As I had asked, the staff had congregated in the main hall. I think most of them had guessed the news I was about to tell them. I noticed a few had wet eyes as I made my way to the front. Anthony was already there, and as I took the stage, he took my hand. We were in this together, my brother and I.
“I’m afraid I have bad news,” I said, keeping my voice even and trying to remember to breathe. “The king passed away overnight.”
They knew the news was coming, and yet, they were as shocked as I had been. Many of them cried. Once I’d dismissed them, Anthony stepped up to speak to me.
“We need to make arrangements. The media will be out here in force, and we will need to tell them when and where the funeral will be. I’m sure John will help us with everything. The flag at the front of the palace needs to be lowered to half-mast, and the hospital needs a phone call to arrange for father’s body to be picked up.”
My mind was whirring with all the jobs I had to do. Each seemed more important than the last. When had Anthony grown up so much? He was more on top of everything than I was. I needed to pull myself together.
“Can you ask John to meet with us in his office in ten minutes to organize the funeral and press? I’ll sort out everything else.”
Anthony gave me a curt nod and left me alone in the great hall.
My first priority was to call the hospital. Not to make arrangements about my father’s body, but to speak to my mother. She would be distraught and the thought of her there alone made me feel sick to my stomach.
On the way to the nearest phone, I spotted a maid.
“Please, can you arrange for the flag to be hung at half-mast and get someone from the kitchen to take some breakfast up to my room? Ari is there, and I’m sure he will be hungry.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The maid curtsied.
“And have some pastries and fruit brought to John’s office too.” I wasn’t hungry, but Anthony and John might be.
The nearest phone was in a small office just off the main entrance hall. Thankfully, the office was empty. I picked up the phone and dialed carefully. When the head of staff answered, I asked to be put through to my mother, only to be informed that my mother had already left and was on her way home.
I’d hoped that would be all, but the head of staff wanted to know what to do with my father’s body. I knew it was a job on my list, but I’d hoped John would deal with it. I had no idea what the protocol for the death of a sovereign was. My father’s father died when I was just a baby.
“I’m not sure what the best course of action would be at the moment,” I replied to him, but then he told me that the hospital was swarming with paparazzi and they needed it to be sorted out as quickly as possible.
The whole morning was a whirlwind of activity as John, Anthony, and I ran through everything that needed to be done. Thankfully, John did remember my grandfather’s death and was able to get my father’s body back here to the small chapel that sat in our grounds at the back of the palace without too much fuss.
Half an hour after I made the call to the hospital, my mother walked through the door surrounded by more guards than I’d ever seen before. Her face was blotchy from tears and for the first time ever, her hair was a mess. She was still wearing the same outfit she’d been wearing when she left in a rush the day before.
“Someone, get my mother a cup of tea,” I shouted out, running over to her and enveloping her in a hug.
“No need. I’m tired. I’m going to retire to bed.”
She did look tired. My mother, who always looked perfect, no matter the occasion, had big black circles under her eyes, eyes that were bloodshot and puffy.
I was about to argue that she shouldn’t be on her own, but looking at the way she was, sleeping was probably the best thing she could do.
I walked with her up to her room and sat with her a while as she lay on the bed sobbing quietly. Eventually, the sobs subsided and were replaced with soft snoring. Wearily, I dragged myself from her room and headed back to John’s office.
As I entered, Anthony and John were in deep conversation.
Pages and pages of paper covered the desk between them.
Anthony turned his head as I closed the door behind me. “We have made arrangements for father’s funeral to be held in two weeks in the Trifork Minster.”
“Two weeks? Isn’t that a long time to wait?”
The thought of my father’s body lying in the small chapel for so long made me feel numb.
“It’s actually pretty quick for a head of state,” John answered solemnly. “It’s not like a normal funeral. There has to be a period of public mourning. The press in all the nine kingdoms need time to get their people here. We expect hundreds of thousands of mourners to show up and security needs to be put in place to keep everyone safe. We also have to send out the invites to the heads of state of other kingdoms. It is a massive undertaking. My office will be extremely busy, plus after that, there is the matter of your coronation. We can’t leave too long a gap between both events.”
Both events. It sounded like he was talking about a couple of parties, not the burial of my father and the bonding of me to my kingdom.
The afternoon dragged on in a blur as I sifted my way through all the official paperwork that had to be taken care of, starting with developing the long list of names from which to choose whom to invite and organizing how we would handle the entire event in respect of the public and press.
Hours later, my stomach rumbled. I looked at the clock on the wall behind John. Due to my numb state and the fact that we’d been so busy, we’d managed to work straight through the whole day without pausing to eat. With a start, I realized I’d left Ari on his own in my room all day.
