7. Chapter 7
Michaela
M y pace quickened at the top of the stairs. By the time I hit the corner and knew I would be out of sight, I broke into a run. Layers of fabric tangled in my legs, threatening to trip me, but I forced myself to stay upright. If I fell, I doubted my drive to get up again.
I’d experienced brutal evaluations before. I had taken criticism for years. On my appearance, my beauty, my personality, and the dresses that I designed. My experience told me not to internalize. I knew it wouldn’t help to dwell on the words that were spoken and yet my mind clung to every negative phrase.
I burst into my room and slammed the door behind me, only pausing long enough to flip the latch. How could they be so vicious? How could they lash out so ferociously? Was Esmerey right? Should I leave? Was I not welcome?
I ached to talk to someone who loved me. I’d talked to my mother shortly after I’d been freed from the sinkhole, but she told me to stay. She said something great was waiting for me in Nolcovia, and at the time I believed her.
At the time, I thought it was Fitz.
But he’d left me there at the table. He’d deserted me to the wolves with no one but Bishop to protect me.
If this was what it would be like to be at his side, then maybe I wasn’t cut out to be with him after all. If he couldn’t put me above the needs of the kingdom, and if I was going to have a problem with it, maybe we needed to stop before we ever started.
I reached for my zipper and swore under my breath. It was impossible to reach on my own. What moron designed a dress she couldn’t get out of without help? I groaned and kicked off my shoes. They thudded hard against the wall and flopped to the side, defeated like my spirit.
It wasn’t fair. None of this was. Not the dress. Not the dinner. And certainly not the fact that my heart belonged to someone as potentially emotionally unavailable as Leonidas Fitzborough.
Frustration tipped me over the edge of rational decisions. In five long strides, I stood at the bookcase and gripped the bronze frog. With a jerk of my hand, I pushed it aside. The latch gave way and I pulled it back. I deserved an answer at least. Fitz owed me his reason for deserting me in that den of hyenas. Was there some fire? A massive explosion? An earthquake we’d managed to miss?
My anger propelled me through the passageway without a lantern to lead my way. The whole thing had become too familiar with all the times I’d snuck over to his side of the palace. My pace landed me at his doorway in record time. One hand on the latch, the other gripping layers of fabric, I stopped for the first time and considered my choice.
Was this a mistake? The banquet had left me raw and vulnerable. I was looking for a fight and would likely find one with him. My fingers pushed back the latch and the painting-turned-secret-door popped open. Whatever had blocked my entrance before was no longer in place. The flickering light of his fire illuminated his neatly undisturbed bed.
Maybe he was still dealing with the crisis? If I wanted to be with him, if it was ever going to be a possibility, I couldn’t be jealous of his royal responsibilities. It was near ten and he still hadn’t returned, so who was I to—
A deep sigh came from his sitting area. A sigh I knew too well.
Fitz was watching the fire.
While I was roasting over the bed of coals his mother had stoked for me, the dear prince had the nerve to sneak off to his room and pout?
Anger rekindled, I stepped out of the passageway and covered the ground to the sitting area, ready to give him a piece of my mind.
“Leonidas Ignatius Fitzborough III, where do you get off leaving me like that?”
In the dim light cast by the fire, hardly the raging blaze it was last night, I barely made out his shape. Fitz sat on the edge of the couch, body hunched forward, shoulders sunken as if his body were caving in on itself. All of his weight rested where his elbows met his thighs. His face had been swallowed by his cupped palms.
This wasn’t what I thought it was. When I’d launched my accusation, I had wrongly assumed that he was biding his time, watching the fire burn as he escaped the torment he’d ditched me in. His head came up at the sound of my voice. A sniffle cut over the silence between us. With lethargic movements, he pulled his hands away from his face and rested his forearms on his legs. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to…” Every word fell clumsily from his mouth as though he had to push them out by force.
I shifted forward, skirts rustling as I moved. He still wore his tux, but the bowtie hung limp around his neck and at least four buttons had been unfastened. Behind the couch, I noticed the jacket he wore at dinner, strewn across the floor if he’d shed it like skin, discarded and forgotten all in the same breath.
“Fitz?” I held my breath, too scared to voice the question. Something had happened. It wasn’t the kingdom like Bishop claimed. In an emergency, Fitz became reactive and agile, a picture of action and determination. This was… a husk of the person I knew. Something had carved out his soul, littered it with holes, and crammed it back in the shell as only a fraction of the person he was. In truth, there was only one option that could leave him this broken.
I slipped in beside him. His eyes remained focused on the floor, distant and unconnected to reality. He barely flinched as my fingers slipped over his hand. Tightening my grip on him, I tried to gain his attention. “Fitz? What happened?”
He didn’t look up, but a breathy combination of a laugh and a sob shook his core for no more than two seconds. “You look beautiful. It was all I could think about tonight. The vision at the far end of the table.” His hand twisted and linked our grip. “I had plans for after the banquet. A walk in the garden so we could talk, then we’d come back here to warm up a bit, then try to understand what this is and what we’re to do to keep it alive.” His voice cracked on the last word as though it took him by surprise. Voice shaking, he tried to continue. “But the news came and I… I couldn’t think. I couldn’t make sense of… How can he—What do I do without—” The first shuddering sob wracked his frame. In a vain attempt to cover it, the back of his free hand smashed over his mouth, but the shuddering gasp ripped from his lungs without warning.
