"And I promise you." Erin bent and pressed her lips to Florence's forehead, holding the kiss, breathing in the clean smell of her daughter's hair. "I will always, always keep you safe. No matter what."
Florence's arms came up and wrapped around Erin's neck, tight and fierce, and Erin held her back just as tightly. Over Florence's shoulder, she looked at Alex. Her wife's eyes were bright with unshed tears, her jaw set, her hands still clenched in her lap. The look they shared was not one they could have translated into words. It held fury and love and fear and theparticular, ferocious resolve of two women who had fought for every inch of the life they'd built and would burn the world down before they let anyone take it from them.
Erin eased Florence back onto the pillow. "Sleep now. Big weekend coming."
Florence closed her eyes. Within minutes, her breathing deepened and evened out, her face losing that careful, watchful quality and softening into the simple peace of a sleeping child. Frank was already snoring softly. Matilda hadn't stirred.
Erin stood and crossed to Alex. She took her wife's hand and led her out of the room, pulling the door closed with a quiet click. In the corridor, beneath the soft light of the wall sconces and the faint smell of lilies, Alex sagged against her. Erin caught her, one arm around her waist, and held her upright.
"She said that to Florence." Alex's voice was barely audible. "To our daughter."
"I know."
"She looked at Florence and told her I'm not enough."
Erin turned Alex to face her. She put her hands on her wife's shoulders and ducked her head until their eyes were level. Alex's blue eyes were swimming, the tears she'd held back in the bedroom close to spilling. She was trembling slightly. The composure that held her together in front of the world was peeling away, layer by layer, the way it always did when it was just the two of them.
"You are enough," Erin said. "You are more than enough. Cecilia is a bitter, jealous woman who lost her power and can't stand watching you succeed. That is not a reflection of you. That is a reflection of her."
Alex pressed her forehead against Erin's collarbone. "I know that. In my head, I know that."
"Then let it in the rest of the way."
They stood like that for a long time. Erin's hand moved to the back of Alex's neck, her fingers threading into the soft hair at her nape, holding her close. Alex's breathing slowed. The corridor was quiet around them: the distant sound of a television from the staff quarters, the creak of the old building settling, the tick of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall.
"We should get some sleep," Erin said eventually. "Long drive tomorrow."
"Helicopter."
"Same thing."
Alex pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes were still damp but there was a ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "They are absolutely not the same thing."
"Details." Erin brushed her thumb across Alex's cheek, catching a tear that had escaped. "Come on, Mrs Kennedy. Bed."
Alex's hand found hers and held on tightly as they walked down the corridor to their room. The palace was quiet. The children were sleeping. The security plans were solid and the team was in place and everything was exactly as it should be.
But Erin kept hearing Florence's voice in her head, small and careful in the lamplight.Grandmama says some Queens don't last.
And beneath the rage, beneath the love, beneath the steady calm she wore like armour, something cold settled in Erin's gut. The instinct that had kept her alive through fifteen years of close protection. The one that told her, in a voice she'd learned never to ignore, that something was coming.
She tightened her grip on Alex's hand and said nothing.
3
The helicopter banked low over the treeline and the castle came into view below them like something from a storybook: grey stone walls softened by centuries of ivy, turrets catching the morning sun, the sprawling grounds stretching out in every direction until they melted into the darker green of the surrounding woodland. Frank pressed his face against the window and made fighter-pilot noises. Matilda sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap and said, "It looks smaller from up here."
"Everything does, darling," Alexandra said. The shift came in her chest, the same one that always came when they arrived here, a loosening, as though the past weeks of public appearances and briefing papers and smiling until her face ached had been a corset slowly laced tighter, and now someone was pulling the ribbons free. The castle estate was the one place that was truly theirs. No tourists, no cameras, no scheduled photo opportunities. Just the house and the grounds and the stables and the dogs and the kind of silence that London never offered.
Florence was pressed against the opposite window, her braid swinging forward over her shoulder as she craned to see the stables. "There! I can see the paddock! Is that Percy? Mummy Alex, is that Percy?"
Alexandra leaned across to look. The paddock was a green rectangle beyond the stable block, and there was indeed a small dun pony standing in the far corner, his tail flicking lazily at flies. "It might be. We'll find out."
"It's Percy. I know his shape."
Erin caught Alexandra's eye from the seat opposite and raised an eyebrow.She knows his shape.Alexandra bit back a smile. Florence had been talking about nothing but Percy and Auntie Vic and the bridle paths for the entire journey, a steady stream of excited chatter that had only paused when the helicopter took off and the vibration stole her words for thirty seconds before she started again, louder.
The pilot brought them down on the landing pad with the smooth precision that Alexandra had long stopped noticing. The rotors slowed, the engine wound down, and the sudden quiet was almost startling after the constant thrum of the flight. A Protection Officer opened the door and cool air rushed in, carrying the scent of cut grass and earth and the faint sweetness of the honeysuckle that grew along the estate's south wall.