“You guys should eat,” I said, jumping up out of my seat. I’ll meet you back here in twenty minutes. There is something I have to do.
Without waiting for an answer, I dashed out the door and up the stairs.
“He’s already left, ma’am.” It was the same maid I’d spoken to earlier.
“When?” My heart sank. I couldn’t believe I’d not thought to come visit him all day. I’d been so wrapped up in my own grief and duties that I’d not once thought to come and check on him.
“How did he leave? He can barely walk.”
“He did walk, ma’am. I saw him go. He asked me to tell you that he’ll see you later and he’ll stay around the shoreline in case you need him.”
I thanked her and hurried back down the stairs, feeling incredibly guilty.
Walking, even the short distance to the ocean without help would be agony for him. I wished he’d come to me and let me help him.
I saw my sheet caught on the rocks where he’d left it weighted down so it wouldn’t fly away.
Picking it up, I called out to Ari.
Way behind me, on the public side of the promenade, I could hear the members of the press shouting my name. I turned to find literally hundreds of them, jostling for position to get the best photo of me.
I closed my eyes, feeling dizzy from lack of food and the weight of grief that pulled at my heart.
A splashing noise caused me to open my eyes. Ari appeared, his head and shoulders coming out of the water, his obsidian hair trailing behind him, and fanning out where it touched the sea.
“I’m so sorry,” I began, kneeling and reaching out to him. “I didn’t mean to leave you alone for so long. There was just so much to do, and everything is so overwhelming right now.”
Ari held up his forefinger to my lips. I could taste the salty water that dribbled down over my chin.
He heaved himself up on the rock and kissed me. As he’d just come from the ocean, his face was wet, making me wet with it. Not that I cared. It was the first moment since I’d gotten out of bed that I’d didn’t think of my father and of the million and one things I had to do. In that moment, there was just Ari and me.
Ari, me, and the thousand photographers taking our picture. A picture that would inevitably end up on th
e front page of the newspapers tomorrow.
“I understand,” Ari said as he pulled back from me. I almost followed his lips which would have made me fall into the ocean with him. It was extremely tempting.
“You are going through a lot right now, and you have much to do. I’ll always be here for you, and when you are able, we’ll go back out to sea together.”
I sighed. With the mountain of paperwork I had to wade through, going out to sea with Ari was a long way off.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to come out with you until all this dies down, but I promise to come visit you soon.” I indicated the braying paparazzi mob behind me. Ari’s eyes flicked to them for a moment then turned back to me.
“I don’t care about them. I do, however, care about you. I will be waiting for you. I’m always here.”
He kissed me again, this time quickly and disappeared under the water.
If my heart had felt empty before, it was even worse now. I was tired, right down to my bones. I couldn’t exactly call my mother lucky, but at least she was allowed to sleep through everything. I’d give my right arm to be able to drift into sweet oblivion and wake up when this all didn’t seem like such a nightmare.
Taking my sheet with me, I ambled back across the rocks, giving a small wave to the photographers. It didn’t matter what I did. They already had the shot they wanted. However much I didn’t like it, Ari and I were huge news. No doubt they’d make a big deal of me visiting him on the day my father died.
I was feeling very anti-media as I entered the house. John caught me as I’d just made it through the door. “I’m sorry Your Highness. I know you are tired, but the press is assembled in the grand hall. They want an official statement from the palace.” He looked at me apologetically as I gawked back at him.
“Why? How?” I was so tired; I couldn’t even articulate the words. I’d only been gone fifteen minutes, twenty at most. How had a press conference managed to be arranged and set up in such a short period of time?
“I’m most terribly sorry,” John apologized again. “My staff set it up without my knowledge. We’ve been locked away all day, and they took it upon themselves to bring the press in. I shall turn them away immediately then reprimand my staff at once.”
“No.” I brought my hand up to my head where a headache was developing. My stomach also pained me because of not eating all day, but I couldn’t just turn the media away. I needed to show the kingdom some leadership and sending the press away when the public needed me the most seemed the worst thing to do, “I’ll speak to them. Please don’t reprimand your staff. It was the right thing to do.”
John gave me a small smile and nodded his head.
I turned to the double doors of the grand hall, and as I pushed them open, I realized I had not the first clue of what I was going to say.
Heartbreak
The month after my father’s death passed incredibly slowly, and yet, every second of my day was accounted for. Every night, I flopped into bed and fell asleep almost before my head hit the pillow. Despite my promise to Ari, I’d not found time to visit him once. My heart burned with the pain of not seeing him, but there was always just one more speech to give, one more form to sign, one more person I had to deal with. The funeral had run as smoothly as could be expected, but my upcoming coronation was fraught with problems. Problems I didn’t want to deal with. I didn’t really want to deal with any of it. I needed to deal with my own grief, but like everything else, that was also something I didn’t have time for. I’d known my father was a busy man, but it hadn’t occurred to me just how busy he was.
