“Welcome to Luxuria, Amber Jonathan.”
Chapter Two
Olivier
Four Years Ago
I stood before the double doors, knowing full-well what awaited me on the other side.
My life was about to change forever. I would no longer be the carefree young man who partied too hard and drank too much, indulging in every luxury my thick wallet could pay for. I was about to come face-to-face with my future.
The doors opened, and a woman emerged. She was petite but held herself in a regal way. Her hair used to be naturally blonde but had greyed completely during the last few months. Now, she relied on a hairdresser who charged four figures to keep her looking as perfect as she always had. Her face was streaked with tears, tired from the months of hardships we’d endured during my father’s illness. Still, it didn’t take away from her beauty.
My mother was a classically built woman with an aristocratic nose, a high forehead, and a beauty that would be as enchanting in antique times as it was now. I knew it had been the first thing my father had noticed about her.
“My son.”
I looked at my mother’s face, trying hard to hide my feelings as she approached me and took my face in her hands. I looked anywhere but into her amber eyes, matching mine to the last fleck of gold in the iris, knowing that if I did, I would break down completely.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I know how you feel. But you will regret this if you don’t muster up the courage. Come, my son. It’s time to say goodbye.”
She took my hand and gently led me to the intricately carved, heavy oak door, but she didn’t enter. I gave her a questioning look, and she responded with a saddened smile.
“This is as far as I can go,” she said gently. “I’ve already said my goodbyes, Olivier. Now it’s your turn. Go on, my son. There’s not much time left.”
I nodded, watching as two servants silently opened the heavy doors without a single creak. It was silent inside, silent and dark.
The faint sound of a cough made me hyper-aware of the atmosphere in the room. The thick velvet curtains were drawn, and it was dark. The room I had known so well had become my father’s prison.
In the past few weeks, my parents’ bedroom had been stripped of everything. My mother left first, since father slept so fitfully now and kept waking her up. The stack of tomes on the rich mahogany side table was replaced by boxes of pills with frightening names. And worst of all, the view was nixed thanks to the heavy eggplant-colored curtains. It was such a shame. I always thought the sight of his kingdom sprawled right outside his bedroom window made my father a stronger, braver man.
It smelled like fucking death, and I hated being in there. But I had to do this. I owed it to my father to say goodbye one last time.
Too nervous to look at the man in the bed, I walked over to the French doors leading out into the balcony and pulled the curtains open. Amber-colored light filled the room. The sun was setting. The end of another day awaited, perhaps the end of more than just daylight.
It was the end of a kingdom.
“Olivier?”
I turned around, blinking away the trace of tears in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. The sight of him filled me with words unspoken, my throat too constricted to let them out into the open. I feared I’d never be able to tell him how I truly felt.
“I’m here, father.”
I approached him with slow steps, stopping next to his intricately carved cherrywood bed. I took his hand in mine, noticing how frail he looked but not saying anything about it. He knew he was dying, everyone did. It would be no use for me to bring it up now.
“Thank you for… coming,” Dad managed to get out. “I know you were abroad… I’m glad you took the time to come and visit me, you didn’t have to do that.”
“Nonsense,” I muttered, the weight of staying away for so long making me feel smaller than I was. Mother hadn’t told him I’d been around, just too much of a coward to come and see him. “Of course I would come… How could I not?”
An uncomfortable silence lay upon the room and I struggled to breathe in the stuffy room. My eyes went to my father’s, and for the first time in years, I allowed myself to look at him the way I should have from the start.
He looked like an old man.
My father had looked youthful and handsome his whole life, but now, his age and his illness had both caught up with him. His hands were covered in liver spots, his skin sagging. He’d had a full head of hair, but it was gone now, lost to the treacherous illness that was about to claim his life, too.
“I’m so sorry, father.”
I tried to convey just how heartbroken I was with those few words, though I had a feeling nothing I could say or do would ever be enough. I’d been a bad son. A bad example. All my father had ever wanted was to have a worthy heir, and I’d let him down every step of the way.
“Don’t be,” he said hoarsely, putting his hand on mine. “None of us knew this would happen.”
It was true.
When he was diagnosed with cancer six months ago, we’d been told it was treatable. He’d started chemotherapy right away, but didn’t respond to it well, and soon enough, he was given a terminal diagnosis. That was when I put my life on hold to return to Luxuria. To say goodbye to my father. He had mere days left when I arrived, and it took me three full days to muster up the courage to see him. Only when the doctor told me it was now or never did I pluck up the courage to see him.
I was a coward. But worse than the knowledge of that was that I knew my father thought so, too.
I knew my father had been disappointed in me, his heir, too many times to count. And if I was being completely honest with myself, I’d been dreading this conversation.
The throne would be my mother’s after my father passed away, but as per Luxuria’s tradition, I would inherit the kingdom once I married. I knew my parents already thought it strange that I was still single, but I was enjoying the bachelor life too much to settle down.
Lavish parties, drugs, booze and women were my kryptonite. I let myself be pulled into the dark underworld of my rich friends, drinking away the worries that nagged me when I was sober. It was a way of putting it all off. I only realized it one night, lying in my own bed, two women tangled around my own naked body and an empty bottle of Macallan dripping its last precious drops on the Oriental carpet on the hardwood floor.
Things needed to change.
However, with my father’s looming death, everything would change. I would be expected to step up, find a wife. And there were so many traditions for me to honor along the way.
After a few moments of silence, my father spoke again. I could tell how much effort it took for him to speak, and I squeezed his hand, trying to reassure him that everything would be okay.
“I don’t want to be the horrible old man who asks for things on his death bed,” he managed. “But it looks like I don’t have a choice.”
I stared at him, the numbness I felt at the thought of losing him spreading through my body. It was too soon, with so much left unsaid. And yet now, when my last chance to speak to him arrived, I found myself tongue-tied around my father.
“My son,” he went on. “I know you’ve had your doubts about the royal life you’ve been born into. I want you to know, you are free to marry whoever you want. I know your mother will try to meddle… But rest assured the choice is only yours.”