Long May She Reign(43)

I scribbled down more notes as Fitzroy considered the liquid. I glanced at him, just once—twice. The lab felt too full with him here. Too full, and too quiet.

He thought I didn’t like him and I couldn’t leave that hanging, undisputed. I hadn’t liked him before, but I’d never spoken to him. And now . . . I didn’t know what I thought about him now. Nor did I understand this visceral something, a pull whenever he was near.

“I don’t dislike you.” I inspected the arsenic powder as I spoke, like I wasn’t even talking to him at all.

“What?” I could feel him staring at me. I didn’t look.

“Before. You said I don’t like you. But it’s not that. I just—” I didn’t know. I looked back at my notes, scrabbling for something to say. “We should test its acidity next. If you want to help—there’s paper, somewhere in one of those drawers. Pink-purple strips.”

I couldn’t see his reaction, but I heard his footsteps as he walked over to the drawers and began pulling them open, riffling through my supplies. I could probably have remembered where I’d stored them, if I focused hard enough, but I couldn’t think. I could barely make notes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and I jumped. “You probably don’t believe me, but—I am sorry.”

He was determinedly staring into a drawer, still searching for the paper. I had no idea what he meant. “For what?” I asked.

“For that first night, at your coronation. When I said you didn’t belong here. I—I was upset, about my father, about all of this. And you were there, standing in his place, not fitting at all, and I just—I wanted to tear you out of there. I wanted to rip everything back to the way it was before. But it wasn’t your fault.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Fitzroy—”

“Everyone calls me that, you know.” He pulled open another drawer. “Fitzroy. King’s son. They invented the name just for me, to make sure everyone knew I was different. Do you even know what my actual name is?”

“William,” I said softly. “William Fitzroy.” I stared at my notes again. I hadn’t thought—“I can call you William if you like. I didn’t know—”

“No,” he said. “Don’t. Everyone calls me Fitzroy. I call myself Fitzroy. But—I don’t know. I’ve never had an identity outside my father. And I never really counted.”

“You counted.”

He made a soft sound of disbelief.

“You counted more than me.”

He didn’t reply.

Earlier that night . . . he had helped me, when that noble mocked me. Why would he have done that, made himself look the fool in order to save me? Because he had saved me, in his way. I had been too trapped in my panic to react to the challenge, and he had reset the moment, distracted everyone, made things easy again.

I walked to the row of jars against the far wall. There was nothing I needed there, but I had to do something, to move. I shifted the jars about, looking at the labels, not really reading them at all.

“Why did you help me? At the banquet?”

The silence was a physical presence. It loomed behind me, growing, growing, as Fitzroy did not reply.

“I knocked over some wine,” he said eventually. “I didn’t help you.”

“You made yourself into a joke, to stop them laughing at me. I didn’t know what to do, and you—” I pressed my lips together. “I appreciated it.” The words were heavier than they should have been, too full of meaning. But I did appreciate it, more than I could express. “Thank you.”

“You should be careful. Don’t let people corner you like that.”

“I didn’t mean to. I wanted to respond. But I couldn’t think.”

“You could have done anything,” he said. “You could have nodded, or smiled. You could have said thank you!”

He made it sound so simple. I suppose it was, to him. “It’s not so easy. I know it should be, but . . .” I didn’t have an excuse. I’d tried to be confident, to be elegant, to transform into the queen they desired. For hours, I’d tried. I’d just run out of resolve. The pretense had lasted too long.

“You’re smart, Freya. I know you can outthink them.”

I paused, my hand hovering over a vial of mercury. “You don’t believe that.”

“How could I not believe that? Have you seen this place, Freya? Have you seen what you’re doing?”

“Court is different. It’s not—this isn’t about being smart. When I’m there . . . all the thoughts fly out of my head. It’s like I’m not even fully in the room any more. I can trust my instincts here, but there—I don’t know what to do. I can’t think what to do.”

“Then don’t think. Go with your instincts, like you said.”

But my instincts were wrong. They weren’t the instincts of a queen, and I had to act as they expected, or they’d never accept me. I chewed on my lip, that admission a truth too hard to say.

“I found the paper,” Fitzroy said. “Should we do the test?”

That meant moving closer to him. I felt every footstep as I crossed the room. He held out the papers, and I took them from him, careful that I didn’t touch him.