As I had with Ari, I’d also had to push my other friendships to one side. Astrid and Hayden had postponed their wedding as they had said they would, and now the date was set at some vague point in the future. I think they were waiting until my coronation to set an actual date, but as I was putting it off as long as possible, their wedding was heading farther into the future. I felt so bad for them, but as I never could find the time to see them, I was unable to apologize in person.
“My whole life is wrapped up in queen stuff,” I complained to my mother about six weeks after my father had died. She was brushing my hair at her large dressing table.
“It won’t always be like this,” my mother soothed. “When your father became king, I barely saw him for months, but then things settled down, and we were able to find some time together. The secret is delegating.”
I looked at myself in the mirror. My mother had gone back to the well-dressed, perfect looking woman she had been before her husband died, but I looked like I hadn’t slept in a month.
There were bags under my eyes, and my skin was almost gray in color. Even my hair that usually had a vibrant red hue was dull and lifeless.
It was easy for my mother to say I should delegate, but I already was delegating every task I could. John was doing twice the work he normally did, and his staff was coming in extra weekends to help prepare for the coronation. Anthony was going way above and beyond his duties by dealing with all the foreign issues—issues I should be dealing with myself but didn’t really understand. I was left to deal with the media. A job which I hated above all other jobs. There were endless streams of interviews from every TV network and every newspaper in all the nine kingdoms. I couldn’t back out of any of them because, according to public opinion, doing so would make me an uncaring leader.
“Apparently, if I don’t give at least a billion interviews a day, the public will think I’m a bad queen.”
“You don’t want to pay too much attention to what the public thinks,” my mother replied, yanking the brush through my knotty hair. “It will drive you insane. Your father didn’t.”
I sighed and rested my head in my arms, forcing my mother to stop doing what she was doing.
“You’ve not had a minute to yourself in weeks. You’ll work yourself into the ground at this rate. How long has it been since you last saw Ari?”
She knew how long it had been. Over six weeks. I’d tried to get out of the palace on a number of occasions, but some emergency or other had always prevented me from leaving. When I closed my eyes at night, all I saw was him. I longed to be back out in the ocean, to be beside him once again.
“I thought so,” my mother said, not waiting for a reply. “It’s about time I gave an interview or two. I’ll take over your duties today, and you can go for a swim.”
I pulled my head up and looked at her reflection. She smiled at me with such warmth in her eyes.
“Thank you!” I jumped up, knocking the brush from her hand and turned to hug her. She was right. I did need a break.
“Go then, before I change my mind.”
I kissed her cheek and ran from the room. As I passed John’s office, I poked my head around the door and told him that my mother was taking all interviews this afternoon. He held two thumbs up and gave me a grin.
My heart already felt lighter as I dashed across the rocks. Not caring about the remaining paparazzi, I pulled my black dress over my head, and in only my underwear I dived right in.
I’d barely swum more than a couple of meters when I bumped right into my grandfather. As soon as he took my hand, I was able to breathe underwater like he did. If only I didn’t have to hold onto a merperson to be underwater. It was so very inconvenient. He spoke to me through telepathy, the same way that Ari and I spoke when we were underwater. I could communicate this way with Ari because we had a special bond, but with my grandfather, it was all magic. Although he was nowhere near as powerful as the sea witch had been, magically speaking, he did have some powers. Being able to talk to me telepathically was one of them. The only problem was, beyond Ari and my grandfather, I wasn’t able to talk to any of the other merfolk and the few times I’d been to Havfrue, I’d had to remain silent or try to communicate with a crude sign language.
Erica!” I’ve not seen you or your mother in weeks. I thought I’d come and pay a visit...What’s the matter?
My tears were invis
ible under water. One lot of salty water pouring seamlessly into another, but I’m sure he picked up on the shock on my face. What with everything going on in the palace and in Trifork, I’d completely forgotten to tell my grandfather of my father’s death. He wouldn’t be upset, not in the traditional sense. My grandfather was my mother’s father and had only met my father on a few occasions. He should have been told from a political perspective, though. My father died.
Now, it was my grandfather’s turn to look shocked. Despite our rocky start, my grandfather had grown quite fond of me. He pulled me into his arms and almost engulfed me in a hug.
He was so young. How did it happen?
I shook my head, remembering back to when the doctors had told us the cause of death. It hadn’t seemed real at the time. I wasn’t sure I believed it now all these weeks later.
Blue Water (A Little Mermaid Reverse Fairytale Book 2) Page 4