“Oh, Edward. I don’t think I can do this. It’s so hard—it’s too hard. I can’t do this without you.”
I don’t know how long I stay there, weeping and shuddering on him. Maybe an hour, maybe a day. I let go, let it out, let myself give in to the awful despair.
But the one universal truth of life is that after a time, all tears run dry. And there are none left to shed.
From very far away, I hear the soft words in my head, a promise Edward made a lifetime ago. I rise and touch his perfect face, stroking his angles and lines.
And then I say the words aloud, promising them back to him.
“I will never be lost. You will be with me always. The vows were wrong—death can have your body, but your soul will stay with me, I swear it.”
I lean down and press my lips to his—to his chin, his jaw and cheeks, and both closed eyelids. And I return to his mouth, for one long, lingering kiss.
Our final kiss.
Until we are reunited. In some other place—a better place—a place where this pain and anguish can’t ever touch us again.
He will be waiting there for me.
I straighten up, shoulders back, head high, letting the mask descend—covering me, hiding me, protecting me like armor. I wipe my cheeks and pat my hair.
And I walk to the door.
For a moment, I stand there, staring at the knob. It’s hard to open it. To leave Edward here, knowing I will never see his face again. Not as he is now—the face of the man I have lived beside and loved every day of the last fifty years. Nearly my whole life—certainly the most cherished parts of it.
I long to turn back to him, but I know if I do even just once more, I won’t have the strength to turn away again.
So I force my hand to reach out, grasp the knob, and pull.
Storm-cloud gray eyes meet me on the other side. Winston—the head of palace security and my guard since I was a girl. He is my only connection to the life before, to the person I was, but will never be again.
Winston bows. And when he lifts his head, his gaze drags into the room toward my husband. For one flash of a moment I see his pain. His face twists with grief and guilt, so much like Edward’s, for not preventing the unpreventable.
“He was a good man,” Winston says, barely above a whisper.
And it almost breaks me all over again.
“Yes, he was, wasn’t he?”
I close my eyes and draw in a breath, deep and steady.
“I have to go upstairs now,” I tell him.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” He nods, shifting to the side so I may precede him.
And then I move forward, one slow, agonizing step at a time.
To do what must be done.
(Ten years before Royally Screwed)
“I almost never say what I really think.”
~Prince Nicholas, Royally Yours
Nicholas
I LIE ON MY BED, my hands hooked behind my head, gazing up at the ceiling, still wearing the dark clothes I wore all day long.
To bury my grandfather.
It’s hard to believe he’s really gone. I’ll miss him more than I can put into words. Edward Rourke, Prince of Wessco, the Duke of Anthorp, was the best of men—honorable and honest, funny and good. But even more than that, he loved us unabashedly and in a way that was uniquely his own.
I’m sad. I was sad when they informed me at school what happened, sad when we walked through the capital, sad when the priest gave the final blessing at his graveside.
But I haven’t cried. Not even felt the threat of tears—not even in the privacy of my own rooms. I cried when my parents died. In the woods, I sobbed like a child in my grandfather’s arms.
But not today. No tears today.
It’s troubling.
I worry that there’s something wrong with me . . . something becoming wrong with me. That I’m calcifying inside. That one day I’ll watch them put someone I love in the ground, and not only won’t I cry . . . I won’t feel anything at all.
And I think she would be proud of me for that. And that’s more troubling, still.
There’s a knock on my bedroom door. There are only two people in the world who would bother me at this hour—and one of them wouldn’t lower herself to knock.
“Go away, Henry. I’m tired,” I call out.
The door opens and my fourteen-year-old brother strolls in—because, of course he does.
He walks to my bed and stands over me, still wearing his funeral garb too. He’s changed in the more than three years since our last funeral. His voice is deeper, and he’s grown to be only a bit shorter than me. But on the inside, Henry is still a boy—wild and immature, selfish and impulsive. I don’t know if he’ll ever grow up. Part of me doesn’t want him to, and is glad that he gets to be young. Another part almost hates him for it.