I wrapped my other hand around his. “Fitz, I’m here, okay? I’m here and we’re going to make it through this.”
His father had died. That was the only explanation I had for this heartache and only because I knew it firsthand, the pain that came with losing the person you’d loved since the first day you’d met them.
“I knew it was coming.” His chest bounced silently as he exhaled. “I’ve been preparing myself since the diagnosis, but to see it raw like this? It’s beyond my limits, Coco.” Fitz looked up, eyes frantically searching my face for the answers he couldn’t find. “How do I do this? How do I survive in his wake?”
Rationally, I knew he needed wisdom, experience, anything to keep him moving forward, and yet, emotionally, I knew those words didn’t exist. There was nothing that could make this right in the moment.
“The doctor is with him now. He asked me to leave while he runs tests. I know he’s hoping Father will pull out of it again, but he’s basically catatonic at this point.” He looked away from me. “It won’t be long now.”
Hope flashed like sequins under a spotlight. “He’s still alive?”
“The doctor says he will pass by morning.” Frustration tightened his grip on my hand. “Strange the way they don’t know anything with surety, except for that. This is the one time they are certain they’re right.” As if someone had severed the string that kept him upright, he collapsed into me, head against my shoulder. “I can’t do this, Coco. It’s too much.”
Fitz freed his hand, but only so that he could wrap his arms around my center and pull closer. His momentum pushed me back, but I tightened my core and took his weight, determined to be his strength for once. My glove slipped easily over his back, up and down, comforting him like my mother had comforted me the night I was dumped by my boyfriend my senior year. I thought it was going to kill me, but what Fitz was facing? That was real pain.
“You smell amazing.” His face turned into the crook of my neck. Hot breath flashed against my skin. Nerves prickled and danced under the attention. “Like strawberries and roses.”
My breath rushed in and out with increasing intensity. He needed me to be his friend, but the way my heart raced, I didn’t feel like Coco, his friend. I was Michaela, the woman who’d fallen for him somewhere along the way.
The weight of his body pushed away from me. Fitz took my shoulders with his hands. “Run away with me?”
“What?” The crazed look in his eyes had me nervous. “You can’t be serious, Fitz. Where would we go?”
“Anywhere.” He dropped his grip and rose to his feet. “I have more money than any human could ever need. We could go anywhere,” Fitz whirled back to face me, “be anyone we wanted. We could disappear.” He sank onto the couch again, taking my hands in his. “Run away with me, Coco? Please?”
“Fitz, you’re just scared. You’re not thinking rationally.”
“Of course, I’m scared! As soon as my father dies, I am meant to be king. I have to choose a bride and the only one I want to spend my life with is not an option!” Tears clouded his eyes again as the bitter reality took hold. “I thought I had time. I thought I had days to convince him, to show him that you’re worthy, but now… Now they will force me to be someone I don’t want to be, so if you ever cared about me, Michaela, please,” his voice shook through the strain, “run away with me.”
It felt like a flash flood of information. He’d thought about this? He wanted me ? Was that what I wanted? Could I be a queen?
“Do you know what it’s like?” His face twisted with the agony of a world he couldn’t bear alone. “Do you know how it feels not to be able to trust your parents?” He shook his head. “Of course you don’t. Your mother is practically a saint, and your father is…” He looked away. “I’m sorry, I spoke without thinking.”
My father was dead. It was my reality for most of my life, but it still cut deeply when I thought about it. Like a knife released the bands on my grief before it stabbed me in the gut. But it wasn’t time for me to feel any of it, not when Fitz needed me.
“Bishop thought there was an emergency in the kingdom.” I pressed my lips together before I added, “He even baited your mother with it.”
That earned me a short snort of derision. “If it was the kingdom, they would have told her first. The king and queen rule together. She’s not an ornament. But this was about my father. The doctor needed my opinion.”
“Why wouldn’t he get your mother for that?”
“I fear Dr. Casco doesn’t trust her any longer. He wanted a second opinion on my father’s care.”
My mind latched onto that fact. Was Fitz admitting that the doctor suspected her of foul play?
“He’s slipped out of consciousness. Unresponsive.” Fitz clenched his jaw as he fought to control his emotions. “He didn’t know I was there. The doctor wants to let him pass and, considering everything else, I agreed this time.” The muscles in his lips flinched rapidly, angry but devastated. “What do you want to bet she’s in there, trying to show that in his last moments he changed the law?” His volume dropped. “Let her. Let her have the lot of it, if she wants it that badly.”
My heart clenched at the way it looked from my side. No, we hadn’t ever found evidence to convict her, but what if Bishop’s intuition was right? What if the queen had killed her husband? And if not that, what if she was merely going to capitalize on his death?
“Please,” Fitz brought my knuckles to his lips and set a kiss across them, “free me from this doomed future. Run away with me?”
