The Never King, page 4
part #1 of Lost Lands Series
Of course, if we’re caught, we’re dead.
Every last one of us.
That’s why when Gable hands me the bracelet, I do my best to look amazed but inside I’m squirming. The design is as familiar as my own name.
“Right there,” Gable insists. “See the swirls? That’s their insignia.”
“Is it.”
“Mother used to love Brûlé jewelry. I haven’t seen it in years. It looks different now.”
“Maybe we’re different.”
“Yeah.” He slides the cool metal onto my wrist. “Maybe we are.”
Gable walks me the rest of the way to the hole in the garden wall. It’s small but so am I. The bracelet feels heavy and foreign as I reach up to hug him. He’s so much taller than I am. Like an oak planted next to a lily. He gives me shade and shelter, his roots intertwined with mine so deep in the earth you could never pull us apart.
“I’ll miss you,” I whisper.
He kisses the top of my head. “I’ll miss you too.”
“I wish—”
“I know, Relia.”
But he doesn’t. My tongue is ahead of my mind, speaking without thinking. Starting thoughts I cannot, should not, finish. What I wish is that we could go back. I want to be me before this. The me that I was when we were children and I was dumb, so dumb, but life is easy when you don’t know any better.
When you feel hope and you don’t know yet that it’s worthless.
Gable releases me slowly. Reluctantly. “Goodnight, Relia.”
I press my hand against his chest to feel his heart beating slow; tempered and strong as its master.
I will mine to slow to match pace, but it won’t listen.
It never listens.
“Goodnight, Gable.”
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When The Sickness started, no one knew how to cure it. You couldn’t treat it, you couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t even figure out how it was spreading. Nothing seemed to help, and once you started showing signs of The Sickness – a red rash around your neck – you were immediately abandoned. It didn’t matter how old you were. How young. People were terrified. They walked away from family and friends, leaving the city behind to make a run for the country where the air was cleaner and the space between you and your neighbor was so, so much wider.
The cities became tombs. People died on the streets and in their homes. Behind the wheel of their car. There weren’t many articles about it printed so the details are hazy. Everything was digital back then. Even the newspapers. We don’t have access to any of that anymore. The imaginary web that once covered the globe, connecting voices from one corner to another, was burned away a hundred years ago.
Along with the cities.
Paris. London. New York. Rome. Moscow. Most of China.
They were all set aflame with the dead and dying still inside.
It’s the only way to stop the spread, the articles proclaimed. We must do it to save mankind.
That’s the last bit of information the ancestors printed. After that, it all became oral history and the journals of the survivors. The tribe of Loire was the largest in the area and the closest to Paris, so they took responsibility for the burning. Out of five hundred people, sixty volunteered to go back to Paris and reduce it to ash. They would be contaminated after that. They couldn’t come back to Loire.
They knew that and they did it anyway.
Every year on the anniversary of the day our ancestors marched out with torches to burn away This Sickness, we celebrate them with the Festival of Light. There are food carts in the square, games in the park, music in the gazebo by the river. There’s a parade and a baking contest that I’ve never managed to win. Parties in the evening, drinking in the streets, and finally the burning of a replica of the Eiffel Tower erected on the other side of the Loire River.
I have a lot of admiration for The Saviors. The sixty who saved hundreds. Thousands. Millions, maybe, if we can ever get the population back up again. I like to think that if the time ever came again, I’d be willing to step up the same way.
Mother says I can’t.
“You’re a Villette,” she tells me crossly. “Villette’s are icons of hope. This world needs hope more than it needs martyrs.”
She said the same thing to my dad when he wanted to join the military. She talked him into politics instead. Last year she got him elected to Prime Minister, finally pushing out corrupt Minister Cassel, because that was what France needed. A new leader to keep the King in check.
She says she did it for France because Villettes are protectors of the nation, but do you know what I think? I think she loves the power. She loves it more than gold and diamonds. More than her favorite daughter and her brilliant husband. More than France. More than its people.
In fact, I think she loves power almost as much as Arden does, and that is a terrifying thought.
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I’m late.
I’m always late.
I should really wear a watch, but I don’t like the feel of them on my wrist. It’s like a shackle. It grates on my skin.
I walk through the door to the dining room covered in mental armor, fully prepared for the fight. Mother is sitting at the center of the long wood table covered in empty plates, empty glasses, and full flower vases that frame her like a photograph.
“You’re late,” she says immediately.
“I know.”
“It’s nothing to be proud of, Aurelia.”
“I’m not.”
She doesn’t believe me because she knows me. She knows I stood outside this room for ten minutes to make sure I didn’t show up on time. “You seem very smug about it.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
“You don’t try to be on time, either.”
“If you know I’m always going to be here at eight-fifteen, why don’t we start breakfast at eight-fifteen instead of eight-o-five?”
“Because breakfast is at eight-o-five,” she answers simply.
An old man in a plain black suit emerges from the wallpaper to pull my chair out for me. I smile at him gratefully as I take my seat. “Thank you, Martin.”
