Henry stared at me, and I could tell he was starting to realize what I’d been thinking.
“The new decree will specify that I can marry a man, but only a man she deems worthy. Worthy via money, or certain families, or status, whatever the fuck it may be.”
“She can’t do that.”
“Of course she can,” I whispered. “She is the queen. And she is writing the rules.”
“Doesn’t anyone else have any say?”
“No one who isn’t on her payroll.”
My mother was still chattering on the TV. Henry and I fell silent, watching as she continued to personally taunt me from behind a television screen.
“Sebastian has always been a troubled boy, but a boy with a heart of gold. His first love was actually another boy from one of the surrounding villages under Frostmonte. He loved him with all of his heart. But when Sebastian took up his duties at the castle, he asked that I send his first love away to boarding school. I obliged, of course.”
Henry’s eyes shot up to meet mine. “She’s lying.”
My blood ran cold.
“He is very thoughtful,” the interviewer said. “The royal family paid for his first love to go to boarding school?”
“At Sebastian’s request. Yes.”
“Lying, right through her teeth,” Henry repeated. “She is the one who wanted me to go to boarding school, not you. She orchestrated the whole thing.”
My throat was tight. “She’s not lying,” I whispered.
Henry looked at me like I’d just punched him.
I felt like my insides had just been scooped out. But I wasn’t going to lie to Henry. Not about this.
“I did ask for you to be sent to boarding school,” I said.
“Sebastian, you don’t have to cover for your mom, if that’s what you’re doing.”
I shook my head. “It was my decision. The money was… was part of my trust money. Not even hers.”
“Jesus Christ, as if this day could get any worse,” Henry muttered. He walked over to the other side of the room, looking out the window and then back at me.
“Worse?” I said. “We—I thought today was incredible—”
“It’s been a roller coaster from hell,” Henry said, shaking his head. “I love you. I’m not just saying that because it sounds good, I’m saying it because I really feel it, and I’ve felt it for almost my whole life. But I need to be able to trust you. What have you not told me, Sebastian?”
He watched me, waiting for an answer. All I could tell him was the truth.
13
Henry
It felt stupid to think that for a moment, I’d imagined I could have a simple life with Sebastian. I’d let my guard down faster than ever.
It was like a blow to the face, learning that he had been the one who sent me away to boarding school.
I wanted to run. I wanted to be as far away from him as possible, and yet at the same time, I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else in the world. He was the person who had hurt me the most in life and also the person who was most important to me. I had been more independent than most people would ever dream of, during my time in the mountains, and yet one man still had the power to take me over completely.
So I didn’t run. I stayed put. Right where I was.
And I waited for Sebastian to say whatever he needed to say.
He turned off the TV, poured more whiskey for himself, and stared out the window as the wind picked up.
“I was numb when my mother took me back to the castle,” he said. His gaze was far away. “I felt anesthetized, even. It’s going to sound so stupid, but it was like the castle itself had some kind of power over me, a curse that I couldn’t shake. Even though I know that isn’t real.”
I let out a bitter sigh. “I’ve spent a lot less time there than you have, and I feel like it’s cursed,” I said. “The place can be unbearable.”
“Or maybe it was just my mother,” Sebastian continued. “I don’t think it’s anything about Frostmonte so much as it is… her. She’s unrelenting. She’s always present.”
“Always watching,” I said.
“Exactly,” he continued. “She took me into her sitting room, and she perched herself where she always does. Right in front of her favorite grand mirror. It’s probably thirty feet tall.”
“Is that even possible?”
“It is when you’re a queen,” he said. “She made me come sit nearby her. Made me look in the mirror.”
“Creepy as hell.”
“Really fucking creepy,” he said. “She made me look in the mirror and repeat to myself, over and over. ‘I will be king. I will be king. I will be king.’ Like some kind of mantra meant to force me to care about my legacy or something. And then she started telling me the story of her childhood. How she was poor growing up, how she had nothing. How her parents refused to get married because they didn’t believe in it, and they shamefully gave birth to her out of wedlock.”
“I didn’t know your mother grew up poor,” I said.
“Yes. She’s always said that her ‘only shot’ in life was meeting my father. Marrying a prince, who became king. And then my mother set in on a long speech about how none of the townsfolk would accept me. No one would accept a gay prince. Because she had seen me kissing you.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Nobody in Berrydale cared that I was gay. I came out when I was fifteen, for God’s sake.”
“I tried to tell her that. And she said they didn’t care about you because you were ‘a nobody.’ But she told me of a time a hundred years ago, when a king in Hevania showed interest in men, and that king was cast off forever.”
“A hundred years ago was a very different time.”
“It was,” Sebastian said. “She talked about money. Legacy. A million things I didn’t care about at the time. But… then she talked about you.”
“Of course.”
“And she told me that you had nothing,” he said. “That in a few years, you’d still be right where you were in Berrydale, whereas I would have everything. She told me that I was hurting you. That I had to stop hurting you. That I had committed some horrible sin by kissing you and making you believe I could ever be with you.”
Sebastian had a couple of tears rolling down his cheeks now as he stared outside.
“She told me that she would me ‘monitoring you’ down in Berrydale. Whatever the fuck that meant,” Sebastian said. “And so I told her no. I told her to send you away. Said that we could afford it easily, that we’d never miss the money. And of course she jumped on the idea.”
Realization crept over me.
“You sent me away because you were afraid that my staying in Berrydale would be worse,” I said softly.
“I knew you staying in Berrydale would be worse,” he said. “You had to get the hell away. From Frostmonte, from the queen, all of it. I wanted nothing more than to run away forever, but if I couldn’t do it, I at least wanted you to be able to.”
I let out a breath that I’d been holding. “So why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t you at least let me know you still loved me—”