A Nordic King(40)

“She’s sleeping. She’s always gone to bed early.”

“I can get it from the front desk,” she says helpfully.

“This hotel is barely even open. They’re not going to have anything.”

She slowly shakes her head at me, like I’m not getting something. “You, sir, are the bloody King of this entire country. You just closed down Legoland. I’m pretty sure that if you want the booze, you’re going to get the booze. Now sit tight, Your Majesty, and I’ll be right back.”

She turns and walks down the hall to the door, and I call out to her. “You know I love it when you call me that.” I can tell she’s hesitating, mulling over what I said. Maybe I caught her off-guard. Maybe she’s trying to think of some smart comeback.

The door clicks shut.

Curiously, I get up and go check on the girls in their room. They’re both sleeping soundly, cuddled up with plush Lego dragons and horses. The same feeling that hit me earlier comes back, slowly this time, curling around me like smoke.

Complicated as ever.

I’ve taken so much from my daughters. It was my actions that night that killed my wife. It was because of me that they suffer from their grief, that they’ll grow up like this, without a mother.

I can’t ever forget that.

Even if I were to try, I couldn’t.

It’s a part of me now.

The guilt.

The yearning for mercy that I’m too proud to ask for.

I wear it like my crown.

Deep down, I know I don’t deserve to feel happiness. Perhaps I never did. Maybe that’s why it eluded me for so long. Maybe it’s why my own parents were so cold and cruel in their own challenging ways. Because they knew.

Helena knew too. That’s why she went for me, hounded me, pretended to throw herself at me. She knew what I lacked. She knew what I was eager to have, sucking it in like oxygen.

I was told to never believe it. And like a fool, I did.

Fate has made me the lost King, encased in cheap armor that only keeps up appearances, forever fighting a battle he will never win.

And yet, looking at Clara and Freja, sleeping soundly, I feel that happiness snake around me. I am both happy when I am with them and devastated in my guilt, and I don’t know how to live with both feelings at once. Yet I keep on doing it. Because my love for them can’t be contained, even if grief comes along for the ride.

But then there is Aurora and … I don’t know where she fits in all of this. The only guilt I feel when I look at her is knowing that I shouldn’t be looking at her to begin with. I’ve spent the last month managing to keep my distance from her and putting up barriers and walls, to keep things strictly professional. She’s an employee, I’m her boss. She’s not even a friend.

And yet, back when Ludwig worked for me, I lamented that he wasn’t a friend either. Just an indifferent staff member. I had wanted, needed, someone to turn to.

Yes, I have my aunt and my sister and I’m grateful for them. But I’ve never had someone that wasn’t obligated to me by blood. Someone who would choose to be by my side.

But to consider Aurora a friend would be ridiculous. I hardly know her. She’s a paid subordinate. Her loyalty, if there is any, is bought.

Yet, the more I’m around her and the more I see her like she was tonight with the girls, caring for them as she does with her big, persistent heart…

Is it fucked up to want that?

Is it even more fucked up to want that from her?

It is fucked up, I tell myself. You think you’re deserving?

There’s a light rap at the door.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing there, mind spiraling into the abyss. I open the door and see Aurora on the other side, holding up a bottle of aquavit. She’s smiling at me like she’s fucking won the world and it makes me feel the same. She’s infectious with her joy and I’ve been resisting feeling it for so long.

“Where did you get that?” I manage to say.

“I have ways,” she says slyly, and I know I should tell her I’ve changed my mind, that I’m just going to bed, that she can keep the bottle, when she sashays her way into the room.

And I move out of the way to let her.

I close the door behind her, softly, and follow her.

She pops into the bathroom and comes out holding two glasses and then goes over to the bed with the princess pink covers on it and sits down. She takes off her boots until she’s in her grey tights and then sits with her legs together and tucked to the side.

For a moment I can’t breathe again and there’s a foreign heat building in my limbs.

I say foreign because I can’t remember the last time I felt it.

This.

Good old-fashioned lust.

I immediately sit down in the pink chair, needing to compose myself, needing to douse any feeling that isn’t indifference.

It’s another battle that I have to win.

“Here,” she says, having poured me a glass. She’s on her knees now on the bed and leans forward as she hands me the glass, and her blouse is dipping low enough that I can see her breasts and the lace of her bra and her hair is falling over her face and…

I train my eyes on hers, hoping she can’t read what’s burning inside me.

I put my hand around the glass, and her fingers brush against mine and she doesn’t let go.