“The evidence was overwhelming. We both know that.”
“What I would do if I met that man in a dark alley…”
I choke out a laugh. “Because the King of Ledonia is always lurking around in dark alleys.”
“It’s an expression, darling. He’s to blame for all this.”
I let out a deep sigh. Nona will always defend her son’s honor, disregarding the evidence against him. Not me. I’ve accepted it. What happened is done. History. And we all know you can’t change history.
I place my hand over hers. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.”
I leave her door ajar and make my way back down the creaking stairs, avoiding the broken step my foot wentthrough last week. I make a mental note to search for a piece of wood in the garden shed later to patch it up.
With my morning brew in hand, I sit down at my desk and crack open my laptop. I'm greeted with an avalanche of emails. This morning's entertainment provides my daily glimpse into the collective psyche of humanity. Nestled between the usual lottery winnings notifications and urgent pleas from African royalty requiring my immediate financial assistance—does that tired ploy ever work?—I discover a gem. Someone claims they made sourdough last week, and the crust formed what they swear is Prince Maximilien’s face.
Well, at least that's amusing.
The attached photograph looks remarkably like a poorly formed loaf of bread to me, but if I squint and tilt my head at just the right angle, I can almost make out a rather happy-looking Prince Max. Which, to be fair, captures his default expression nicely.
I could make a fun TikTok with this.
Next there's an email entitled "Royal Aliens." T.K. Ross presents a theory that the royal crest includes a constellation of stars not visible from Earth, which he firmly believes shows their extraterrestrial origins, and he fears they may soon summon their cosmic relatives to enslave us all.
Filing that one in the bin.
Not that I’m in a position to complain. I make my living from information, fed to me by a cultivated network of sources who trust me with their gossip, T.K. Ross notwithstanding. My sources come from all walks of life, but one thing they all have in common is access to the royal family, which is why I’m always the one to break the stories first.
From upstairs comes the sound of Nona’s voice, raisedin what I prefer to think of as "spirited discussion" with someone about a bill. It’s probably the electric company, though it could be the council about property taxes, or the heating oil supplier.
Our house—Nona’s house, technically—is the image you’d see if you looked up “faded grandeur” in the dictionary. It boasts no less than twelve bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a library, and the most useful of rooms in 21stCentury Ledonia: a ballroom complete with a sprung floor.
Not a lot of use for that one.
Our heating works in two bedrooms; the plumbing is questionable in all but one bathroom, and even that’s a lottery if you’ll get a water torrent or a mere dribble; the library roof has developed what we optimistically call "ventilation,” requiring a host of buckets to catch drips every time it rains.
Lap of luxury? More like the lap of disrepair.
My workspace occupies what was once an elegant study, complete with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with musty books, and a window overlooking gardens which have long-since been claimed by a terrorist organization of weeds. Nona will need industrial-grade machinery to locate the plants this morning—and a medical degree to resuscitate them.
The house reflects our family's trajectory rather poetically—once grand, now crumbling, hanging onto dignity through sheer stubborn determination.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the same thing.
As I pad across the study floor, the photograph on the mantelpiece catches my eye. My father, looking impossibly young and happy, captured during what I didn’t know at the time was our golden period.
I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though it was fifteen years ago now. My world ended witha knock on my dormitory door. The headmistress wore the expression adults adopt when they're about to obliterate a child's world with a handful of words.
“I'm afraid there's been some trouble with your father, Valentina,” Mrs. Walters had said, her expression more pinched than usual. And that was saying a lot. The woman closely resembled a prune.
The “trouble” was splashed across every newspaper and media site in the land the very next day, labelling my father as a traitor. Using his position to steal money from royal charities. My sweet, kind, quirky dad, who, with my mother passing away when I was only four years old, had done what he could to be both dad and mum to me. He sent me care packages to my boarding school as regular as clockwork every week, always sneaking in some extra chocolate. He taught me how to ride a bike, how to throw a cricket ball, and how I should expect to be treated by a boy.
I still have the letter he sent me, telling me he was innocent. I believed him. Of course I did. He was my dad. But the evidence against him was too strong, and over the years, I’ve lost my previous conviction. I love my dad, but everything pointed to him having done it.
We email. Stilted, careful messages where he asks about Nona and I tell him she's fine. I’ve never told him I'm working as a journalist, that I write about the royal family. Some truths are easier left unsaid.
The last email came two months ago. He called me “piccola”, his childhood nickname for me. Little one. It still has the power to make my chest ache.
I want to forgive him for leaving me behind. I want to believe he's innocent, like Nona does so vehemently. But mostly, I'm just angry that he chose exile over fighting for his name.
