by Emily Albert
The words hit her hard as a memory of her mother and Remy came to her. She had been a child, looking for her mother. She had finally heard her voice in Remy’s room, and instead of going in and risking interrupting, she sat right outside the door to wait for her. Though she had missed her mother, curiosity bubbled inside her and she stayed and listened. At first, they had been finishing a book together. After, they had talked about his day with his tutor and what events were coming up. But then Remy had said something to her, so quietly that she couldn’t hear it. She had heard how he said it, though. He had sounded proud, like he was amazed by something he had done. Now, it reminded Lenna of when she had told her mother about riding. Only, instead of giving him a tired smile, she had sniffled as if crying and said nearly as quietly, “I see myself in you.”
The feeling that had brought to a small, sensitive child was unbearable. What had Remy ever done to be preferred by their mother? Surely she was unlovable. Inferior to Remy. Worthless. She had desperately longed for father who would love her in a way she believed her mother never could.
Now she finally had that father, but those same words did not bring much comfort. He was trying to take away her throne, even if it wasn’t for himself. A good father didn’t take away his child’s opportunities. During her childhood, she never imagined he would be this bad. This wasn’t the way this was supposed to happen. This wasn’t the kind of father she wanted.
You don’t need a father. He is one of them—one of the real people who will hold you back. No one can love you like I do. No one. I am the best you will ever have. I am here for you like parents can’t be.
Again, she looked up to Ollivan studying her face.
“Why do you keep doing that? Get out of my face!”
“What are you thinking about?” The way Ollivan was never fazed by her hostility was off-putting.
“Why?” she breathed. “Why do you care?”
“When I was King, before I left, I was a lot like you. If not because of shared blood, I care because I know your thoughts, maybe better than you do. I can predict what they lead to.” He paused to look at her meaningfully. “You need support, and the best support is not in this castle.”
But he has never been your support, has he? Even being here, he refuses to support your rise. He knows nothing about you and the power you hold. The power he denied. But I do. I’ve always been here and always will be.
She felt all her dreams of being loved by a father, however small they may have been, deflate inside her. At the same time, she entirely embraced her guardian. It was the one who would always be there.
“You look troubled,” he said.
“Oh, I was just wondering how I could have ever dreamed that you would be a decent father. You don’t understand me, and you’ve never been here for me. It’s okay, because I’m better off. You would have only held me back.”
“Oh. Lenna. I know you’ve been missing a father your whole life, and I’m sorry for that, but…”
“But this is about you accusing me of being an out-of-control monster. And once you’ve forced me out of the castle, the throne will go to the perfect Prince Remy, right? You can’t deny it. He can do no wrong, right? Let’s kick the mad princess out and give him all the power!”
“Lenna, this is about you, not whoever rules in your stead.”
“But it would be easier to have Remy as king. Easier for you and the whole kingdom, because he’s easy to control. But he doesn’t understand what it means to have power. I deserve it.” She started to stand up.
“Lenna, this isn’t about deserving it, it’s about… Can you please just give me one more minute?”
“Why? So you can predict how many mistakes I’ll make as Queen? How weak I’ll be?”
“No. You didn’t let me finish.”
She sighed heavily and sat. “You only get one more minute. I need to go. Hurry up.”
“I want to tell you the best parts of having pieces of me in you.” He leaned forward. “You’ve probably heard stories of me. I’m not sure what you’ve heard.”
“Actually, aside from one person who doesn’t even live in the castle, no one has told me anything because they’re afraid to mention you in front of me. Maybe they do know about the murder after all…”
“Please… Please, just let me talk.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
She sat back and decided to humor him. “Go ahead.”
Nothing he says will redeem him.
“What they might have told you, if they had told you anything, was that I was called the Soft Stone King.”
Lenna snorted. “What does that even mean?”
“They say I’m tough as stone, strong as can be. But I care about the people, about doing things the right way. I have the power of a stone without the harshness.”
“You just explained to me that you were too weak to fight the ‘thing inside you.’ You were too weak to stay with your people and your family. So I can’t say you really have the strength part.”
Ollivan laughed just a little bit. “I started out the kind of strong you’re thinking of. I stood up to attacking countries, I started to fix the economy—”
Lenna couldn’t help but laugh when she thought of the ramshackle town.
Ollivan smiled; it was modest, like her own. “Well, you should have seen it before. Anyway, I fought for my country and solved problems relentlessly. I had the kind of strength to confront people and force things into place, whether you believe it or not. I didn’t go into war or cause unnecessary pain, but I pushed until the problems yielded to me. I was trying to keep that determination without becoming mad like my father, and for a while, it worked. I got a lot done during my reign. That’s how the stone part should be. But I did become like him. The stone became harder than I thought it could. And that’s when I walked away—that’s the soft part. The gentle counterpart that lets a person walk away from something important to them to save something more important. Stand up to temptations and impulses. It’s a kind of strength all on its own. I had it, and I believe it must be somewhere in you as well. I’m sure that it is.”
“That strength didn’t get you very far, did it?”
