She rolls over onto her back and kisses me good morning.
“Maybe even out of my rooms,” she says.
“Ambitious,” I say.
It’s noon by the time we leave. I have to ask someone to bring me regular clothes from my own rooms, and as we walk through the halls of the palace, I can feel everyone watching us while pretending not to.
He must know by now, I think. Surely, someone’s told him already that I spent the day in her room.
The silence from him worries me more than if he called and screamed at me. I half expect that when he gets back I’ll simply be given an official document and told that I’m no longer his son, but right now, it’s impossible to worry about that.
We walk through the gardens. Hazel smells a rose, and I pick it for her, because I can. A gardener stares, so I pick another one and hand it to her.
“Okay, stop picking roses,” she says.
“No,” I say.
“How many do you think I need?” she asks.
I pick her another one, and she laughs.
“What if I don’t take it?” she asks.
“An even number of flowers is bad luck,” I say.
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m not. We put even numbers of flowers on graves.”
I hold out the rose.
“Is that the last one?” she asks.
“You’re impossible,” I say. “I’ve got a castle with an entire rose garden and you won’t take three flowers.”
“Here we go again,” she says, her eyes crinkling around the corners like she’s about to laugh. “More ‘I’m a prince’ stuff.”
“It’s impolite to tease a royal,” I say.
We walk to the massive garage. There are people everywhere on the palace grounds, and they’re all watching us while pretending that they’re not, so I ignore them.
“There are beautiful sea cliffs about twenty miles from here,” I say as we walk between the rows of shining cars, perfectly parked. “You can almost see Turkey from them, and at low tide, there are caves below.”
“Won’t it be crowded on a Sunday afternoon?” she asks.
I pause for a moment as we walk.
“No,” I say.
She sighs.
“Kostya, what’s wrong with the sea cliffs?” she asks.
“Why do you think there’s something wrong with them?” I say.
“Because of how you said it,” she says. “That was your I’m not telling you the whole story and it’s because something is fucked up voice.”
I frown.
“I don’t have that voice,” I say.
“Then the caves are lovely and no one is there because they were all busy today?” Hazel asks.
“The caves are lovely,” I say.
Hazel waits.
“And haunted,” I finally admit.
“That keeps people away?” she asks.
“We’re very superstitious,” I say. “A hundred and fifty years ago, there was a lot of piracy on the Black Sea, and pirates would hide out in the caves.”
“And an enterprising Svelorian king somehow killed them all while they slept?” she asks softly.
“It was an admiral,” I say. “His name was Dubroshkov. The pirates slept in hammocks during high tide, so he sent in canoes rigged with gunpowder, then shot one from a war ship out on the sea.”
Hazel squeezes her eyes shut.
“It triggered a chain explosion, seventy pirates burned to death, and there’s a statue of Dubroshkov in the center of Velinsk,” I finish. “I’m sure you’ve seen it.”
“Did it stop piracy?” she asks.
“For a year or two,” I say, and put my hand on her back, rubbing in slow circles. From the far corner of the garage, a mechanic looks at us and then looks away.
“The cliffs are still beautiful. I ride out there sometimes at night.”
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
We stop in front of a low-slung, black Maserati that looks fast even when it’s parked.
“Come on,” I say. “We’ll go for a ride in style this time.”
Hazel looks unsure.
“Would you rather take the bike?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she says, looking up at me. “No one will notice if I accidentally scratch it.”
“Hazel, there’s no damn point to being a prince if I can’t give you flowers from my garden and I can’t take you for a drive in my sports car,” I say.
“That thing probably costs more than the house I grew up in,” she says.
“It’s only a Maserati,” I say. “It’s not a fancy car.”
She gives me a slightly alarmed look.
“Joke,” I say, and sigh. “Someday, you’re going to laugh at one.”
“Someday, one’s going to be funny,” she says, and stands on her tiptoes to kiss me quickly.
The mechanic looks over and away again, and I fight the urge to squeeze Hazel’s ass. Instead I get the key from a fingerprint-protected lockbox, walk to the passenger side, and open the door for her.
Just as she’s getting in, I hear shouting. I turn my head and Hazel stands, both hands on the door frame.
We frown and look at each other. The shouting gets louder, and Hazel steps back, shutting the door.
Coming down the center aisle of the garage is Niko, running even with his limp, trailed by two much older cabinet chiefs of my father’s.
“Kostya!” Niko shouts, a note of desperation in his voice I haven’t heard in years. Not since the Guard.
He’s calling me by my informal nickname in front of government officials. I feel like I’ve swallowed lead, like there’s an enormous fist squeezing my lungs as I walk toward him, then break into a run.
Behind me, Hazel says something but I don’t catch it.
Niko and I stop a few feet from each other. He’s breathing hard and favoring his bad leg, standing slightly off balance, and I wonder how far he’s run.
“Kostya,” he gasps.
“Tell me,” I say, speaking Russian.
Hazel comes to a stop a few feet away, keeping her distance, like she also instinctually knows something is very, very wrong.
“Your father’s been murdered,” Niko says.
I stare.
“There was an explosion,” he says, still trying to catch his breath. “A car bomb. In Tobov. He didn’t suffer.”
My body’s gone numb. I’m frozen. I couldn’t move if I wanted to.
“I’m sorry, Kostya, I’m sorry,” Niko says, the words spilling out of him. “We didn’t know, there were no rumors, no whispers, nothing at all to suggest...”
He trails off. I’m barely listening. The last time I spoke to my father we fought and I stormed out, too angry to even say goodbye. I don’t even know why he was in Tobov. I thought he was in Kiev.
The other men have caught up to Niko now, huffing and puffing and gasping like they’re having heart attacks. Niko is still looking at me, jaw set, face rigid.
He takes a deep breath.
“Long live the king,” he says.