Long May She Reign(15)

I sat at the high table, positioned above them all. Normally, the monarch’s family and favored guests would join the table, but so few people remained that my father insisted I sit alone. Twenty people could have been seated here, but instead the space stretched out on either side of me, a queen with no allies at all.

Naomi was seated halfway down another table, similarly alone. Her black hair was piled into another elaborate style, but it was drooping to one side. She didn’t seem to have noticed. I needed to talk to her. I needed to find out how she was, what had happened to her, but I didn’t dare move. I had a few more hours to endure.

There was food, at least, pheasant and raspberries and wild boar, but how could anyone eat it with the memory of the last feast so fresh? Servants brought out dish after dish for my approval, but I selected them at random, and barely ate a bite.

The room was almost silent. I could hear every groan of a chair, every splash of wine in a cup, every brave scrape of a knife against a plate. Everyone was trapped here until the end of this charade.

Nothing was going to happen, I told myself, as I forced myself to chew a piece of boar. But beneath my stage fright, beneath the awareness of everyone’s eyes on me, genuine fear lingered. I was a target. We had no idea what had happened at the last banquet, so it could easily happen again. Someone could try and complete the job, catch the heir they had missed.

And I was making it easy for them. Sitting here, eating this food, acting like I thought I was invincible, when I knew I wasn’t. They could hurt me as easily as they’d hurt everyone else, and I was just sitting here. Making it easy for them.

I stood. My chair scraped against the floor. Everyone stared at me. But I couldn’t bear it, not for another moment. I had forgotten how to breathe.

This wasn’t a real coronation. King Jorgen would never have been isolated like this. He would have had music, dancing, wine, a table so crammed with people that everyone’s elbows bashed together.

But I couldn’t be like that. Everyone had died, and I was supposed to rule, but I didn’t know how, and no one would be convinced by this, no one.

The room blurred at the edges. I needed to breathe.

I swept out of the room, forcing myself not to run. My guards marched behind me. I needed air. I just—I needed some air.

The corridor beyond was quieter, at least, the cold air refreshing. I fell back against the wall. I closed my eyes, shutting everything out, and focused on my breath. Breathe in, breathe out. I could do this. I could.

“What do you want?”

I opened my eyes. William Fitzroy stood farther down the corridor. His eyes were slightly red.

“I didn’t know you were here.” What else could I say? My voice was too breathy, but at least I managed to speak.

“Quitting already?” He laughed, and the sound rattled through me. Fitzroy usually sounded so light, mocking at his worst. Now he sounded cruel. “They never should have had you crowned. You don’t belong here.”

I looked at him, his messy hair, his bloodshot eyes. I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t have the strength to build any lies. “You’re right. I don’t.” Any fool could see that. “But I’m here anyway.”

He blinked, and his eyes widened. Had he just realized what he’d said? He opened his mouth to speak again, and then stopped. What, I wanted to say. Tell me. All the silence, all the pretense of the day had eaten into me. Everything was fake, grief and weakness buried deep, but not him, not then. I wanted his words, his honesty, whatever cruelty ripped out of him. But he just shook his head and stepped back. “Excuse me.”

He walked away. My hands shook.

“Your Majesty?” My guard stepped closer. “Are you all right?”

No. No, I wasn’t all right. I wanted to scream at them to go away, that I needed to be alone, to breathe, to think, but that wasn’t fair. This wasn’t the guards’ fault.

Fitzroy was right. I didn’t belong here. But if I showed weakness, if I ran and hid, my head would be on the chopping block before I could blink. If someone took the throne from me, even if I stepped aside . . . I was queen now, for as long as I breathed. And I did not want to die.

“Yes,” I said to the guards. My voice shook, but I said it, at least. “I should go back inside.”

I stumbled back into the hall.





FIVE


A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, I STOOD OUTSIDE NAOMI’S door, trying to work up the courage to knock. One of the guards had shown me the way to this fourth-floor corridor that housed some of the surviving nobility. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in the hundreds of years since the court had lived here. It stank of mildew, and the few lamps were sparse, making it feel more like a dungeon than a home.

I needed to see Naomi, to speak to her, but now that I was here, I had no idea what I could possibly say. Her potential grief terrified me. I hated myself for the thought, but the fear screamed inside me, that I did not know what to say, that I would say the wrong thing. That I’d make things worse somehow. I wanted to be able to stride in there and see her and make all of her sadness vanish. I wanted to give her a plan, at least, a way things could be improved. But if her brother was dead, if he was dead, I couldn’t change that, and that helplessness froze me in place. What good was a friend who couldn’t help?

But I couldn’t let myself avoid her. What sort of friend would I be, if I abandoned her because I didn’t know what to say? I wouldn’t let her think she was alone.