I can hardly balance what’s in front of me now.
I stand, march over to the window, and stare down at the back gardens where the girls are playing on the playscape, pushing their baby brother in his child swing. The cook, that poor woman who is supposed to be prepping lunch, is out there watching them since the rest of us are in my study. I used to have sisters. I never see Brea, and Desta is gone, likely dead, though we never found out what happened to her. I have a brother who shows up every now and then and is the closest thing I have to a friend and confidant. My mother is in her residence two hundred kilometers from us, and much like us, now refuses to leave it.
I had a family once. Now all I have is this.
“Find me someone new,” I command. “Find me someone different.”
“Someone different?” my aunt repeats as if the words are foreign to her.
“Yes. Different.”
“Different…how?” Emily picks up.
“Someone who doesn’t scare so easily,” I say. “Someone who will give a shit about my children. Someone who isn’t in this entirely for themselves and what they can get out of it.”
“Someone who can put up with you and your less-than-pleasant disposition, you mean.”
I raise my eyebrow at my aunt, and she returns the gesture, finding her backbone once again after the marriage comment.
I blow out a silent breath, my hands gripping the windowframe. The children are growing sick of the revolving door of caretakers and, frankly, so am I. It shouldn’t be this difficult, though over the last three years, that’s all this seems to be. Hell, it’s been like this since I took over the throne when I was just a teenager. Too young by any measure to rule, it’s a wonder I’m not streaked in gray.
The only light I see is when I look into my children’s eyes, but the terror that keeps me up at night overshadows everything else.
“I don’t care how you do it or where you find them,” I tell the room. “They have to be qualified and capable, but for fuck’s sake, find me someone different,” I repeat.
Then I frown to myself. Already knowing it’s impossible. There isn’t a woman out there like that. If there was, we’d already have found her.
2
BELLAMY
My heart beats faster when I feel my phone ringing against my hip. Pausing on the stairs that lead to the ground floor of the place I’m renting, I quickly dig through my purse, find my phone, and grimace. My father. I knew it could only be him. No one else calls me aside from the home he’s living in, but I never know how these calls will go.
Sucking in a breath and holding it in my lungs, I swipe my finger across the screen and answer. “Dad?”
“Ah, there you are,” he says in that booming, grandiose voice of his. “How’s my best girl? I haven’t heard from you in a few days.”
Exhaling the breath I was holding, I continue down the stairs. He sounds good today, even though I spent all last evening with him. He already doesn’t remember. “I’m fine. Just getting up and out.”
“Where are you headed today? Work?”
“No. It’s Saturday, remember? Today, I’m going down to the river to read.” I meander through the cheese shop that sits below the room I’m renting, wave to the shop owner who is also my landlord, and head out the door into the bright, latesummer sunshine. It’s oppressively warm this week, and I wouldn’t mind a break from it. Summers in Messalina are hot, and my apartment has no air conditioning.
“River?” he barks into the phone. “What river? You mean the Charles River?”
I frown. “The river in Tourin, Dad. Messalina. Remember? We haven’t lived in Boston in eight years, and we moved to Messalina four years ago.”
A silent beat. “Oh, yes, now I remember. Before the royal family died.”
“The queen. Before the queen died. The rest of the royal family is still alive.”
“Great. Good. Wonderful. So did I tell you my news?”
For the second time I pause, nearly causing a collision with the couple behind me, who skirt around me at the last second. I apologize to them in French, though I’m not sure if they speak French or Italian. It varies in this country depending on which part you’re in, and since the town of Tourin is in the middle, it can go either way.
“Amy did you hear me?”
Amy. Only my father calls me Amy. My mother hated it when he did that. I don’t reply. I’m too afraid, but this is my father, and he keeps going regardless of whether or not I want to hear his news.
