Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Tuscany
The days after my father’s funeral bleed into weeks. Time is meaningless, as shapeless as the lushest drapes.
Sometimes, time is fast, first-light plummeting into the sea, bouncing back up the other side. Sometimes it is slow, every inch of a sunless sky, hazy and wild, gradually darkening with the dying last-light, until the world is but bleak outlines and movements in the shadows…
No matter the pace, Cairo’s warning circles me: ‘Better a quiet queen than a hysterical one.’
I have been quiet. I wonder if my silence is understood better than the cries that were treated with shocks to my brain. When they treated me as a broken doll in a lovely room. So lush. So fortunate. A fanciful asylum.
Though I have been quiet, so has life. Since my father’s death, Rome reigns.
My routine is different.
During the lighter hours, my Army ladies visit, bathe me, dress me, and often sit with me to read. I promised to go outside once a week, but Rome is away on campaign so often, no one is here to keep me accountable to my word.
It's the nights that still unsettle me. When the dim ensues, my reality becomes skinny and phantom hands grip me, squeezing the air from my lungs.
I try to relax in bed, but voices come from every corner of the room. ‘They’re coming to cut you, more of you. Your legs. Your heart. Your face.’ The words hiss in the dark, ring in my ears.
I cry out. Seeing their faces, cold and detached, smelling the tonics, the stench of antiseptic, I drop to my knees. Need to get under the bed to the tear in my reality.
"She does not want to be disturbed. Not even by her Army,” I hear my Room Guard talking to someone.
“Move aside." Kong is pushing into my room before I can react. He freezes when he sees me crawling under the bed in my nightgown. "Little queen, don't do that."
I freeze on all fours. No one outside of the nurses has seen me like this. No one can see me like this! No one will understand. I'm little. I'm little right now.
"It's okay," he says. "Come out."
I don’t actually know him. Not before as a child or now as a woman. I know he seems nice and that he says he will watch my monsters, but they are just words. Lots of words. No actions. I don’t believe… words anymore.
“I won’t hurt you.”
Standing slowly, I'm still unsure how to breathe like an adult or form adult thoughts. I just want to hide.
“What are you doing down there?”
I look at the ground. The only thoughts I have are feelings. Small. Scared. Nothing else comes to mind. "I'm hiding,” I squeak. “I'm feeling little, and usually when I feel little, they make it go away with a therapy called ECT, because it’s not queenly to feel… little.”
“They—” Somehow his silence is angry. “How often did they do this?”
Usually, when I'm small, they give me the treatment. It's not natural for a girl to grow and shrink, to age and regress—I'm not normal. I need to be treated.
“Every time I behave... little,” I say, eyes cast down. “Little, hysterical, aggressive—it’s all the same to them. Irrational, immature, and not the slightest bit marble.”
There is a long pause during which I sense his dark gaze on me. "Get into bed,” he says, a growl shaking his voice. I flinch at it.
“Little queen, no one is going to hurt you anymore. Please, your bed is soft. You'll be safe. I'll sit outside your door."
I want to see his expression, but I'm too frightened he’ll look through me.
I’m safe? He'll sit outside my door? Is that a good thing? Memories of that night when he promised to sit in the dark with me flood my mind.
Am I safe now? Wasn’t I safe before? Safe with my father, The Trade, the people who helped carve me into a queen. That’s my place. My duty. My Meaningful Purpose. Was I… not safe with them?
It’s too much.
My forehead pounds.
Tears blur my vision.
My nervous fingers clench and unclench, stalling on what to do. What is happening? Kong is in my room...
"W-will you brush my hair?" I ask, shaking my head at the stupidity of what I just said. “It’s not affection. I’m the queen.” I don’t think that made the request any better.
"You know I can't do that, but I will brush the eagle, if that will make you feel safe."
I nod. "Yes."
He motions to the bed, and I climb in, forgetting about hiding while he collects Eagle Rome and a hairbrush. He combs the fluff without hesitation. Somehow seeing that tiny bird in his big hands makes me smile.
I pull the sheets up to my chin, watching him with my toy. "His name is Rome."
"Good proud name."
He brushes him for a few moments, then hands him to me. "He looks good. Sleep now, little queen. I'll be outside your door."
Kong leaves my room without another word, but outside I don’t hear footsteps.
Is he really staying?
I wonder what he makes of me? One day a queen with her chin held high, the next a girl who cannot think for herself.