“I lost my family and my kingdom, but I gained my sanity. And if I hadn’t gained my sanity, I would have lost my family and kingdom anyway. So I’d say it got me somewhere.”
Lenna did not want the softness if it meant walking away from everything she was striving for. “Maybe true strength would have been embracing whatever you wanted to run away from. Using your temptations and impulses for the better.”
“That sounds more like a superpower. It wasn’t possible, not for this. The options were to walk away or give in and fall into some kind of convoluted happiness that would hurt everyone else. It was the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. It was important, though. That was strength. Maybe not ideal, but still. You’ll learn that it’s valuable to focus on what keeps you grounded and safe, not impossible ideals that will run you ragged.”
Lenna had to look out the window just to relieve the tension. As she looked into the dark, she heard, Running is not strength. I am your strength. Following me will give you what you want, and true happiness along with it.
She turned back to Ollivan, who was watching her.
“I have plenty of strength. I’m not sure why you’re trying to push your own problems onto me.”
“Oh, I know you do. The strength you need just might not be the kind you think you should have.”
Ollivan took a breath as he seemed to see something in her face. “You are the child of your mother and your father. She is in you too. And she was wiser and softer than anyone. You can use what you learned from her.”
She was not her mother, just as she was not her father. They were no more than blood relations, ones that would not care for her.
“You don’t know me,” Lenna spat as she got up to open her door. “You need to leave.”
“Lenna?” She turned around and glared at him. He was patient as ever. �
�Do you know why I called you ‘lion’ before?” She shook her head. “I named you. Did your mother ever tell you that? I guess not. You know Haeden’s symbol is a lion. Amoretta’s is a horse, but that’s not very strong. It’s soft, gentle, kind. It’s certainly your mother and your brother, but it’s not what I knew you would be. You’re named after a lion. Lenna means ‘a lion’s strength.’ I knew you would have it in you, and you do. It suits you. But you already know that about yourself, just as everyone else does. That’s not what you need right now, that brute strength. You need to channel some of the softness of the other side of your family. It was your mother who gave some of hers to me.” He smiled fondly. “It won’t make you weaker, only more honorable. Kind strength is braver than hard strength.”
Lenna opened the door.
“And Lenna? I know you wonder if I’m here to take the throne from you—that’s what I would have thought. I’m not. I gave up my right to the throne long ago, and I don’t want it. Not anymore.”
She motioned for him to leave, sinking into the love of her guardian. It was better than anything she could ever get from a parent.
Twenty-Five
When Lenna had left her room an hour after Ollivan left, his words circled her mind. She had had the time to think about the message he was trying to get across, about the way he acted like he knew her. It was all met with a stern internal voice telling her that her guardian was all she needed, not him. It told her to give up any form of listening to her father, and it did so convincingly. Of course, she hadn’t known Ollivan her whole life, so how could he be any kind of father to her? And her mother, who had been with her until the day she died, had not been the kind of parent she deserved. Lenna couldn’t even find solace in Kendra, who could never put her above her own blood. In a way, she had known her guardian her whole life, even when it whispered small praises to her as a child. She dropped Ollivan’s words.
Though she had already accepted that her mother had not been ideal, the memory of her and Remy was painful. She never stood a chance against their bond. How had she never seen that? She had let herself fall for the idea that someday Fay would be well enough to love her the way she deserved. It would have never happened, even if Fay had gotten better. Remy had had something closer to a real mother than she ever would. When Fay had said, “I see myself in you,” she meant, “I can never give all of myself to Lenna,” and, “You are more my son than Lenna is my daughter,” and, “I love you more.” There were endless phrases that those five words must have meant, and each one pulsed through her, finding their way to her mind where they stuck themselves on like leeches. She should have heard them sooner.
There was only one person alive that she could punish to satisfy her anger. Whether it was toward herself or her family, it didn’t matter.
By the time she got to the dungeon, her mind was no longer her thinking, rational mind. It was covered in those leeches that sucked out her control and let anger fill her body. Lenna walked down to Remy’s cell, every stomp on the stone floor satisfyingly intimidating.
After taking the cell key from a nearby guard, she stormed up to the front of the cell. Remy looked broken and nearly dead, if not physically then mentally. He lay on the floor, twisted up in an absurd way. For a moment it appeared he was crying, but then it became clear that he couldn’t even manage that; his body was just trembling.
She tapped on the bars, and he still lay motionless on the filthy stone floor. She could imagine that when she was younger and softer, and he was kind and innocent, her heart would have been crushed for him. She would have opened the gate, run to him, and tried desperately to shake him out of this state.
This wasn’t that time, though. Lenna was angry, bitter, and wild, and Remy was a murderer. So instead of comforting him, she stood for a moment and watched him suffer. It was fulfilling in a way. Seeing him deteriorating on the hard ground of the dungeon felt like sweet, rewarding justice.
When she had finally taken in enough of the scene, she noticed the pulsing in her temple. She banged hard on the bars of the cell. Remy stirred but didn’t look up.
“Hey! It’s me! Your sister! Get up! I need to talk to you!”