“Fitz, you don’t mean that. You would never forgive yourself if you weren’t here when he…” I couldn’t say it out loud. “And you just said that they’ve been wrong in the past, so who’s to say they’re going to be right this time? I mean, maybe someone will think of something that will—”
The warmth of his hand captured mine. “While it’s noble you would say it, it’s simply not possible.” As sadness flooded his features, my helplessness tripled. “There’s nothing left. They’ve tried every remedy the modern medical world has available.”
Like a bur in my socks in late summer, something he said caught my mind, prickling the outskirts of my subconscious.
“But you…” Fitz brought my palm to his face and pressed it over his jaw. “We could go away from here, figure this out, you and me.” His gaze searched my face, bouncing all over as if he wouldn’t stop until he found the acceptance he was looking for. “We haven’t had a chance to even speak to each other. You don’t know the agony I went through not knowing whether you were…”
Every remedy. My mind still worked on the words I’d flagged. Every remedy.
“I can’t lose you.” He pulled closer. “I came up with nothing but that wire from the dirt, and I knew it in my heart, you were all I wanted in the world, Coco.” His head dipped closer to mine. “Michaela. My Michaela.”
My heart was his, fully and completely. But to run away? To leave and never look back? My rational mind fought it, but my heart surged like I’d already said yes.
“Say something.” His lips brushed mine, lighting fires in my system. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? My thinking. Because half of my mind focused on how close he was and how he kept pulling closer. The gravity of his frame pulled me into his orbit and instinctually my head tipped to the left just enough for our lips to line up. His hand didn’t hold mine anymore, but only because he’d dropped it to take hold of my waist. Hot breath flashed against my mouth as he lingered, waiting on my cue that he had permission to end this game and whisk me off to our happily ever after.
But the other half of my brain wouldn’t stop working on that dang puzzle.
Every. Remedy. Why was that important? His lips pressed against my cheek, not like a kiss, more like dragging over my skin, leaving need and ache in its wake. My breathing increased, slightly impeded by the tightness of the bodice of my gown. I hadn’t considered this in the design. Never once had it crossed my mind that a Crown Prince might leave me breathless and begging, and yet I was stuck in exactly that scenario.
Every remedy.
It bounced through my mind as his fingers tunneled into my hair. His heated kiss inched toward my neck and bare shoulders. Why couldn’t I let it go? Why wouldn’t I just say yes? I owed nothing to Nolcovia. I was a foreigner who had been belittled and looked down on since day one, so what on earth was keeping me from pulling him back to my lips and giving in to whatever this madness was that burned between us?
Then it broke through my thoughts completely.
Every remedy the modern medical world has available .
But what about the ancient medical world? When I was pulled out of that pit, Sadie’s healing broth had done miracles for me. Had they tried anything like that? Sadie would have mentioned it. When she told me about her work as an apothecary, she acted as if it was a secret, so why would she tell Fitz?
“You’re drifting away.” His lips left cascading kisses over my bare shoulders. “Come back to me, Michaela. I need you.”
But I couldn’t. Not when the king’s life had a chance at being saved.
“Fitz,” I took hold of his arms and pressed him away from me, “I can’t run away with you, not like this. Not when you’re clearly not in your right mind.”
“But I am.” His eyes widened. “I’m thinking clearly for the first time in I don’t know how long.”
“I know you think you are, but this is grief.” I couldn’t tell him yet, not until I convinced Sadie to help. If she was keeping her profession a secret, there had to be a reason. It was late and she might be in bed, but I had to try. “And I can’t stay right now.”
I shifted as if to stand, but his hand caught my wrist. “No, Coco, don’t leave me to face this alone.”
Jaw clenched to keep my emotions locked away, I eased from the couch, but couldn’t free myself from his grip. “Fitz, I promise I’ll be back. I promise. But there’s something I have to do first, okay? It’s for your own good.”
“No,” he shook his head as tears filled his eyes, “no, they’ll come for me while you’re gone and if he dies,” his strong voice cracked under the strain of that brush with reality, “I’ll agree to be king. I won’t be able to deny them, can’t you see that? We have to go, now. ”
The plaintive words of his plea tugged on my heart. I wanted nothing more than to stay with him and do exactly as he asked, but I had to go. Twisting my arm, I broke his grasp on my wrist. “I’m sorry, Fitz, but you have to trust me.”
My fingers wrapped into my skirts and hoisted them up so I could run. He fell forward as if to take hold of me again, but I’d already started for the passageway.
“Coco! Coco, come back!” His cries followed me down the dark passageway. I didn’t have time to explain it. And it wouldn’t be fair to give Fitz false hope if Sadie denied me or couldn’t do anything to help. I didn’t have the luxury of staying where I wanted to. I only had time to seek out the one person who had a chance of saving the king’s life.
All my hopes rested with Sadie.
But, even as I realized it, another truth dawned on me. By deserting Fitz and asking Sadie to save the king, was I sacrificing my own place in his heart?
Who would he love more?
The woman who left him?
Or the one who saved the kingdom?