But it had been buried deep inside me because it wasn’t complete. This time, if I could say goodbye to him on my own terms, I could fucking put it to rest, already.
I could stop thinking about him. Forever.
At least now, Sebastian had told me how I could get to the castle without alerting the entire fucking royal family to my arrival.
I was going to go up to the castle, find Terrace View Road, and I was going to say goodbye.
8
Sebastian
“No, the new craft tea,” my mother snapped, her eyes narrowed at Natalia. “I specified. I can’t have black teas this late in the day. Take the lapsang away.”
“Of course, your Majesty,” Natalia said. I cast her a sympathetic glance as she rushed out of the hall.
My mother was perched on one of her many favorite antique Victorian chairs. This one was upholstered with deep azure embroidered silk, and as my mother sat, the blue of the fabric seemed to highlight the ice blue of her eyes. She was working through a stack of papers in front of her, signing each one at the bottom before flicking to the next one. They were thank you letters to some family she had recently visited in Europe, but her assistant had written every single one. My mother was just signing them.
“I take it things are going well with Princess Emma?” she asked, not even looking at me.
I was leaning against the nearby window, watching a pair of squirrels zigzag back and forth through a snow bank four stories below us.
“Emma is great,” I said.
“Speak up, Sebastian, I never can hear when you mumble.”
“Everything is going perfectly,” I said louder, enunciating every word.
“Well, you don’t have to take a tone with me,” she complained, but I could tell she was satisfied that I’d given her the answer she’d been fishing for. “Emma is a lovely girl. You’re doing well.”
“Thanks for your approval,” I said. “Your next project should involve starting a matchmaker TV show.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, looking up to meet my eyes for the first time. “You’re sour this evening.”
I just sighed.
She looked back down at her stack of papers, signing and rapidly moving forward. “You’re comparing yourself to other people, aren’t you?”
“Me? Never,” I said, unable to keep the dripping sarcasm from my voice.
“We’ve talked about this—”
“Yes, mother, and my opinion hasn’t changed,” I said. “Of course I compare myself to other people. A lot of other people don’t have essentially arranged marriages. They can choose who they’d like to marry. They can date without their mother hovering over every move they make, especially if they’re well into adulthood as I am.”
She was tight-lipped. “You have never respected your legacy, and I’m not surprised to see it unchanged now.”
“I’ve respected my legacy for my entire life,” I said, more tired than anything. Tired of having this conversation in a million different ways, all the time, with my mother.
“During the meeting you did not attend last week, we were informed that the townspeople will no longer support Frostmonte with tax money within the next five years,” she said, her voice cold and clinical.
I furrowed my brow. “What? But they always have.”
“Indeed,” she said. “And that is coming to an end. Did you not read your briefing two mornings ago? I had James summarize the meeting for you.”
“Must have missed that one,” I said. I never read any of the internal royal briefings that my mother sent to my chambers.
“They’re voting on it next year.” She said the word voting as if it were a filthy slug. “And the vote does not look like it will fail.”
I sighed. “Frostmonte has enough inherited wealth already,” I said. “Too much. We don’t need the taxpayer money anyway.”
Her eyes locked onto mine. “We won’t need the taxpayer money if you marry the right wife.”
“So I’m supposed to marry Princess Emma just because she’s rich.”
“Because Beloria is one of the wealthiest kingdoms in history, yes,” my mother said. “And Frostmonte isn’t, anymore. We have plenty of money for the next five years. Ten, even. But think about your children, Sebastian.”
I shivered. It felt like she’d just shot a spike into my heart.
I really did want children. Badly. I wanted a family—a real one, with children who would be loved, and not treated as royal objects.
But I had no conception of how I would ever get there. For a long time, I’d only been able to picture raising kids alongside Henry. Nothing else felt right. I knew Henry would be an amazing father.
It was all pipe dreams, of course. There was no way I could ever be with him. Not only was he a man—the Frostmonte royal decrees all stated that I must marry a woman—but Henry was poor. A nobody.
He also hated my guts now. And he was right to.
So the idea of having children always stung. There was no chance I’d ever get to do it how I’d dreamed of.
“Sir?” I heard Genoveve’s voice float in from the entryway.
“Yes, Gen?”
“There is something waiting for you, when you have a moment.”
My mother waved a hand absentmindedly, her way of telling me I was released from this little meeting in her rooms.
“Go, spend time with her,” my mother said.
She thought I was being whisked away to go spend time with Princess Emma. But I could tell from the slight hesitancy in Genoveve’s voice that whatever was ‘waiting for me,’ it wasn’t the princess.
I walked out alongside Gen, feeling myself relax with every step we took further away from my mother’s room. She whisked me off in an unexpected direction, toward the kitchens.
“Here he is,” Genoveve said, gesturing as we turned and walked into one of the service loading dock entryways downstairs.
My heart skipped a beat. I saw Henry, his hands behind his back in handcuffs, leaning back against a wall flanked by three of the castle guards. Henry was scowling but not struggling, and he gave me a bitter glare as I saw him.
“We picked him up at the top of Terrace View Road,” Vincent, one of the guards, told me.
“Doing what?”
“Attempting to gain entry.”
“You told me Terrace View Road was safe,” Henry said, giving me a pointed look.
I couldn’t help but puff out a laugh that turned into a sigh. “Yes, it is safe, but that doesn’t mean you can simply arrive and come in without me accompanying you.”
I had no idea why Henry was trying to get into the castle unannounced, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe he was here. I had been so sure that I would never see Henry again after the way he’d left the fairgrounds.
“Take him to my chambers,” I told Vincent, and he nodded. “And get those cuffs off of him, for goodness’ sake.”
“Your chambers, sir?”
I nodded. “Yes. I need to… speak with him. Privately.”
“I can speak with you right here, Sebastian,” Henry said.
But I was already walking off. I needed to go say goodnight to Princess Emma in the guest quarters. I needed to have a quick chat with Genoveve about my schedule for tomorrow.