The Wild Heir(7)

She looks at me and her eyes are watering.

Shit.

“If you don’t wish to abdicate, then you will be king. Sooner than you think, sooner than we all hoped. With all you’ve put this family through over the years with your partying and your women and your damn adrenaline sports, you need to step up and be the man we want you to be. We need you to do the right thing and marry someone and start a family and do all the things that a king should be doing.”

This is too much to take. My stomach is starting to twist. I sit back down, my foot tapping rapidly against the floor.

“Have you talked to father about this?” I ask quietly.

“I did,” she says. “He agrees.”

“This is like an arranged marriage.”

“It isn’t when you have a pick of who you marry,” she says stiffly.

“It’s an arranged marriage,” I repeat, looking at her hard. “A marriage of convenience. Or inconvenience since you very well know marriage has never been on my agenda.”

“You’re twenty-eight. It had to be eventually.”

“Why? Because that’s what society says?”

“Phhffft,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You’ve spent your whole life bucking what society says. Maybe this is about something else. Maybe you need someone, Magnus. You need someone in your life instead of all these, these things.”

“I can guarantee you’re not going to be telling any of my sisters this spiel. You’ve always encouraged them to do what they wanted, to date whomever they wanted, girl power and all that.”

“You’re different, Magnus, and you know it. I encourage them to do what they want because society is always there to try and hold them back. You have no one holding you back. I think it’s time that maybe you did.”

“Right. You’re really selling marriage right now.”

“Do you want to die alone?”

I get up again. “Okay, Mother, no offense, but I think this conversation took a turn for the worse seven minor heart attacks ago.”

She closes her eyes, seeming to compose herself, then gets to her feet. I offer my hand, but as usual, she ignores it. “This went about as well as I thought it would.”

She walks past me, heading to the door.

“That’s it?” I ask. “You’re not going to yell at me? Threaten me?”

She puts her hand on the knob, takes a moment, her shoulders seeming to grow heavier before my eyes, then glances at me. “Come over for dinner tomorrow. It’s been so long since we’ve had the whole family in one place.”

Then she opens the door, steps out into the hall, and the door shuts behind her with a resounding click that seems to echo inside my head.



At six-thirty the next evening, Einar and Ottar practically shove me into one of the royal cars parked around the corner from my apartment and take me to the palace in the city center, which is really only a short drive away. Too short, in my opinion. I told them I could have walked but I think they both imagined me running off into the sunset. My friend Viktor, the Prince of Sweden, got to do that, to run away and pretend to be someone else, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so envious than I am at this moment.

We go through the large palace gates and Einar parks at the back entrance, a lush park surrounding us on both sides. With it being September now, the leaves are slowly turning from green to gold and the nights are getting chilly.

Tor, my mother’s butler, greets us formally and then leads me to the dining room. It’s funny, even though I grew up in this house, I still feel like a commoner in it. The moment I turned seventeen I moved out, and ever since then I’d felt like this place belonged to strangers.

Or maybe it’s because I turned into a stranger to everyone else. This couldn’t be more apparent than when I enter the dining room and see three of my sisters’ blonde heads swivel toward me in eerie synchronicity. I supress a shudder, remembering that Village of the Damned movie I saw when I was young.

There’s Cristina, who is only one year younger than me, though I know she couldn’t be more relieved that I’m next in line and not her. All Cristina wants to do is live with her long-term Italian boyfriend on a Greek island somewhere, living off the land.

Then there’s Britt, in her mid-twenties, a real party animal with mile-a-minute tendencies and grandiose plans for herself which seem to change every minute. At the moment, Britt is planning her move to America where she wants to get an internship in New York, though I can’t say what for since she’s always changing her mind.

There’s also Irene, who is the spitting image of our mother and also finishing up at university for political sciences or something like that. Irene is about as reliable as you get. Some might say boring (I might say boring), but she’s smart and efficient and honestly would make a much better queen than I would a king. There doesn’t seem to be a scheming bone in her tiny little body, but if there were, I bet she’d wish I’d just abdicate already and give the throne to her.

Mari, the youngest, isn’t at the table. She’s seventeen, just finishing up school and still living with our parents here at the palace. Because she’s the last to leave and was a complete “miracle baby,” she’s probably the closest to our parents right now. She’s sweet, compassionate, and always willing to go above and beyond for anyone. But there’s no mistaking her for a pushover either.