Heir (Royally Hot 4)

She turned away, pulling a small bag from beneath her bed and starting to pack clothes into it. “Mhm,” she said quickly, the sound little more than a high-pitched squeak. “I have to go. Don’t tell the headmistress that I’m gone.”

“In this? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be all right. Someone’s meeting me outside the gates…”

“Who?”

“Just promise me you won’t run away,” she said, turning with the bag in her hand. “Please, Valeria.”

I shook my head. “I won’t. But I don’t know when I’ll next see you. After my father comes to collect me tomorrow, I don’t know when Petre Greengallow will next allow me to see my friends.” I crossed to her, trying to put my arms around her for a hug, but she shrugged away, shaking her head.

“I have to go,” she said, and a moment later the room was empty once again, just me and the knowledge that that might be the last time I saw my best friend for a long time. “Lock the door behind me.”

She left and I did as she asked, wondering why she seemed so nervous.

In the room next to mine, I heard one of the other girls who boarded cough softly in her sleep. It was little Anna, tough as nails but always sickly.

Staring at the wall that adjoined her room, I thought about her, and how she’d told me all about her mysterious and fabulous aunt, who lived a life of luxury, moving freely from royal house to royal house around the world.

Anna said she was beautiful, interesting, and excellent company, so everybody was always glad to have her visit. She was unmarried, she had no children, and she did just as she pleased. She reminded me of a consort…a geisha in a way, except she was free. Desired, yet aloof. Which sounded pretty fantastic to me.

Especially right now.

Staring at myself in the mirror above my dresser, I wondered if maybe I could pull off a similar sort of life. I was pretty—at least enough, I thought.

I had my mother’s hair, wavy and layered in warm variants of light brown and golden streaks. I had my father’s eyes, blue as the sky. I was full in my bosom and hips, very attractively so, from what others suggested.

As for interesting, I was somewhat sure I was at least somewhat interesting. I hoped. I could fence, I could ride, I could read tarot, knew the stars, played chess, and made my own clothes. I could bake bread and even helped raise the chickens here at school; I could read a little French and sing somewhat in tune.

My marks in my classes were always at the top of the scale. And I could even put a grown man into a fairly respectable choke hold. I was rather proud of that one, I had to admit.

If I wasn’t good company yet, I could learn to be.

The ray of hope at a life of freedom was quickly replaced by the sting of reality. If I did that, packed up my things in a midnight flit, and ran off to Wherever It Might Be, then what would happen to my father? What would happen to my mother?

Natasha was absolutely right. If I fled, they would bear the brunt of the Greengallow fury, and I had no doubt that Petre would take perverse pleasure in such revenge.

The idea of abandoning them made me slump down on my bed. I knew my mother loved my father, and vice versa. There was no question about that. And my father, despite all his life-upending faults, was a decent human being who I loved even when I most probably should not.

He’d made a mess of my life and sold me off, yes; but he also had always tried his best, even when his best ended up in catastrophe. The gambling was beyond his control in many ways.

Getting him to stop would be like asking a terrier to stop chasing a rat. Even still, I had never been deprived of anything in my life; despite our family having very little money, whatever we did have was spent on me without question. When I received an offer of a place at Saint Theodora’s, the money was there. No doubt if I required a dowry it would have been found, though as things stood that was unnecessary: Petre Greengallow was getting something far more valuable than money; he was getting a royal title. Something for the family that has gained the very highest positions available within their own social class, but still lusts after more.

Even my father’s gambling, I knew, had as much to do with me—to secure a life for me, to give me safety and stability—as it had to do with the thrill of chance. For all that I had, I was grateful. If I left, if I let my end of this whole horrendous bargain drop, how would that make my parents feel?