That guy is definitely tightly wound.
The question is… will his behavior affect me? Because if it does, I could be well and truly fucked.
Chapter Nine
Stellan
My fingers are cramping up from scrawling my signature on over eight hundred letters. Not only that, but I can feel Margot just behind me. Her eyes threaten to burn a hole in my upper back. I roll my neck until it makes a satisfying pop.
Tension still simmers in the room. It has ever since Margot walked in half an hour ago.
Arrogant. Spoiled. Full of yourself.
Those words still ring in my head, thrown at me by Margot herself. I’m cantankerous today and that’s a big reason why.
I turn and face the windows of my study, a room as large and dimly lit as the rest of the palace. With the same high ceilings as the rest of the palace, this room manages to be as drafty as the others. The only difference here is that the walls are predominately dark wood, the only color a hint of blue in the curtains surrounding the floor-length windows.
The light filters through a gauzy curtained layer just before the windows. Dropping my fountain pen with asigh, I push myself up out of my chair. Instantly Margot is on her feet.
“Where are you going?” she asks, her voice low.
I walk to the window, unwilling to look back at her no matter how badly I’m tempted. I already know what will happen.
I already know that she will look at me with those deep blue eyes, her expression as cutting as a blade. She’s always just on the cusp of figuring me out, or at least that’s what her expression indicates.
“Nowhere,” I answer, gritting my teeth. As if I could just leave when I have a mountain of letters left to sign. It’s all part of the deal, being a royal. “Just stretching.”
I do take a minute to stretch, raising my arms over my head. I’m half dressed for the arts event that I have to leave for in half an hour; white button up with two buttons undone, sleeves rolled up, a pair of light gray trousers.
As I stretch, I’m aware of her eyes again. Those clever, piercing eyes. I usually feel like an animal in a zoo exhibit on my best day. But having her here, in the midst of my most mundane daily tasks, is almost too much to handle.
I hear paper rustling. “Can I ask you some questions while you’re stretching?”
Looking back at Margot from the window, I see her opening a little notepad. It’s almost cute, the way she is deadly serious about her job. Her pink hair is curly and hangs loose. Her heart shaped face puckers a little bit as she frowns down at her notepad. As usual, she wears the same black blazer and black pants, although this time she wears an old yellow Blondie t-shirt.
I lift one shoulder casually. “If you must. I don’t imagine that you actually have to write a single word if you don’t want to. You know that the royal press office would gladly write the whole damn article for you, don’t you?”
Her eyes narrow. Her mouth twists. “I’m writing the article. It’s going to have my byline slapped on it. I might as well make something of the experience.”
Shaking my head, I turn back to the window. “Suit yourself.”
I move the gauzy layer blocking the window aside and peer out across the perfectly manicured lawn. A gardener moves at the far end of my view, closing a wooden gate. He has a basket of flowers on one arm and he stops, wiping his head with a cloth from the pocket of his gray coveralls.
“When you think of Denmark and its future, what do you hope for?”
Hunching my brow, I drop the curtain and turn back to face her. I know the answer to this question by heart. “Stability, success, and growth.” I give her my most deadpan expression. “Next question.”
Her nose wrinkles. “You didn’t even think about it.”
I repress an eye roll, adjusting one of my shirt cuffs. “You do know that I’m constantly being asked the same questions, right? I’m on display a hundred percent of the time. I come prepared with the answers to fifty most commonly asked questions.”
“Ah.” She writes something down in her little notepad. “Well, I guess I’ll have to ask a wider variety of questions, won’t I?”
Instead of an answer, Margot gets a shrug in response. I return to the table where my letters are stacked, sitting down and picking up the pen once more. Dropping back into signing them is the work of ten seconds.
For fifteen minutes, I let myself fall into a trance. I relax my gaze. I think of nothing. I feel the pen moving across each piece of paper; I barely notice the fact that I have to move each piece of paper across the desk and into the finished pile. I am only barely aware of time moving.
It’s not exactly a pleasant feeling to be able to lose myself so completely in a task. Nor is it bad… it simplyis. It speaks to the fact that once a week, I do this exact same thing, in the same span of time. A thousand signatures on a thousand letters of reply. I’ve done it since I was old enough to hold a pen.
