“My cousin Mattreg,” I said. “He currently lives in Norway.”
“Mattreg?” Henry said. “What the hell kind of name is that?”
“You don’t even want to know the names that some of my distant family members have.”
He nodded. “So it’ll be King Mattreg instead of you,” he said. “Is Mattreg a nice guy?”
“Mattreg is a two-year-old baby,” I said. “If his royal ruling style is anything like his current interests, it will certainly include playing with wooden blocks and laughing hysterically any time someone blows bubbles.”
“Oh dear,” Henry said.
“Yep.”
“You don’t have to do it right away,” Henry said. “If you aren’t ready. Sleep on it for a week. Or for a month.”
“I’ve already slept on it enough,” I said. “And I don’t think I’m ever going to be ready to tell her. Not really.”
“Because you don’t want to give up your legacy to someone who still wears diapers,” Henry said.
“I really don’t,” I said, pulling in a long breath. “But I’m going to. Tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. I’m going.”
“Okay,” Henry said. “Then I support you.”
I bit my lower lip. “Good. Because I’m probably going to be a fucking mess.”
15
Henry
I knew something wasn’t right when I got Sebastian’s phone call the next morning.
I’d been in the middle of sanding and staining the backyard fence when I got his call. It wasn’t weird that he had called me—it was weird that he called me three times in a row, and each time, he barely said a word. I heard commotion and yelling when I picked up the phone each time.
“It may take me a while longer,” he told me during the first phone call, which ended abruptly with a dropped signal. The second call came a few minutes later, and Genoveve spoke.
“There’s a situation at Frostmonte,” Genoveve said.
“Situation?”
“Yes. A… gathering. But Sebastian is very safe.”
“Gathering? What the hell?”
“I’m so sorry, Henry, I’ve got to go—”
Genoveve hung up quickly and I didn’t get a third phone call for another fifteen minutes.
“Um, Henry?” Sebastian said. The noise level behind him sounded much louder now.
“Sebastian, what is going on?”
“You might want to try to come up to Frostmonte Castle,” he said, speaking loudly over the noise. “As fast as you can.”
“Are you okay? What is going on?”
“There’s a protest,” Sebastian said. “Please. I need you here.”
“I’m already leaving,” I said, hanging up and shoving my phone in my pocket before running out to my truck.
The boat of a car puttered its way up the long, sloping roads that led to Frostmonte Castle. But after a certain point, I wasn’t able to continue up the long driveway at all.
When Sebastian had mentioned a protest, I’d expected a few dozen people at most. But there were hundreds upon hundreds of people here. People had hand-painted picket signs: Wicked Queen. Stop the Hate. No Queen of Mine.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen in any of the villages surrounding Frostmonte, let alone right outside of the castle itself. And right at the center of all the chaos, surrounded by a circle of people, was Sebastian.
Fear shot down my spine as soon as I saw him. He looked so small, somehow, standing on a short wall while so many people crowded around him. Over the years, Sebastian had honed his ability to seem princelike. The first couple of times I saw him as an adult, he wasn’t intimidating, but I could see why some people might think he was.
But he wasn’t like that now.
Seeing him with the massive crowd around him activated every protective urge I had inside me. He wasn’t safe there. These people were protesting the royal family. How long before they turned on him? It was irrational, but I was acting on pure instinct.
I pushed my way through the crowd, trying to make my way over to where he stood. People were chanting, and as I made my way through, I finally realized that Sebastian wasn’t going to be in any danger.
They were chanting “for the prince,” over and over and over again.
Of course.
They weren’t protesting against the whole royal family. They were doing this for Sebastian.
And against the queen.
“Sebastian,” I called out. My voice was completely drowned out by the crowd. I wasn’t too far away from him now, but I was lost in a sea of picket signs and shouting. Some sort of plastic object was being passed through the crowd, from person to person, making its way up to Sebastian. They shoved the object into his hands and I realized that it was a big white megaphone.
They were trying to get him to make a speech, for God’s sake.
I remembered so many moments, back in our school days, when Sebastian came to me, utterly freaking out about having to make any sort of public speech in class.
It was one of his most hated things. Any time he had to make a presentation, he would dread it for weeks prior. When the time came, though, he always delivered them flawlessly. He would stammer at the beginning, and sure, he’d seem completely anxious, but on the inside, I’d always been convinced he was a natural at public speaking.
But even now, so many years later, I could see the flash of fear in his eyes just from the crowd asking him to make a speech.
He shook his head. “I appreciate you all, more than you know,” he said. “But I can’t make a speech here. It isn’t right.”
He tried passing the megaphone back to people in the crowd, but everyone refused. I realized that Genoveve was just behind him, standing on the grass hill behind the wall, her eyes scanning the crowd. He passed her the megaphone and she held it awkwardly.
Just then, a fleet of at least ten black cars emerged from around the bend, up toward the castle.
They were finally responding. I knew that Queen Charlotte had to be in one of those black cars, ready and waiting to come down and gain control of the crowd.
I didn’t know what the queen would do in a situation like this. I knew she was evil, but how far would she go? How far would she make her team go? I knew that if anyone in the crowd so much as got a scratch on their eye, Sebastian would blame himself for eternity.
“Excuse me,” I said as I pushed further up in the crowd, finally making my way closer to Sebastian. But right as I got close, gasps erupted throughout the gathering.
“There she is!” a woman shouted, as everyone turned to watch the queen emerge from one of the cars. She was wearing a long, crystalline-blue gown.
I clenched my teeth. She knew. She totally knew that all of the attention would be on her, the second she came out here. Hell, she was probably treating this like a press event, for God’s sake.
I had always thought that Queen Charlotte was evil, but if she was going to use this opportunity to denigrate her own son, I couldn’t stand by and watch it happen. I had no idea how the hell I was going to get Sebastian out of this situation, but I knew I needed to.
The queen started waving to the crowd, as if she were participating in a pageant. The day had been chilly and sunny, but like clockwork, the second the queen appeared, clouds started to obscure the sun.