PROLOGUE
RHYS
Four Years Ago
“Rhys...” My name falls from Lennon’s lips just before she presses her hand to her mouth and quietly closes our mother’s bedroom door. Her eyes are rimmed red with tears flowing freely down her cheeks, and her shoulders rise and fall as she drags in a deep, fortifying breath. My sister looks between my brother, Atticus, and me, heartbroken. And here’s the thing, it’s not just her. We all know what’s coming, and each one of us is doing a shit job of faking it right now. “Mummy is asking for you.”
Father folds his newspaper and rises from his armchair on the other side of the sitting area outside Mother’s bedroom, but Lennon shakes her head and quickly looks back at me. “She wants to speak to Rhys . . .alone.”
“But...” Father groans before Grandfather looks at him the way only a king can, shutting him down without uttering a single word.
Thankfully, one of us can.
“Go, my boy,” the king commands, his eyes softening when they come to me. “We’ll be right here.”
Grandfather doesn’t do emotions. They’re far too messy for him, and messy is not his way. But the squeeze of his hand on my shoulder as I nod is more than he typically offers and more than I’ll get from my own father as I walk past our crumbling family.
Fucking cancer . . .
I swear on all that’s holy in this wretched world, if I ever do anything worthwhile, it will be forwarding research to eradicate this rotting disease.
We all knew this day was coming . . .
Even if somehow I’d managed to convince myself we’d have more time.
That my beautiful, barely fifty-year-old mother wasn’t really dying.
That there wasn’t going to be a gaping hole in our family and our country.
“Future queens don’t die of cancer,” my grandfather had announced when my mother had given him the news over tea and biscuits one afternoon. Like our birthright somehow would protect his daughter from dying.
I remember thinking how ridiculous he sounded.Pompous.
What I hadn’t realized for months was he wasn’t being ridiculous or pompous. He was scared. Not an emotion I’d ever seen from him before or since.
So he did what he’s always done... he tried to bend the cancer to his will.
Shame it didn’t work.
Her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Gwendoline Allison Caroline Windsor is one of the strongest people I’ve ever known, but not even she could beat this miserable disease. Grandfather tried everything in his power to make it so. He brought in the best specialists from around the world, and when that didn’twork, he demanded Mother try every alternative treatment out there. He refused to believe he could lose her, and her being the ever-dutiful daughter she is, she did as he asked. Tried every treatment. Fought with unmatched grace and strength. Something the rest of us couldn’t manage to muster as we watched her slip slowly away, day by agonizing day. We knew what was happening, even if she refused to share her pain with us.
The crown is a sign of hope, she’d said.It is not my job to garner sympathy from my people. It’s my job to give them hope.
So that’s what she did.
She continued to carry out engagements for the past two years, selflessly. Refusing to let treatments slow her down. Never showing the pain she was in. Not until just a few weeks ago when she and I were coming home from a meeting with Grandfather and the high council. Mother stumbled, and before I could steady her, she passed out... Just dropped to the ground without any warning.
Well, without any warning for my siblings and me. Father and Grandfather weren’t surprised.
My eye twitches with the nearly constant anger I’ve harbored for days.
But now isn’t the time to harp on that.
I’ll deal with my father later.
For now, I close my eyes and hold my breath as I step through her door, bracing myself. My mother is a beautiful woman. She’s vibrant and full of life with a quick wit, tremendous laugh, and a wickedly sarcastic sense of humor. But today, she’s lying in her bed, attached to a machine. Her already pale skin is ashen, with an almost translucent appearance, and her green eyes... they’re no longer emerald green. They’ve lost their light.
She’slost her light.
