CHAPTER NINE
SHEPULLEDHERSELFfree of his arms. “I must excuse myself,” she said, smiling, because people were watching. The whole gilded, glittering ballroom was filled with people, like it had not been since she was a girl. And tomorrow, she would be crowned Queen. And all of it was simply too much.
She remembered this room full of her family.
And they weren’t here.
She remembered dancing now. Dancing with her father.
As she never would again.
“Excuse me,” she said again, and took as many dignified steps out of the ballroom as she could manage. Before she started to run. To flee out into the garden, praying that the night sky that enveloped her now would simply swallow her whole. Open up and pull her into the black velvet, cover her with the diamond stars. Conceal her. Conceal this weakness from her people. Even from herself.
She had thought, given a year of time away from everything, that she would be stronger. That she would be braver. That she would be prepared to cope with all of this, but instead, the changes that were being instigated around her only reminded her of everything she’d lost. She did not feel a whole year advanced from her captivity. Rather, she felt like she had been brought back to the stage when she had been taken. When her world had been shattered.
She ran down the garden path until she saw a stone bench. Then she flung herself over the bench, curling around the stone and weeping.
She never wept.
Queen Annick of Aillette could not afford to show such weakness.
And so she’d hidden it. Hidden it because what other choice did she have?
And then she felt strong, warm hands on her waist, lifting her up off the ground, pulling her from the depths of her misery. And she fought. Like a hissing, spitting cat, because how dare he? She was angry. And she was upset. Devastated. And half of it was his fault. She did not deserve to be pulled out of her darkness. Rather, she wanted to pull him down into it.
And so she fought him. Until he grabbed her wrists, steadying her, pinning her against his chest. He moved her arms down, fixing them low at her back, her breasts brought up against the wall of his chest.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I hate you,” she said, seeing him suddenly as the emblem of everything that was bad. “I don’t feel strong. This was supposed to make me strong. I feel a failure. That I need you to stand beside me to keep me safe. That I am not enough. That I do not magically know everything, that I cannot stand on my own strength because it is not there. That I feel alone in a ballroom full of people, where the ghosts feel more real than those who actually stand next to me. I feel like a twelve-year-old girl who was shut away, locked in time, and yet I know I am not a girl. Because a girl would not want the things that I do. With you. I cannot even have that. I cannot lead my country without you, and I cannot stand to be with you.”
“I am an enemy of your own making, Annick,” he said, his voice rough. “Your anger with me is not my fault.”
“It is,” she hissed, wiggling against him. “You were supposed to help. You were supposed to help, and instead you’ve made me even more confused. And you make me feel all these things. Me, I do not like it.”
She could feel her grasp on her English slipping as emotion rose inside of her. “This was supposed to be a special night for me, and it is nothing. Nothing but... Nothing but a reminder. It is all wrong.”
“Do you know what this is?”
“What?”
“Grief,” he said, his voice a fractured pane of glass. “It’s grief. You’ve been locked away for so long that you never got to have it. You had to protect yourself. You had to save yourself. But all those memories that you put away are out here. And believe me, I get it.”
“Why? Because you too have grief?”
“Yes. And because I too have been running from it.”
He stared at her, his eyes burning into hers. And that flame wasn’t banked. Wasn’t low or subtle now. Was more than a flicker.
It was an inferno.
“Then what do we do? How do we keep running?”
“I know,” he said, his thumb dragging along her lower lip. “I know just how to keep it away.”
“Please,” she whispered.
And then he was kissing her, her wrists still pinned against her lower back, caught in one of his large hands, as he tasted her with a ferocity that shocked her.