Remy flinched and lifted his head up slowly. His face was smeared with black dirt. His eyes were hard and hollow. There was an eerie silence between the siblings as they stared at each other, each one changed in their own way.
“Well, you look great,” Lenna said.
Remy put his head back down.
“Oh, no. You don’t get to avoid what you did. You have to face the consequences. I need to talk to you. Pick your head up.”
He did. “Haven’t you done enough?” he croaked.
Lenna laughed cruelly. “Not even close.” All the feelings that had been boiling inside of her began to spill over.
Remy stared at her with eyes that had been tortured for so long that they were nearly unaffected.
“You don’t seem excited to see me, Rem. What, you don’t love your sister anymore? Well, like mother, like son, I guess.” Lenna’s tone was maniacal and disturbingly upbeat.
His eyebrows furrowed as much as they could with the energy he had left. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, as I’m sure you know, you were Mother’s favorite. Not that it was well-deserved, but somehow you were the perfect child to her.”
He squinted and squeezed his eyes shut as if trying to clear them. Then he wiped them with his hand, leaving a trail of grime.
Lenna said, “I suppose it’s been a while, so you might not remember what it was like when she was alive. It’s ironic, really, that you’re the one who killed her, isn’t it? Since it’s been a few months since you’ve felt her love, let me refresh your memory. Does ‘I see myself in you’ ring a bell?”
He blinked at her and pushed himself up to sit.
“No? Hm. I’m surprised. I just thought it would mean more to you that you won the contest for best child—undeservingly, at that. What did you have to do to win? Did you bribe the judge? Make her presents and go for rides with her until she thought, ‘Wow, this child is just like me! He likes horses! He’s so much better than my other child, who is objectively smarter and stronger and more involved in the kingdom.”
She tapped her fingers on the cold metal bars, unable to contain her energy.
“I get it, things aren’t always fair. I just wanted to make sure you knew just how unfair it was, how wrong she was when she told you that you were better. Hey, maybe she didn’t even mean it. That would make sense.” She rubbed her chin. “Yes, that could be true. But either way, I couldn’t have you thinking that you had actually won. Do you understand?”
Remy just continued to blink.
“I said, do you understand?”
“Maybe she knew that you would turn out like this,” he said without much vigor.
“Wow, getting bold, are we?”
“I don’t know how else you’re planning to torment me for what I did, as if I’m not already torturing myself enough for it, but I’m not scared anymore. I’m just numb. You can do what you want.”
“I just wanted to chat. I want you to know that she didn’t really love you more than me. She couldn’t have.”
“I never said she did.”
“But you thought it. After she told you that you were just like her, you thought that you were better. More loved. Is that why you weren’t involved in politics? Because you thought you had already won, and it didn’t matter?”
“Lenna, I never thought that. She loved us both. But if this is what you’re choosing to hold over me next, go for it. I can’t stop you.”
Lenna didn’t know what she had been expecting. She thought he would still have some fight left, but Ollivan had been right. There was nothing left to him. She had been hoping for some fire, something to crush. Instead she spoke to a brick wall.
He is defeated. Out of your way. Well done. Go, and focus on what is next.
It was right; there was no chance of him beco
ming King. But her own fire was still burning and ready to attack.
“Ollivan thinks that I should pity you.”
Go on, child. There is more for you to worry about. You have me. I am all you need.
She couldn’t make herself stop. It felt so good.
Remy said, “And I’m sure you’re going to tell me what you think.”
“You’re right. I think you’re so feeble and pathetic that you can’t even fight. You can’t even look me in the eye and try to defend yourself. Your weakness is beyond pity. It is just laughable. But you know what else I think? I think that suits you perfectly. You did something so despicable that you should not even be allowed to stand up for yourself.”
Remy’s eyes flickered weakly up to her. “I know.”
He’s done, Lenna. It’s time to go.
Lenna narrowed her eyes at him, energy still pouring out of her body. “I know you’re trying to manipulate me. You’re trying to make me have sympathy for you so I’ll let you go. Do you think I’m stupid enough to fall for that? It’s not going to happen. You’re malicious, and you deserve to stay here and suffer.”
Lenna unlocked the cell door and slowly slid it open. As she did, Remy pushed himself back to press up against the far wall.
“What? No more sad remarks? No more taunting me, thinking I won’t actually do anything to you? Hah!”
Through the darkness, Lenna could just barely see him swallow hard. Towering over this terrified, cornered boy, she was powerful. That was what she had always wanted.
“You should be proud,” she whispered to her guardian. Remy flinched.
This is more than you need to do. It will come back to destroy you.
She thought of how Ollivan had killed someone. It must have felt wonderful.
“Do you have hope because Ollivan said that he forgives you?” She laughed hollowly. “You think that he’s going to make me release you? I’m sure he said something along those lines. But see, the thing is, he doesn’t have any power here. He can say he forgives you all day long and it won’t mean anything. If I wanted to, I could forbid him from visiting you. You’d be even more alone than you already are. So if he’s what you’re counting on, forget it.”