That said, I had an idea. A way to boost her confidence more and give her real-life experience without my hovering.
“Helena…I’ve an offer for you.”
She turned her face up to look at me. “I’m all ears.”
“How would you feel about interning with my company?” I kept a sharp eye on her reaction. “It’ll give you real-life experience in how to manage a company. Which, really, is fundamentally the same as running a country. If nothing else, it’ll give you good experience in handling economics and business in the future.”
Her head jerked back momentarily, as if I’d startled her. Then her eyes lit up. “Yes. Absolutely yes.”
“You don’t need to think about it?”
“Why the hell would I?”
“Excellent. I’ll arrange it, then. Let’s start a week from now to give you enough time to clear your schedule and for me to make arrangements.”
“Sounds perfect.” Helena hopped a step, laughing in delight. “I can’t wait! I’m so excited. I can’t take much more of standing around at events and soirees and smiling prettily.”
Which was basically what her day-to-day life was. The Helena of the past was a hard worker with a good head on her shoulders. No way would I let her languish in the palace a day longer than necessary.
“I’m honestly glad for an excuse to escape the palace.” Helena let out a long, gusty sigh, as if her soul was worn out. “Victor has beenquitethe nuisance recently.”
My shadow on Victor had reported things to me, but I wasn’t sure which she referred to. “What’s he been doing?”
“Pestering me. For some reason, he feels like that will achieve something.” Helena paused as she sidestepped, letting a heavily laden cart pass, then followed me up onto the sidewalk near the seawall. “He’s not really taken the ultimatum to heart, to everyone’s utter lack of surprise. Instead of understanding that his whole attitude needs to change and he’s got work he should be doing, he’s instead confined himself to the palace.”
“What…does a voluntary house arrest solve?” I didn’t get the logic. Not that I expected much logic from Victor, but still. Some modicum of reason wasn’t much to ask for, right?
“Not a damn thing.” Helena let out another weary sigh. “But trying to tell him anything falls on deaf ears. He keeps trying to invade my garden and rant and rave about how unfair all of this is, then gets mad when I show him no sympathy. I pointed out last night that the only way to keep his position was to actually do the things our parents told him to do. You’d think I’d suggested cutting his dick off. He threw an absolute tantrum, destroyed my nice bone china, and then left like a storm chased after his heels.”
“Some people create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he can’t learn even when he’s being spoon-fed what to do, there’s no helping him.”
Helena snorted. “That’s for sure. He’s past all redemption or help at this point. He’s also no longer welcome in either my rooms or my garden. I’ve had quite enough of his stupidity.”
Look at her standing up for herself. I felt like hugging her, I was so proud.
“I think Victor will destroy himself well enough. We don’t need to entertain him any longer. Let’s focus on you and our country.”
“I think that’s a splendid notion.” Helena stopped abruptly and peered ahead. “My, they’ve got a section of the wall down already.”
That they had. The very second we had cleared this project with the council, I’d sent word down to Foreman Bates and had him start. It hadn’t taken anything more than money and a single directive for him to jump into the project.
Today, they were actively dismantling the crumbling seawalls with the goal to set a new one in place by this evening. Each section would take a full day, at least. The sections near the docks would take longer, since they required more finesse, but still nothing more than two days. Even as we watched, they finished breaking the old walls into more manageable chunks, then lifted them into the air by crane and deposited them into a wagon waiting nearby.
“They’re working very fast,” I said. “And I don’t see the foreman… Ah, there he is. Bates!”
His head lifted, turned, and then he spotted us and waved. He abandoned supervising for the moment and hopped onto the sidewalk, making his way toward us, beaming the whole way.
“Your Highnesses, this is all thanks to you pushing the project through. Come to see our progress?”
“We were hoping to get a glimpse,” I admitted. “I know you told me how fast this would be once you got started, but I’m honestly surprised now that I’m watching it in action.”
“Seawalls are basically falling apart on us,” Bates said with a wince. “Which makes them easy to demo, but Retazo bless us, I’m praying we don’t have a single storm until we’re done. It’ll wipe out the market district if anything serious hits us.”
“Don’t jinx us,” Helena scolded with an exaggerated wince.
She wasn’t wrong. This would be a horrible time to be jinxed—
The ground under my feet started shaking, hard enough that I nearly lost my footing. Helena tumbled into me, and it was all I could do to keep us both upright. A sinking feeling dropped my stomach out through my feet.
