Chapter Twenty-Nine
Julian
I watch the car drive Belle away, standing at an upstairs window. She ran away from me so quickly that I didn’t even get the chance to walk her out, give her a proper goodbye .
Belle just bolted and left me here, feeling like a splinter of my heart is lodged within hers and it’s getting farther away by the second .
I want to understand. I do, in a fashion. If I’d had a chance to say goodbye to my mother, I’d have done almost anything to take it — I’d have bolted away from anything like Belle just bolted away from me, but I didn’t get that chance .
I knew she was getting sicker — ovarian cancer — but I was in the hospital myself, barely hanging onto life and newly half-blind after a roadside bomb nearly took me out, when word came that she had died .
Understanding doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, watching her run away from me like this. It hurts far worse than I thought it would or could, and I swallow hard, scarred hands gripping the windowsill as I watch her go .
I have no idea if she’ll come back. For all I know, she’s escaping me forever right now. She didn’t say anything about returning, and of course I didn’t ask .
I’m a beast, not a monster .
* * *
“I’m certainly not implying that Griskold is some kind of incompetent backwater,” the man says, smoothing his tie against his chest. “I’m merely pointing out that your border security is somewhat last-century, and your guards rely on outdated tactics to determine danger .”
He folds his hands in front of him, the enormous signet ring on his left hand shining in the light .
For several moments, I indulge in a fantasy: of ripping it from his finger, possibly taking his finger with it, and shoving it down his smug, ugly throat, then choking him with his expensive tie until his face turns purple, right here in this massive conference room .
“Of course not,” says a far more reasonable voice than mine, that of my Petrovian Ambassador. “However, we have in fact found our security methods, however out of date they may appear, to be quite accurate when assessing threats to …”
I flex and release my hand, over and over, watching the scars strewn across my knuckles whiten and then turn flesh-colored again as I do .
I haven’t heard from Belle since she left. The driver who took her told me that he let her off at the hospital where her father is a patient, then watched her run inside. He told me that she cried quietly the whole way there, but it’s the last thing I know she did .
Not a peep. Not a whisper. I’ve forced myself not to call her, not to call the hospital and demand an update. I told her she was free to go, that I wasn’t holding her any more, and I meant it .
Even if it feels like I’m ripping my own guts out and stringing them down every hallway in this palace .
After another thirty minutes of polite bickering, during which the smiling motherfucker from Petrovia repeatedly insults my country and my ambassador insults him right back — politely, of course, that’s why it’s diplomacy — we finally leave the meeting as the sun goes down over the forested mountains .
I’m the first one out of the room, already striding down the hall toward my private gym, where I can get out of this ridiculous costume and go a couple of rounds with a heavy bag, maybe work out some of this —
“Your Highness,” the ambassador’s voice says .
I don’t pause my stride .
“What?” I ask, my voice coming out half- feral .
“Sir,” he says, nearly tripping over his own feet trying to keep up with me. “I don’t mean to undermine our argument with the Petrovians, but I do have to admit that when it comes to zone security and our border in particular, they do have some good — ”
“I don’t care!” I shout, stopping so suddenly that he skids past me .
The ambassador, a man about ten years my senior with slicked-back hair and wire-rim glasses, stops and looks at me .
“Those fucking river monkeys can do whatever they want on their side of the border,” I seethe.
“They can put in tiger-filled pits with spikes, they can map the DNA of everyone who crosses, they can make full plaster casts of them all and then smash them one by one, I don’t fucking care.
They’re here because they want to call us out on the world stage for being a bunch of backward hicks, and I won’t fucking have it ! ”
“Your Highness,” he starts again .
“I won’t!” I shout, my fists curling into balls at my side, my roar echoing down the hallway.
“They’re here to make fools of us and nothing more, and I will not have it in my own fucking house!
Now get them out of here before I see to it myself, because if I do it, it certainly won’t be diplomatic . ”
I sneer the last word and then turn on my heel, stomping down the hall. The ambassador doesn’t follow, and I’m left to storm on my own, taking the steps to my basement gym two at a time, tearing my tie off as I go .
I slam open the door, and the attendant behind the desk looks up, smiling brightly .
“Hello, Your Highness — ”
“Go fuck yourself,” I snarl, already stalking for the changing room .
* * *
She doesn’t come back the next day, or the next. My mood only goes from bad to worse, until I’m snapping at everyone in sight, roaring at the kitchen staff, trying to pick fights with the guards outside the palace .
Finally, after she’s gone for four days, I don’t go anywhere. I don’t even leave my quarters. I have my servants leave me food outside the door to my suite and then grab it once I’m sure they’re gone, wolf it down in near- darkness .
I keep the TV blaring day and night, just to distract myself. I can’t look at the bookshelf with the secret room behind it .
The nightmares come back, only now it’s Belle getting blown up by a roadside bomb. It’s Belle’s head rolling away, across the dusty road, her limbs flying bloodily through the air .
So I stop sleeping. I don’t bother to change my clothes more than once every forty-eight hours, but it doesn’t matter that much because all I do is pace around my living room, stare out the windows, or sit on the couch and watch endless sitcom reruns .
Sometimes people knock. I ignore it .
Everything has stopped mattering .