“Nothing to forgive,” Sam said. He offered me a bow. “Whatever you need, Your Majesty, we’ll see it done.”
I hated the title worse from his mouth, but I hated myself more for expecting Willem to say anything at all. He didn’t. He just stood there and breathed and we looked at each other in silence, until it became too empty and too long, and I left.
Chapter 33
Sameer wrote to me after I left. His letter arrived the day I returned, an hour after Father’s funeral, which was a private affair between myself, Elías and the priest. Among his words of sorrow, he suggested we move the wedding for logistics, three weeks into the future, and to Oreia. While I was happy to avoid the circumstance a little longer, I had to shuffle things to secure the cathedral in Town Square, and I wound up recruiting Miss Jocelyn to handle the majority of wedding plans on my behalf, as I grieved.
When I finally found the chance to pen my response to paper, several dozen tusk-colored lilies, roses, and chrysanthemums were delivered to the gate from the Palace. Attached was a note that simply read, “I’m sorry, my Queen,” and I sighed defeatedly, accepting that at least Sameer was trying. I cried myself to sleep that night, and in the morning I forced myself to finish the letter and to include my thanks for the Prince’s thoughtfulness. My reply was so chaotic, I had to have Elías tell me what to omit.
The truth was, back home, I became more Crown than I thought I could ever be. I was painfully aware that I had never been my mother’s twin as Ser Elías had promised. That, in His Majesty’s death, it was becoming clear. I was not as soft or prettyas she had been. I was coarse. I was cold like King Nikolai, like his father before him, and his, and I was ice. Even my reflection shocked me to see. I seemed to look like him more and more each hour. By the end of the week, I covered the mirrors in the castle, and I locked myself in his tower study to accept and mourn the loss of my happiness forever.
Father’s domain had become mine in but a moment. It was wrong and it was horrible, and it was darker than any other chamber on the grounds, save for the crypt. It was hidden from the sun, andIfelt dark and hidden every moment I remained where he used to sit. His wingback chair curved over me like looming wings. No one visited. No one disrupted my thoughts, and for hours and hours at a time, I imagined scenarios in which the staff must have bargained with each other to avoid me entirely.
The only knocks came when they required a decision frommymouth, one that the Lord Commander or Josie could not deliver, and they didn’t stay past prompting depressing choices out of me in regard to my gown or cake.
A week before the wedding, a wretched thudding in my chest began to keep me company, and it only waned when I fell asleep, though I secretly hoped it was the start of what might kill me. Just as it had killed the King. Nothing mattered except the draining of sand in the hourglass, and while I tried to convince myself to put one foot after the other, that my marriage was inevitable, I avoided stopping to acknowledge it at all cost.
I busied myself by organizing Father’s maps. Then, I inspected the peculiar objects he had collected over his years and I wondered how I had missed some of their procurements. When I ran out of trinkets, I stared mindlessly at the spines of all his precious notebooks that lined the wall–his book keeping binders. There were so many journals there. Such fancy leather to clothe them.
The night before the wedding, I could not sleep. I couldn’t shake the image of Father lying stiffly on the crypt’s marble slab or the shape of Ser Elías’ lips as I tried to read them whisper his goodbye. Eventually, and sentient of any higher thought, or perhaps puppeteered by the hope his phantom would appear should I violate his property, I returned to his study and pulled back the lip of his most recent book, the one left upon his desk. I flipped it to the dog-eared page, but when it sprawled open, it smelled like him, and I felt nauseous. It smelled like all the times he had chosen to scribble inside its pages and its predecessors' pages, instead of dividing his attention for his only child. His ‘heir.’ I was furious–furious he had notcaredthat I had stood there in front of him mere months ago, waiting for guidance, and furious that he had never cared no matter how many times. I moved to permanently close the book but then I saw my name written at the top in his hand.
Svana,it read.
I looked away; I should have left it but I went back.
Svana.
It was a letter, a letter written to me. I turned the page but the next was blank, yet all of the previous pages were marked by his writing. The whole thing was a collection of dated, signed, and penned thoughts to me. It had never been his ledger; it was his diary! The first page began in January of the year, but therewas a number inscribed onto the inside of the leather shroud. Eighteen.
I flicked to the shelf where the others were. There wereseventeenthere.
Back to the letter, I read,
Svana,
Today you leave for Chalke. I am very proud of you, though I have never said these words. I don’t know how.
“What?”I muttered. “What is this?”
You are an adult as of last week, and I have missed the opportunity to give you these books. I know how you love books. Every year, I forge a new one and I promise myself I’ll deliver it, but then I allow it to become a sanctuary for my private shortcomings over anything for you.
The truth is, I don’t want you to see these words, anymore than I want to keep them to myself. I don’t want to watch you go to Chalke either. You’re all that’s left of my Eliza. I hate the Treaty and everything it costs, but as Queen, one day, you will find, there is a necessary price–an evil–to the Crown that must be paid. You will say and do things you do not have the strength to say or do, all because you must. Like trade your greatest treasure to save a nation that’s taken everything else you have.
I know in my mind this sacrifice will bring life to Oreia. That, without it, your mother’s death was for nothing. I cannot explain its importance in words, but I promised her I would end the War, by any means. I must succeed,even if it's the last thing I do, as an apology, maybe. And even if you loathe me forever for how I do it, I cannot fail. If I impart no other lesson onto you, let it be this:
A good sovereign accepts his faults; he corrects the ones he can; he vows to learn and to adapt as the opponent before him changes, too. In war, he fights, and when he can, he finds peace for his country by a variety of means. You will affect change in Oreia and in the world, if you trust your instincts and you don’t allow fear to control you. Remember, iron does not shatter; it protects; it builds. You are of iron.
Devote yourself to duty and the Crown, and in spite of its demands, trust it. You were chosen by God to be where you are now. Do not be afraid to believe that, to sacrifice your wants for His greater good, or to stand for what is right even when it is hard.
Courage is not the absence of fear but the victory over its vice. Everything worth having, everything you want, is on the other side of risk, if only you can look it in the eyes and say, ‘no more.’
That said, I am well-aware that you leave now, not in an eagerness to serve our empire or crown, but in an effort to flee your father. I see it in your face; I hear it in your voice every time you call me by rank and not by endearment. I’ve injured our connection beyond repair; I can pinpoint exactly where. While I maintain that I only did what I thought I should to protect you, I am sorry I couldn’t be the father you needed that day. I’m sorry I let them hurt your friend. I was never meant for parenthood. Your upbringing belonged to your mother. In her absence, I did what I could. I took advice where I could. Unfortunately, I made mistakes where I could, as well.
One day, you will bear a child of your own. I selfishly pray that you will feel the same sudden and unbridled love for them that I felt for you the moment you were born. That, in the realization that you are simultaneously responsible for their life and the fate of our people, you might find forgiveness for your father’s wicked sins under the pressure. I pray that you understand sooner than I did, that love is only so much of loyalty. True love and true loyalty requires sacrifice. It requires honesty in the brightest of lights, and faith in the darkest of nights. It cannot falter or exist only at one’s comfort.
I pray you-
And then there was nothing. His words were left unfinished. I revisited the next few sheets, audibly begging that he had carried on a little further, but there was nothing.
