Long May She Reign(45)

I didn’t know how to help him. I wished I did. “What about your mother?” I said instead.

“I don’t know. She didn’t really have a part in my life. My father wanted her forgotten.”

“What happened to her?”

He shrugged. “She’s gone. That’s all anyone would tell me. I found out a little on my own, but—” He sighed. “Even after all that, I still loved him. I still wanted his approval. And now he’s dead, along with everyone else, and I’m still—” He shook his head. “You asked me if I wanted to be king, before. I don’t know if I wanted to rule. But if I became king, that would be—I would have his approval then, wouldn’t I? So yes, I wanted it. It was all I wanted, sometimes. But I wouldn’t fight you for it. I wouldn’t fight anybody. It just—it meant something, before. It doesn’t mean anything now.”

“I’m sorry.” The impulse was too strong to resist. I reached across the gap and touched his arm. He looked down at my hand, and I looked at it as well, feeling the weight of it.

Then Fitzroy stepped away, reaching for another bottle of acid, and my hand hung in the air where he had been. “So, how about you? Are you ready for tomorrow?”

I closed my eyes. “I’ll never be ready for tomorrow.” I had to be honest, too, but it was so difficult, my concerns so selfish. “I feel like I’m going to be an intruder, somehow. Everyone will stare at me and hate me for being there, when the people they cared about should have been there instead.”

“They won’t,” Fitzroy said. “Not tomorrow. They’ll be too focused on themselves and their own grief to hate you for it.”

“But I’ll be there. Right at the front, being queen, when I shouldn’t be.” I glanced at him, suddenly afraid. I shouldn’t say that I wasn’t really queen, not out loud, not to anybody. But Fitzroy just shook his head.

“If people don’t know you, they won’t even notice you tomorrow. And if they do, they won’t have the energy to spare to hate you. No one will really be watching.”

“People are always watching.”

“Normally. But not tomorrow.”

“I always thought—” I paused, pulling my thoughts together. “I assumed it was easy for you. Everyone always seemed to like you.”

“I would have thought it was easy for you. No one would really have cared what you did.”

“I cared,” I said, more forcefully than I intended. “And my father. People who remembered my mother, and how wonderful she was. I felt like everyone was watching me, all the time. And I didn’t want to be part of it. I wanted to be here, with my science.”

“But you forced yourself to try?”

“No, my father forced me.” I let out a breath. “I was going to leave, to study. Be a scientist. Make big discoveries, far away from here. I can’t do that now.”

“You could,” he said softly.

“No, I can’t. I’m supposed to be queen, and if I don’t hold on to this throne—”

“But you could,” he said, more forcefully this time. “If you went far away, across the sea, and changed your name, and never mentioned this at all. They’d make Madeleine Wolff queen, and as long as you never challenged them . . . most people would forget about you. And those that didn’t probably wouldn’t be able to find you. You could leave.”

The possibility had never even occurred to me. I could go. Run far away. Follow all my dreams after all. But the thought wasn’t as relieving as I’d have expected. It just made me tenser, more anxious, faced with a possibility that I knew, deep down, I could never pursue. That plan had belonged to the Freya of a week ago, and she felt as far away now as if she were a dream. I couldn’t leave. I had to make things work here.

“I won’t leave,” I said.

Silence filled the laboratory again. And then, so softly I almost didn’t hear it: “Good.”





FIFTEEN


WE WATCHED THE RIVER AS THE SUN ROSE.

The nobles sat in huge stands along the banks, dressed in the soft yellow of sunlight and spring. Their jewels glittered in the dawn.

Everyone else stood farther down the river. The crowd heaved as people pushed forward to reach the water. Many of them held flags or banners, some official with the three stars of King Jorgen, some crafted from old clothes and scraps. A few unscrupulous merchants walked the street near the bank, offering tokens to wave for the king’s final journey, alcohol to toast him with, special lucky coins to toss as the bodies passed.

The dead were by the riverbank, too, upstream of the crowds. Hundreds of wooden boats bobbed in the water. Some were plain, but others had carvings on the sides, etched names or drawings that represented the person or their family. The richest victims lay in elaborate boats—given swan necks or mermaid tails or the wings of a hawk—with silks as blankets.

The king and queen lay in a boat together, on a mattress of gemstones. The jewels wouldn’t get far. People would be scouring the river as soon as the funeral was over. Even a single stone could feed a family for several years. People would fight over them. They would drown in the river for the hope of finding one.

It was such a waste. All of this was a waste.

I glanced at Fitzroy. We stood on a wooden platform by the water’s edge, inches from the royal boat and his father’s body, but he wasn’t looking at them. He stared resolutely at the trees on the opposite bank, his jaw clenched.