“Mademoiselle,” he answers gruffly.
He blends back into the wall.
“I’ll try to be more punctual,” I lie.
“Don’t do that. It insults us both.”
“You’re right.”
Mother drops her newspaper onto the white linen covering the table. It barely misses her gold fork and gold spoon. Her gold rimmed plate. There’s a gilded vase between us filled with white peonies that shouldn’t be blooming, not now that it’s fall. They force them for her in the greenhouse. She has them year-round, even in the winter. She has to. It’s her signature flower. Iris’ signature flower is – you guessed it – an iris.
I don’t have a signature flower because I am a disappointment.
My mother is a beautiful woman. She’s always perfectly put together. Barely five-foot-four, she fills the room with a presence that makes my skin feel hot. Her hair is long and blond, like mine. Her skin pale as cream, her eyes like sapphires. We’re a lot alike, on the outside. From our hair to our nose; slender and turned up slightly at the end, like a ski slope. I don’t mind mine but she hates hers. She’s told me more than once that she wishes plastic surgery was still around so she could ‘fix us both’. Personally, there’s about a million things I’d pull up from the past before I’d reach for plastic surgery.
An airplane.
Can you imagine?
To fly that high, racing that fast. So fast even the birds can’t catch up with you. My heart flutters just thinking about it. We’ve managed to resurrect a few pieces of the past, but airplanes are not something we’ve been brave enough for yet. So far we’ve rediscovered mills and a few factories. We’ve harnessed the power of the sun, wind, and water coming through the dam, but even that is spotty. There are days when the lights don’t work and you have to light a candle to find your way to the toilet in the middle of the night.
My dad’s side of the family made a small fortune in electrical repair. Toasters, radios, curling irons, and, most popularly, electric cars. The four that are owned by The Crown were restored by my dad and his brother, Dylan, when they were teenagers.
Uncle Dylan died in the southern Armée before I was born. Spanish marauders broke through the wall and burned his post to the ground. Mother says I would have loved him.
“You’re both brats,” she tells me with a smile that’s surprisingly affectionate and infinitely rare.
This morning, she’s frowning. “We have too much to do today and not nearly enough time to do it. Every minute counts and you’ve wasted your fair share of them already.”
“I’m here now. What are my orders?”
“Did your father tell you to ask me that?”
He did, but he also told me not to admit it.
“What do you need?” I ask again.
Mother takes a deep breath, pulling in patience on the sweet scent of peony. “A million things, but none of them are for me. You’ll be helping Queen Marie.”
“She has an entire team. Why does she need my help?”
“Because she’s still in the country. She hasn’t done any of the preparations in the castle.”
“Seriously? I thought she got back last night.”
Mother shakes her head in disgust. “Even if she had, it wouldn’t have been soon enough. Nothing at the castle has been done and now there’s no more time to wait.”
“Is His Majesty—”
“He’s in a rage,” she answers immediately. Sternly. “Stay away from him. Promise me.”
“Gladly.”
She visibly relaxes. “It shouldn’t be our responsibility, but if Her Majesty can’t perform her duties because she’s— I don’t know what to say. I can’t understand it, but this is what we’re dealing with.”
Weakness. That’s what you can’t understand because you hate it.
“What do I need to do?” I ask.
“Everything. There are decorations that need to be hung. The menu for tonight’s dinner has to be finalized. The place settings haven’t even been chosen.”
“She’s literally done nothing?”
“She’s been gone for nearly a month,” Mother reminds me, her voice laden with annoyance.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long since I last saw the Queen but I know my mother is right. Queen Marie is such a quiet person, it’s easy to forget she’s there even when she’s sitting right next to you. She’s slowly been retreating from court life for the last couple of years. Even Gable says he doesn’t hear from her very often.
“Where do I start?” I ask.
“Decorations then the dining hall. Do the menu last. You’ll need to find someone to help you. There’s too much to do and no time to do it.”
“You can’t help?”
“I would if I could but your father has appearances all over the city today. I have to be with him or the family looks fractured. We can’t appear weak. Not today.”
I know she’s right. I don’t like it, but I understand it. The country is unstable. The Crown is obviously split with Queen Marie gone more often than not. A riot nearly broke out four months ago when King Arden refused to sign a new trade deal with Italy. Fires are being set in chateaus across the country, targeting the aristocracy closest to The Crown. We’re all on shaky ground and our family, my father especially, is the only stability the people have left.
“Bette came into town last night,” I say. “If she’s not too busy with the baby I’m sure she’d want to help.”
Mother nods approvingly. “She grew up in court. She knows how everything should be done. Just don’t ask Clare.”
I bristle, eager to lash out at her, but I rein it in just in time. Just as my tongue begins to curl around my anger. Her dislike for Clare is not a secret, but that doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.
In the years after The Strain I was incredibly lonely. I lost both of the twins in one afternoon and I was shocked to realize that they were my only friends. I didn’t get along with most of the girls at court. I lack a filter between my mouth and my brain, and that made me seem harsh, something young women don’t appreciate. People said I was stuck up. They said I was rude. Then Clare came along.
