Chapter Twenty-Four Eugene #2
“She tried,” Leona says bluntly. “She tried to be happy and stay for you, but she was…fading. Always flinching at shadows, afraid Enver had followed her across the sea, calling for your father in her sleep. When she took ill, her last request was for me to make sure you got that book, that it was meant for you. A week later, the hospital sent word that we’d lost her. ”
The silence sits heavy in the little library for a long, long moment.
“I really wish I could have known them,” Eugene finally says.
“I wish you could have, too. You deserved to grow up climbing the walls of the printshop, and they deserved to know their son. We all deserved better.” Leona rolls up the maps, tucks them under an arm, and closes the drawer.
“You’ll always be welcome in Astera, as long as I’m Master of Seas.
And I expect to see more of you, especially since you’ve taken up with the princess of our newest allied nation.
But for what it’s worth…” She motions to her cane the way she used to in the orphanage, and Eugene automatically passes it over.
“You can’t really picture me in a printshop, huh,” Eugene says with a rueful grin.
Leona shakes her head with an answering, albeit more wry, grin and heads for the door. “Can’t picture you with gray hair. Now, if you buy me a very strong drink…I’ll tell you the stories your parents never wanted to reach the light of day.”
Eugene laughs. “With what money?”
Leona stops in her tracks, staring at him. “Oh, stars help me, we need to go to the administration center, right now. No one told you about the royalties.”
Morning light casts the harbor in pale gold, almost the same as the starlight Rapunzel held, as they gather by the royal galleon.
Compared to just a fortnight ago, the assembled company is mostly the same, but the mood distinctly different: Rapunzel is bouncing on her toes; Cressien is marginally less tightly wound.
Eugene has the fresh glow of a man who has just inherited his parents’ substantial accumulated royalties, with interest, and is going to make some very reckless financial decisions once they figure out the currency exchange rates.
Verette and the rest of the People’s Council are also in good spirits, despite the early hour and the necessity of farewells.
“I believe,” Verette says with a merry kind of formality, “that our hospitality was lacking during your visit. I wish to make it up to you all.” She reaches into a satchel slung over her simple indigo gown and pulls out an oddly mismatched stack of paper, then hands it to Eugene.
It’s been loosely stitched together in crude thread, and on the very top page are scrawled handwritten letters: The Tales of Flynnigan Rider.
“I found it among my mother’s belongings,” Verette says. “I believe it’s the first draft.”
The manuscript shakes in his hands. He can see two dueling sets of handwriting in a string of names: Marion Andrews? A. M. Fitzherbert? Eugene Rothar? Then: A. DREW ROTHAR.
He can’t picture their faces, but he can imagine them at the counter of Herbert Cressien beams from ear to ear. Hughes shakes Verette’s hand, then pulls her into an embrace. Even Eugene is getting a little choked up. “Can I borrow your hanky?” he whispers to Rapunzel…just as she finishes mopping up her own face by blowing her nose. “Actually, I’m good.”
“For Princess Rapunzel,” Verette says, “I must first apologize that our original invitation turned out to be issued in bad faith. I would like to extend an invitation of my own, for your entire party to attend the Fountain Festival in one year’s time.”
“I accept,” Rapunzel says, hiding her hanky behind her back as Eugene pretends not to see. “And I also wish to extend you an invitation to visit us on my birthday, so you can see the floating lanterns.”
“I also accept. But that would leave me once again in your debt…if not for these.” Verette looks behind her and motions to a guard. They come forward, bearing a bushel basket heaped full of something white and strangely shaped—
“THE SHELLS,” Rapunzel gasps. “You—you remembered—is it okay?”
“We have more verai than we will ever need,” Verette says firmly. “They may not be as iridescent now, but I suppose that means you’ll just have to come back when the shells start washing ashore full of starlight.”
Rapunzel doesn’t bother with a handshake; she lunges right at Verette and wraps her in a hug. “I guess I will.”
It takes them the better part of an hour to weigh anchor and embark, but they leave the harbor with an escort from the Asteran navy, Leona perched at the bow of the foremost ship. Eugene makes his way to the stern and watches until she and Astera both sink behind the waves.
It’s strange, leaving a place that could have been home.
That was home to the life he should have had, to the people who wanted him.
He doesn’t know who he would have been under Enver’s rule, if he would have changed their odds for the better or followed his parents and uncle into an early grave. Part of him will always miss that life.
He turns and finds Rapunzel at the bow, laughing with Cressien, the breeze tugging at her hair as she keeps a firm grip on her sketchbook.
And Eugene knows that if his parents could see him now, they’d be happy, even if Astera isn’t his home.
Everything they wanted for him, he has: a girl he’s madly in love with.
A job that will let him use his skills for good.
A future he’s proud to chase. (And the outrageously ample inheritance doesn’t hurt either.)
It’s not just their dream he’s living, but his own.
He pulls his own battered copy of The Tales of Flynnigan Rider from his satchel. The inside cover creaks as it falls open.
Eugene pauses.
Something’s…off.
He’s never taken the time to really study the endpapers before. They’re soft cream marbled with pale silver, the Asteran royal seal embossed inside. There’s nothing odd about that. Right?
He flips to the back. The endpaper there is clearly one sheet, folded in the middle, one half making the very last page of the book and the other half glued to the back cover, the standard method. When he turns again to the front…
It’s clear as day. The marbling pattern is flipped on the inside cover. The embossed seal is right side up.
Leona said yesterday the royal insignia should be upside down.
Someone cut the endpaper down the seam and pasted it back wrong.
Eugene’s brow furrows. He takes a knife from—well, a gentleman never tells—and carefully slides it along the edges of the endpaper, slicing through the lines of glue. Then he peels back the sheet, exposing the raw board of the cover.
Thunderstruck hope rises in his chest.
Beneath the endpaper, framed in wobbling paste lines, are scrawled two ragged words:
FIND ME.