Please get better. Please don’t let this curse take you next.
For a long moment, Bellamy just stares up at me, her eyes searching mine as if seeking some hidden truth within their depths. Finally, she nods, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“All right.” She exhales a heavy breath that floats through the air like a ghost, her voice barely audible. “I’ll try, Sebastian. For you, for our family…and for my father. He wouldn’t want me to be like this.”
“No. A man who loves you as much as he did wouldn’t.”
“I’m scared for tomorrow.”
“Do you not want?—”
“No,” she quickly cuts me off. “I think I need to do it. I think it’ll be good for me. But fuck, how do I do it?”
“One breath at a time.”
“One breath at a time,” she parrots, leaning against me, tucking her head beneath my chin. “I can try that.”
“Thank you,” I say, drawing her closer and pressing a kiss to her forehead. I’ll do whatever I have to for my beautiful queen to find her way back from the abyss. “Let’s get you inside. You’re frozen through.”
She stands and comes with me, and after I force her into the bath and make her eat some lunch, some of the color has returned to her face. Still, she doesn’t sleep much at all, and by the time dawn comes and all the ice from yesterday is replaced with blinding sun, she is more stoic than she’s been all week.
She didn’t want a service for him. She just wanted it to be us, and as we all pile into the cars and make the three-hour trek down to the Mediterranean Sea, a sudden thought takes over me. I stare at my children and realize I’ve been forcing them to hide from their grief. From their heartache.
Especially Phaedra, who remembers Nora the most.
“Phillipe?” I call out to our driver. “Take us to Palais sur La Mer.”
“Your Majesty?” he calls back, his eyebrows at his hairline in the rearview mirror.
I give him a firm nod and feel everyone’s eyes on me. “I think that’s the best place to send him off,” I tell Bellamy and look over to my children. Phaedra blinks at me with troubled eyes. “Do you know why I want to go there?”
She shakes her head and I reach out and take her hand. “I had the palace where your mama died torn down and turned into a beautiful garden. Much the way we did with the palacewhere my father died. I want you to see the gardens. Your mama loved flowers, especially roses, and I had them plant a whole rose garden right where…” I swallow. “Right where she died. Those roses won’t be in bloom this time of year, but we can still go and see them, and this summer, if you’d like, we can go back when they’re flowering. I want you to see that through something tragic and painful, beauty can still be found. I’d like to send Bellamy’s father into the ocean there. What do you think?”
Phaedra’s big green eyes stare up at me, so wide and yet so brave and determined. She is her mother’s daughter through and through. Nora would be endlessly proud. “Okay, Papa. I’d like to see the garden for Mama.”
“That’s my darling girl.” I lean over and kiss her cheeks and then Sabrina’s and Zayer’s too. I lived in fear and imparted that fear to them for too long. I may still have concerns about this curse—fuck, it’s been one thing after another—but maybe facing it head-on instead of hiding from it will finally set us free for good.
Honestly, I don’t know what else to do with it. If it doesn’t work, if the curse is still unbroken…
But for now, we’ve come too far for us to go back. I can’t hide my children away forever as much as I’d like to. Bellamy was right when she made me face that.
Bellamy leans her head on my shoulder, her hand holding mine, and Althea pats my other shoulder, giving me a prideful smile. We arrive to warm sunshine, the weather mild at about eighteen degrees Celsius, the brine and sounds of the ocean filling the air.
There are a few people meandering through the grounds of the park, and our royal agents kindly ask them if they would be willing to return another time as we’re having a private service for Bellamy’s father. Graciously they agree, and all of us walk the grounds of what was once our summer palace.
I haven’t been back here since it was torn down. Zayer takes off, sprinting along the stone paths and the manicured hedges. Sabrina joins him, and after a few moments, Phaedra gives chase.
“I’m on them,” Rowan tells me, smacking my shoulder. “This was a good call.”
I take Bellamy’s hand and walk her over to the winding stairs that cut into the rocky side of the mountains the palace was perched on, roughly thirty meters above the sea. Down below is a small beach, and that’s where we head. The wind whips across our faces, tussling our hair, and I keep Bellamy behind me, cautious of our steps.
Finally, we make it down to the pebbled beach, the wind calmer here, and we slip off our shoes and head for the water’s edge. The beach is a bit of an illusion as about a meter and a half out, the earth drops, and the water is very deep. Swimming is not allowed here, which makes it a perfect place to do this.
“It’s beautiful here,” she whispers, staring out at the gleaming blue-green waters.
“Now you know why we had a summer palace on these grounds.”
“I love that you did this. Made a garden for Nora, but also brought the children to see it. I think it’ll mean a lot to them, especially Phaedra.”