Clare is rude. She tries to be. It’s her personality and I love her for it. When her dad was elected to the Ministry under my own father, she joined me as an outcast, wearing the title with pride. She made me feel proud of it too.
“We don’t need to fit in,” Clare told me. “People who fit in suck. Just look at your mom. She’s the queen of ‘in’.”
She spoke pure truth straight into my soul.
Bette was already at court when Clare and I started hanging out. She joined us slowly, almost imperceptibly. It felt like one day we just looked up and there was Bette. We had no clue as to when she showed up but it was too late for us. We already loved her. The three of us navigated court life as a team, handling parents, boys, and the caprices of a mad king with a deftness we never could have managed on our own.
We were thick as thieves, Clare, Bette, and I.
Right up until we fell apart.
Mother glances at the clock on the wall, scowling at it as though it’s disappointed her. “If you’re going to accomplish any of it, you better get going.”
“Am I really not eating breakfast?”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
“What about Iris?”
“Your sister ate in the kitchen at seven-fifty-five.”
“Why is no one allowed to eat at an even hour in this house?”
“Why do you care?” She stands abruptly, her chair sighing as it glides over the plush carpet beneath her. “You wanted to eat at eight-fifteen.”
I stare straight ahead as she leaves. My eyes are focused on the pale petals of a rose starting to wilt. It’s the heat in this room; it’s stifling. Or maybe it’s been overhandled. Too many hands touching it, adjusting it, pushing it to perfection until it tipped over that pinnacle and has started the inevitable downhill slide into decay.
Poor thing. She never stood a chance.
“Mademoiselle?”
“I’m leaving,” I promise Martin. He’s at my chair, pulling it out from under me just as I put my weight on my feet. His timing is impeccable. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
I leave without looking him in the eye. It seems rude but it’s what he prefers. He’s been serving my mother long enough to have adapted to obscurity. The shadows are where he lives. Where he watches and listens. He’s more of a spy than a footman, gathering information for her wherever he goes.
When I walk home in the small morning light after another evening with Gable, Martin’s eyes are the ones I worry about the most.
The man sees more than God.
Once I’m alone in the hallway, I kick off my shoes. I dangle them precariously from my fingertips as I shuffle slowly, the stone delightfully cold under my feet. The halls of this old chateau are always chilly. It was built long before central heating was invented and it stands tall and proud even now, a hundred years after it fell out of fashion. That’s how Mother describes it. As though we’ve chosen not to use the old amenities instead of having them stripped from us when the world fell apart and nearly half the population died out. I suppose ‘out of fashion’ sounds a little nicer than ‘went to Hell in a handbasket’.
It’s less honest though.
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“The gold,” I say decisively. “He’ll want the gold place setting for tonight’s dinner. It’s the most—” ostentatious “—elegant.”
Bette nods. “Agreed. I think it’s what His Majesty will want.”
She stands on the other end of the long dining hall, a clipboard in her hands. On it is our master list of everything we need to get done this afternoon. The list is longer than my arm. Definitely longer than Mother let on. Queen Marie has really done nothing in the months leading up to the festival. There’s music to select, a cocktail to be designed, flowers to be arranged. We have to choose the songs that the children’s choir will sing as the sun goes down and the fireworks begin.
Oh, and we have to choose the fireworks design.
It’s noon, we’ve missed half the festival, and there’s little hope we’ll make it to the other half. I’ll probably be here in this dining hall finishing the menu minutes before people start to arrive. I’ll be dressed in these white linen slacks, a wrinkled blue blouse, my hair a golden bird’s nest on my head.
Mother will murder me.
“Let’s see if we can get the King to walk through the room and sign off on it,” I tell Bette.
“I already asked. He’s not to be disturbed.”
“Okay, but the Queen isn’t back yet.”
“Nope.”
“Then who are we—” My stomach drops. “No.”
Bette smiles. “Yes.”
“What about the horticulturist? Can we get him in here to say yes to this place setting?”
“You know who we have to ask.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to.”
“Why can’t you ask him?”
Her smile widens. “Because I don’t want to.”
I laugh, rolling my shoulders back until I’m standing tall. Proud. Nervous as a sinner in church.
“Bastian responds well to you,” she says encouragingly.
I snort. “He doesn’t respond well to anyone.”
“He responds best to you.”
“That’s like saying a crocodile will only eat my nose, not my whole face.”
“Still. It’s better than losing your entire face.”
I nod reluctantly to the maid waiting by the door to the dining hall. She’s probably twenty, three years older than me, but I can see her discomfort when I speak to her. It’s my last name. It gives me a power age can’t compete with. “Find Prince Bastian, please. We need his approval on the place setting.” She moves to open the door. “But don’t tell him that!” She halts, her hand on the glimmering gold knob. “Tell him he’s needed urgently. But not for something like this. He’ll hate that.” Her face contorts with worry. “Tell him it’s urgent. But not that it’s for me. He’ll stall if he knows it’s me waiting, just to spite me. Make it something important but not dire.”