To stop the questions, I swallow my sedatives, and squeeze my eyes shut. Holding Eagle Rome to my face, I inhale him. A subtle scent, masculine and strange, fills my nostrils. It’s Kong; his hands. I like it. I fall asleep drawing in every trace.
The weeks stretch into months without treatments. I think it might be over…
When Rome returns, I visit his wing. I see his giant eagle, Odio, and play in the courtyard. My brother tries to make things right, showing me devotion and, at times, irrational protectiveness. This only lasts until his next campaign.
Then he disappears again.
That is a king’s Trade.
A nurse still comes at first-light, and I hide under the bed, but since my father’s funeral, no one has cut me, no one has forced medication into my veins, electricity into my brain, or tried to peel or carve my imperfections.
The nurse only administers soothing lotions, creams, and checks my general health.
Last-light is very different, too. I swallow the sleeping pills of my choosing, curl into the Aquilla Cat furs on my bed and wait to hear it…
Heavy footsteps thump and stop outside my door. Even though I shouldn’t, I flinch every time, heart hammering against my ribs. Then settle, because I know who it is—Kong. Finally, he is here, sitting in the dark with me like he promised all those years ago.
When the king and his Guardian are in The Estate, that is where he is, outside my door. Or close. He is a constant, silent authority.
Trying to watch the monsters for me.
Rome comes in like a bull, while Kong stalks, undetected. Sometimes, I hear the scrape of his chair as he sits opposite my door, my Guardian on the other side of the beautiful, aged wood.
I climb out of my bed, my legs trembling, and tip-toe to the door. Leaning my back against it, I slide down to the floor and hug my knees to my chest.
“Kong?”
“Yes, little queen.”
I exhale in relief. I knew it was him, still hearing his voice douses the caution that simmers inside me. “Are we alone?”
There is a pause, then, “Do you want us to be?”
I rest my cheek on my knee and tighten my arms around my legs. This night, I feel vulnerable, but safer. “Yes.”
A chair slides and Kong’s deep voice commands, “Move further down the corridor.” There is movement, boots rapping, then the sound of shuffling—the noise closer, coming from just behind my back.
The door presses into me, only the millimetre it has in the frame, but I feel it. I feel him; he is on the other side.
We don’t talk for a while. I know exactly how much time passes, because I count my pulse in my neck, each one steady with him at my spine, only a piece of wood separating us.
After four hundred beats, I sigh. “I’m going to go to bed now.”
“Goodnight.”
I go to stand but freeze and look at the door, trying to imagine him. How he is sitting, what he is wearing.
“Will you stay?” I ask softly. He said to accept what my inner creature needs. What it needs is pathetic and childish, but that is how I feel right now—vulnerable and little.
“Always.”
“Where is my brother, then?” Placing my hand on the wood, I close my eyes, pretending to sense his warmth.
“In his wing,” he assures. “Asleep. I’ve already checked on him. Don’t be concerned about Sire. He wanted to come see you when we got back, but it was already last-light.”
I exhale… “Kong?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when you spoke about my inner creature a few months ago at my father’s funeral?”
“Yes, little queen.”
“I never asked you. What does your inner creature need, Kong the Unbreakable? What does he demand?”
“To be reined in,” he states, his voice as serious as his message. “A controlled beast watches the feral ones make mistakes.”
I half-smile; he is a looming force of control, and yet, that only makes him more formidable. “I think I’d like to see your inner creature set free, just once.”
“No, you wouldn’t, little queen.” His tone deepens, and I slide my fingers in the grooves of the wood, touching and connecting.
“There would be nothing left of Master Cairo or the men and women who laid hands on you. There would be nothing left of The Estate that holds you or the citizens that whisper.”
My heart feels every word.
“Good-night, Kong.”
“Sleep peacefully, little queen.”
We whisper through the door most nights. His voice is so deep and familiar now, I feel I could draw its cadence.
Still, I don’t want to leave my suite without Rome for fear someone may see me and remember that they left a part they needed or witness a wrinkle or blemish that must be removed. They will start cutting and peeling me again when they realise I’m not marble enough for them.
But something is… different.
Is the worst behind me? And inside, leaving me to face the aftermath, the echoes of cries that cling to my skin and these lovely drapes dancing from post to post.
Four months after my father’s death, I gain the courage to venture out of my suite without my brother.
I wander quietly into the courtyard, and I catch a glimpse of Kong—my shadow in the perfectly varnished archway, his eyes on me.
Those serious, dark eyes.