?”
We had come to a low fence that ran along near the building. She paused, and rubbed her palms over the rough stone, frowning. “I don’t know what happened to them. But he made me promise never to go in there.”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I shivered. “Right, so, should we go back now?”
“For now,” she said, slowly. “But what would you say to a little walk later, say, ten o’clock?”
“You wouldn’t!”
The gaze she leveled on me then was the most royal thing I have ever seen.
“Yes,” she said, “I would.”
* * *
That night, after dinner, I crept down the back stairs and met Sonia by the side door to the garden. It was the first time I had seen her in jeans and t-shirt, but I supposed she couldn’t wear blouses and pantsuits every second of her life. We trotted down to the building, which, I’ll admit, seemed a lot more ominous in the night time.
“Ready?” she asked, as we stood at the wall.
I glanced over my shoulder. Far across the lawn, the windows of the Rose Palace glowed warmly, but here we were in near-total darkness. I had been hoping she would back out, but apparently Sonia was just made of sterner stuff than I. “After you,” I replied.
A hard yank opened the door, and we both let out a breath. Inside, the space opened up into a little room not much larger than the space we needed for standing. Sonia shoved the door closed, and switched on a flashlight. It illuminated a low ceiling, and a wall stacked with some wooden crates and a barrel. Next to them leaned a rake and a shovel. Wide floorboards creaked under our feet, and I followed the beam of the flashlight through a door, into a second room. This one had a window…and stairs. Going down.
>
A slender hand closed around mine, and down we went. Her first with the flashlight, and me following, with my heart in my throat.
The stairs were shallow and stone, and curved to the right as we went. After about thirty steps, a gust of air came up out of the darkness, and we froze. It was cold, dank air, and all I could think about was how everybody says the temperature drops when a ghost is near.
I am not sure which one of us screamed first, and I have no memory of going back up the stairs.
What I do recall is both of us flying through the inner room and toward the door leading out, and colliding with a large, very solid form.
We fell, and the flashlight broke.
The massive shape let out a surprised grunt, and a scuffle ensued. In the pitch blackness I was uncertain of my bearings, but the action was to my right.
“Sonia?” I asked, packniked, into the darkness.
“You…big…jerk!” Sonia shrieked. There was a thump, another grunt, and a decidedly male guffaw. And a snort.
“You scared the complete shit out of us!” Sonia scolded. Even when she swore, she was regal.
“You’re creeping down a set of dungeon stairs in a building widely known to be haunted, and it’s my fault you’re frightened?” Nik. Silently, I agreed with Sonia’s assessment – he was a big jerk.
With a huff and a rustle, Sonia began complaining that she couldn’t find the flashlight. In the meantime, large warm hands gripped my upper arms and lifted me to my feet. In the darkness it was hard to tell, but in that moment there may, or may not, have been a kiss planted on my left temple. I’m not sure. A moment later he had stepped away, and pushed open the door.
As he did so, I felt it again – a rush of cold air coming up from the depths. Realizing that the air had moved when Nik opened the door, I was almost giddy with relief.
In the faint light that came in through the door, Sonia found her flashlight, and stomped past her brother, who was now wearing a guilty – but not apologetic – grin.
Letters from a Prince: The Royals of Heledia (Book 1) Page 10