Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(81)

Mother enters dressed in a simple black gown. Black has ever been her color since father died; she never cast off her mourning clothes. The gown makes a stark contrast against her pale face and snowy hair that hangs loose to her back, bound only by the simple circlet she wears tucked in her hair when she is not required to wear the ceremonial crown that rests in a vault below the castle.

"Step away from there."

I tremble in place, gripping the old stone. How many princesses before me have done the same, I wonder? Is it such a terrible thing, to be royalty? To utterly belong to your people?

Truly it is terrible. I am not sure I can survive it.

"Anastasia, step away from there and come inside. Sit on the bed."

Even now, I dare not prompt her to command me a third time.

I walk to the bed sullen and sit down. Mother strides over and seats herself beside me, smoothing her dress over her legs. We look so much alike, we could be twins but for the crow’s feet around her eyes, and the sadness that stains them like blood on water.

A gasp strikes me as she rests her hand on my back, tenderly.

"Anastasia," she sighs, "I so wished to spare you this. I wish I had never sent you to America at all."

I look down at my feet and say nothing for a while.

"That is an awful thing to say."

"Why, daughter?"

"Then I never would have met him. I was happy for a time. Happier than I have ever been. I have never been happy. Only lost and lonely. He made me feel what a human being feels. I thought I was turning into a star."

The words fall out of me and shatter on the floor, like a glass slipping from a drunkard's hand.

The sobs comes a moment later.

Mother does something she has never done before in my entire life. She puts her arms around me and pulls my head to her chest.

"Cry," she says. "Cry, child. I'm here."

I want to push her away, but I can't. I need the embrace, I need the softness of her to weep into bitterly. I hug her as though I never have before—in truth, I never really have—and tighten my arms, holding on to the only thing that is still solid in my life.

Despite all that she is, she is still my mother. She pats my head and strokes my hair, and hugs me back.

"I've failed you," she says with a deep, withering sigh. "I never wanted this to happen. I wanted us to be closer, but there was so much. Always so much."

"I don't want to be queen," I moan.

"I once told my father the same," she says. "In much the same circumstances. When I was to be wed to your father. There was—"

"A man. In America. Did you sleep with him?"

She sighs. "Yes. I did. He took my virginity, and I gave him my heart. He was the world to me. He was kind and good and made me feel like no one else ever had. He made me feel like I mattered. The person, not the title. Not the crown. It was a magical feeling. It made me feel invincible, perfect. I thought of all the changes I would make with him by my side, how I would be the one to change the tradition."

I push her away and sit up.

"Now you want me to marry a man I loathe for 'reasons of state.'" I throw her own words over the phone back at her.

"I want you to be queen. It's a hard lesson, and yet you still clearly needed to learn it. You don't have a life, Ana. You have a crown. You have no right to shirk your responsibilities—"

"What does my love life have to do with my responsibilities?" I shout, rising to my feet. "What does it matter, tell me? Can I not approve a budget or write a law if I am taking the wrong cock in the bedroom? I already know what your life is like. Hours and hours and hours every day of matters of state from the small hours of the morning until nighttime, and then what? An empty bed filled with the memory of a man you despised? I know you, Mother! You can wear mourning blacks until you die, but I know you never shed a single tear for my father."

"Neither did you," she hisses.

"Why should I? I barely knew him. He was nothing more than a stud to you. I never played with him or danced with him or listened to a story from him, and I never did any of those things with you. People who have known me for a few months know me better than my own mother. What is my favorite color? My favorite food? Book? Film? What is my boyfriend's name that you hate so much?"

"His name is irrelevant," she snaps. "He's common. He's nothing."

"You don't believe that, you f*cking hypocrite. Your man wasn't nothing. Thorlief deserves better than you. I can't believe he told me he's in love with you."

She blinks. "What?"

"My guardian, Thorlief. You know him—"

"Of course I know him. He guarded me when I was a girl too. He—"

"He loves you," I throw at her, clenching my fists. "You threw him away like trash and ruined him, and why? Over something I did. I wasn't tricked, Mother, I wasn't seduced or confused or whatever other excuse you want to feed yourself. I fell in love with a man! I slept with him! I did things with him!"

My voice echoes off the ceiling. My screams tear at my throat.

"He loved me more in a week than you have in your entire life. I'm just a tool to you. A legacy. All you care about is that I take care of your damned country."

"Because it's all I have," she shrieks, rising to her feet, looming over me. Even now, she still tops me by several inches. "They took everything else away from me."