27. Roslav Cathedral
27
Roslav Cathedral
JACOB
At first, Alma tries to reason with me.
“You can’t engage in behavior like that,” she argues, her voice loud and tight. She paces our sitting room, running out of space and striding back.
“He was asking for it. This dirt weasel barges into your palace and calls you—”
“Stop. Stop.” She holds a hand up. “I don’t care about your reasons. Think about what you owe to your people. Markets are going to go haywire every time you form a grudge. You’ll be an embarrassment instead of a diplomatic asset. Vede , Jacob, don’t throw this away because you can’t swallow a few insults.”
At this moment, all I want to do is get rid of my title. What has being a crown prince ever given me?
Nothing but my mother’s peace. Nothing but knowing Alma.
Chol. Chol nia.
“You can’t let people treat you like there’s no line you won’t let them cross,” I counter. Surely her people would understand that. Vorburgian people would. Not sure about soft Handselites.
“He has the power to hurt you,” she says, voice shaking.
Who cares? I would have shrugged off anything Pietor said about me. But he attacked Alma. “I’ve got twenty-five pounds on him that say otherwise.”
She bangs a fist into the sofa and growls her frustration. She thinks I’m stupid. I think Pietor shouldn’t have started something if he didn’t want me to finish it.
“He wasn’t bluffing. I don’t know what weapon he’ll use, but he has one, and you just begged him to use it.”
I reach for her fist, working it free with my thumb. It loosens, but she turns her face away. Weak winter sun shines through the mullioned windows, and dust motes dance in the light. I hear her sniff.
“Alma. Don’t ask me not to fight for you,” I say, my voice rough.
She breathes in and out, a slow cycle, then drags her hand away, slams through her bedroom door, and shoots the bolt home for good measure.
The Cold War is back on.
Karl and Caroline speak only when spoken to. Mr. Tumwater clicks his tongue and shakes his head, doing the final fitting on my tuxedo. Alma gives up on trying to persuade, blasting me instead with an arctic wind. I retreat into a shell of silence and manly pride. I can’t understand her, and she won’t understand me.
That’s it, then. A bastard prince of Vorburg and a princess of Sondmark were always going to be a hard sell.
My father sends an itinerary via Karl. Mom chats via video message as she cycles from the market, showing off her cancer-fighting greens, and reminding me to represent Blackberry well.
“Are you getting sleep?” she asks.
“I’m getting sleep,” I say.
I’m not getting any sleep. Everything hurts.
I stare hard at the door of my suite, memorizing the lines as well as I’ve memorized Alma’s face. I text Ella, gaming with her when I need to get out of my head. Every night.
“You’re coming back, though,” Ella says, her pixelated avatar carrying a pixelated brick to a pixelated castle wall and slotting it into position.
The game isn’t destructive enough, and I distract myself by looking around the room. Ella’s space has a lot of color and patterns. “When did you all move into your own suites?” I ask, fighting off a sneaker—one of the pixelated marauders who crop up occasionally to tear down the buildings. His pieces spring apart and absorb into the ground as mulch.
“As soon as we moved on to college or the military academy. Mama gave Noah and Alma adjoining suites so they’d feel more independent. They got a kitchen. I got a hotpot.” I laugh. “Noah moved to Lily Cottage a few years ago. He has a dog.”
“Did she let you decorate?” I’ve glimpsed enough of the other rooms to know they’re all stamped with a personal style. Freja’s has the look of a stately English home, Clara’s is a mix of antique pieces and ultra-modern accents—pastels and gold. Ella’s is three fandoms in a trench coat.
Ella rubs her nose and pushes up her glasses. “She tried to steer us but used words like ‘appropriate’ and ‘classic’. I don’t speak that language.”
I glance at the stuffed raccoons piled on her bed. “You don’t say.”
She elbows me hard, and I chase down a sneaker, axing it in the back.
“If we had let her get her way, I’d have brocade wallpaper and Aubusson rugs, matching pillows with no tassels whatsoever.”
“You’re describing Alma’s room.”
Ella’s mouth drops open. “She actually let you in?”
“Just a peek,” I lie. No need to tell her about taking her sister’s hair down, of standing in her doorway and having her do my tie, of reading paperbacks late into the night. “It looks like a build-your-own palace bedroom kit.”
That’s not entirely true. The top of a console table is stuffed with family photos over the years—candid pictures instead of the carefully posed portraits of a royal family or press images from tiara events. These pictures include muddy hands and sandcastles. Rabbit ears and zits. My grandparents have one of those shelves.
“She has plenty of her own personality. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she doesn’t,” Ella warns. “People are always calling her this perfect princess, but there’s no such thing.”
Ella sounds like she stands next to her sister, armed with a gaming controller, prepared to fend off all attackers.
“She is perfect,” I murmur, the controls going slack in my hands. “No one is more terrifyingly prepared than your sister. If I walk into a room without reading the briefing materials ahead of time, she makes me regret it. She’s sharp and relentless. If she makes a mistake, she owns up to it. She’s smart and funny. I was—”
“Dude. Sneakers wiped out my north wing while you were monologuing.”
“Sorry,” I say, tapping a few buttons and upgrading my weapon. “I’ll clear the area.”
I’m creating a pixel-bath of dismembered attackers when Ella clears her throat.
“Alma isn’t the kind to bawl her eyes out about a break-up. Is something going on I don’t know about?”
My answer comes fast. “Nope.”
Yep.
I’m in love with Alma. The truth of it has settled on me during the last months like sawdust falling over my wrist—unnoticed while I worked on other things. But unlike sawdust, these feelings can’t be brushed off.
I’ve tried. I keep telling myself a cute little story about how I just have to make it until Thursday. I’ll pack my bags and have a few memories about falling for a girl I was all wrong for and how it didn’t matter because we were never going to make it.
The real story is about how I fell completely in love with a woman intent on smoothing away my rough edges. How it hasn’t worked. How I want to carry her back to Vorburg over my shoulder and fight every man in Sondmark if I have to. How I will never deserve her. How I would spend the rest of my life making her happy. How I want her next to me when I am king.
No one else. A shudder works up from my spine as I fight against accepting the unalterable fact. My father doesn’t have another heir. What happens if I can’t have Alma?
“You’re still leaving in a few days?” Ella prods.
I imagine the future Alma has painted for me a thousand times. Frigid Djolny Castle. My father pushing me to marry and get myself an heir. Stumbling through thousands of meetings, receptions, and engagements.
I can do it. I can. Alma has taught me well. But a lifetime of doing it without Alma sounds like running a marathon on a belt sander. With every revolution, I’ll get smoother and smoother, smaller and smaller. Eventually, I’ll have to watch Alma move on. She’ll find a brand new Pietor, and every step will be in the news. Parliamentary approval. Roslav Cathedral. Royal babies.
I flinch against the pain. It’s still too easy to imagine another future. One in which I’m not a secret and she isn’t placing me last on a list of considerations. Thanksgivings in Blackberry with the cousins. Roslav Cathedral. Restoring the castle. Our babies.
I swallow. The House of Wolffe could use some hearty peasant stock.
“The king has ordered me back,” I answer.
Ella rolls her eyes as she maneuvers her avatar across a rope bridge. “Idiots.”