“I thought you’d always go for older women.” Her smile is serrated.
The scars have healed enough for them to be difficult to slice open.
“Or maybe she really did screw you up.” Majken threads her fingers through her lover’s hair.
I never told Majjie about our aunt. But she knew. She watched. And she never intervened.
“I think we both ended up screwed one way or another. Hence we’re both sitting here now while the man you’re fucking plays with a gun that’s probably the same size as his dick.” I watch her for her reaction.
Majken was easy to play if you knew which moves to make. Any slight against her perfection would loosen her fragile control if she was uncertain and I knew she was uncertain today.
“I’d be careful with what you say,Benjamin.You aren’t the only way we have of getting the information that would make a lot of people happy.”
It was confirmation of what I already knew.
“I never thought I was that valuable. But why go to the trouble of bringing me here?”
She shrugs. “Shits and giggles. And chance for some quality time. Maybe I can bring Aunt Hedda over, you know, so you can reintroduce yourself to her.”
She was expecting the words to jar.
“Or maybe I just want to watch you when your Princess Bride ends up in bits.” She giggles.
No one else laughs.
“I think you overestimate my worth.”
Blair would be safe even if I wasn’t there. There was a team around her, one that could be trusted. And there was Isaac.
Our dark horse.
For the first time, I think of them both and wonder when they knew I was gone. If they knew how I had gone. What they thought I’d done.
Traitor.
Majken shakes her head. “I think you underestimate yourself. Just like you always did. Maybe we should’ve spent more time together. Maybe a few weeks here in this remote place, will give us the chance to reconnect.”
Blair had told me she loved me. New Year’s Eve, as the fireworks lit the sky above the loch and the three of us held each other. Isaac had breathed the words into my ear later when we lay spent on the bed, just as he had weeks before.
“Remember why we started this, Ben. Remember what happened that day. What we promised each other.”
Thief.
I’d stolen hearts. Blair’s. Isaac’s. Majken’s. My father’s.
“We were children, Majjie.”
“We stopped being children when our mother died.” She smiles softly. “I know we need to move past it, that’s what we should do, being healthy adults and all, but we both know that closure is the only thing that can help. Blair will unify the two countries. She’ll carry out her brother’s wishes. That can’t happen, Ben.”
“You don’t know anything about Blair’s wishes.”
“I know more than you think. She doesn’t tell you everything. And you’re right; We don’t only have you.”
I remember the last delegates’ ball, the last time in London. Whispers in a darkened room and footsteps echoing on wooden floorboards after I was left with an empty bed.
We had promised each other nothing.
Liars.
