The Never King, page 7
part #1 of Lost Lands Series
“I’ve never seen it.”
A door slams at the front of the room. Footsteps march loudly across the floor.
“If you had to guess…” Bastian prods.
I roll my eyes into the dark. “I know as much about it as you, Mon—”
“Uh-oh,” he scolds lightly. He leans in close, the rough material of his tuxedo brushing my bare shoulder. It sends an electric shiver down my spine. “Not Monseigneur.”
“Dauphin then.”
“No.”
“Your Majesty.”
“That’s worse.”
“I’m out of options,” I practically hiss, eager to end this conversation. We’re being rude.
“Bast,” he says deeply.
I swallow hard, my heart a stone in my throat. “No.”
“Why not, Ria?”
“Don’t.” I sit up straight, pulling my shoulder away from his. “Please, don’t.”
Bastian is quiet. Still. I have no idea what he’s feeling or thinking, but my stomach is churning. This is what Bastian and I do. We argue, we banter, we fall into old patterns that used to be our daily lives when we were kids and we didn’t know any better. When I was naïve and he wasn’t an animal and we were the best of friends. It hurts every time it happens, and it happens every time we speak. I can hardly stand it.
An actor begins his monologue. His voice is booming, echoing off the empty walls, drowning out my thoughts. My frustration.
Bastian raises his glass. I can hear the ice in his whiskey jingle like a bell as he drains it in one gulp, shaking it violently to signal the usher. The man already has a fresh drink ready for him. Bastian waits for nothing in this world.
The play is slow to get going. There’s a lot of exposition, so much set up that I start to get tired. I yawn quietly into the back of my hand, not willing to offend the actors, but still. Come on. We have to be over ten minutes in and it’s only slightly more fun than an evening with my mother.
Bastian shifts in his seat, grunting uncomfortably.
Clare snores quietly, fast asleep.
I sigh, no longer sure I should be here tonight. It’s not what it was supposed to be.
“Ria,” Bastian whispers.
“What?”
“Are you having fun yet?”
“No,” I admit reluctantly.
“Why do you like coming to this?”
“I don’t know if I do anymore.”
“I want to leave.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because you won’t.”
My stomach flutters. Butterflies and a soft breeze that raises the hair on my arm. “You’re staying for me?”
“Because of you,” he clarifies. “I have orders to stick close to you. For safety.”
“Yours, not mine, I assume.”
“Are you a son of The Crown?” he asks by way of answer.
It makes sense now – why he’s here. He’s using me as armor against his enemies. Whoever is setting the fires is most likely against The Crown, probably the entire Aristocracy, but even though we Villette’s are incredibly high ranking at court, my father is the Prime Minister. He’s the voice of the people, chosen by the people, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that I want his job someday. I want to be the first female PM of France, following in his well-defined footsteps, and that makes me valuable to revolutionaries.
I’m a symbol of progress and freedom.
Bastian is a symbol of tradition and tyranny.
Put us in the same room, though, and you can’t destroy one without the other. That’s what Bastian is banking on tonight. This theater will not burn with both of us inside.
“Was that your father’s idea?” I ask.
“The Queen’s, actually.”
“That’s surprisingly cunning of her.”
“That’s surprisingly insulting of you.”
I close my eyes, irritated with myself and my tongue. “You’re right. It was. I’m sorry.”
He makes a short, animalistic sound. “I hate that you do that.”
“So does Mother. She says I have a vicious tongue.”
“I meant apologizing. Your spine used to be stronger than that.”
I bristle. “You’re Dauphin. I offended you. What do you expect from me?”
“I expect you to be you. Not your mother’s obedient little doll.”
“I am not her doll.”
“You’re soft as one.”
I want to hit him. I want to stand up, bust his lip, and ask him how soft I am then, but I can’t. I would have without hesitation when we were kids because back then I thought we were equals, but we weren’t. We aren’t. Bastian will be King someday and I’ll always be the Duchess of a small estate poised and ready to destroy him if he gets out of hand. And he will, because it’s in his nature. I can see it in the excess of women, parties, and alcohol he partakes in almost constantly.
Bastian and I are destined to go to war someday. That’s why boundaries are so important, whether he likes it or not.
“As you say, Monseigneur,” I reply coldly.
He laughs at me. “You’re so predictable. I knew if I made you angry you’d hide behind propriety.”
“You’re Dauphin,” I remind him again. “What do you want me to say?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I don’t have that kind of freedom with you.”
“Try it. See how it feels to come off leash.”
A door slams, making me jump.
Mr. Kipp is locked inside the house from hell. A candle is lit in a distant corner of the room. The wind blows in off the river, icy and wicked, making the weak flame dance precariously. Mr. Kipp’s breath can be heard behind the candle as it levitates through the theater. I track the sound closely with my ears, my eyes glued on the flickering flame.
“Come on, Villette,” Bastian goads me quietly.
The actor shouts. I can’t understand him over the blood rushing in my ears.
The back of Bastian’s hand brushes mine. “She’s caged you your whole life.”
The beating of a rocking chair thumps like a heart inside the room.
“You’d feel better if you let loose,” he promises.
There’s a crash somewhere to my left. The actor screams.
Bastian’s nose brushes my cheek. His lips hover over my ear. “You’d feel powerful.”
I feel breathless. “Stop.”
“You’d feel like you again.” He kisses the skin just below my ear, soft and wet.
I slip into cardiac arrest.
Explosions erupt in the distance. A firecracker at the festival.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
I scream in terror.
Clare jerks awake, reaching for me. “Are you okay?”
I rip my hand away from Bastian’s. It feels hot, like he burned me.
“She’s fine,” he answers, his voice suddenly lazy. “She’s just scared.”
chapitre dix-neuf
A siren screams in the distance.
It takes me a second to process. Is it part of the play? Is it real?
A man’s voice is gruff above my head. “We have to go, Your Majesty. Now.”
It’s Jacquard. Bastian’s right hand and bodyguard.
This is real.
I reach wildly for Clare, accidently hitting her in the face. She curses loudly but her voice is drowned out by the panic erupting around us.
“What does it mean?” a woman gasps.
“What do we do?!” people shout.
“Where do we go?!”
“It’s the dam! It’s the alarm for the dam!”
Bastian grabs my hand, pulling me roughly from my chair.
“Wait!” I shout.
“Aurelia!” Clare cries.
“Clare! Come this way!” I try to pull my hand out of Bastian’s grip but he’s too strong. He’s dragging me behind him like I weigh nothing. “Let me go!”
“There’s no time to argue,” he answers angrily.
“Clare!”
“Aurelia?!”
She’s not following. Her voice fades into the chaos as I’m pulled out into the moonlight.
“Bastian! Stop!” I scream.
He doesn’t stop.
Outside, the night is growling. I feel like there’s a lion roaring in my ears. Part of it has to be this wind. It pushes at me, knocking me into Bastian with a force that surprises me.
“Is it a storm?!” I shout, my eyes rising to the empty sky. Clouds ride low overhead like it’s about to rain. It feels cold enough to snow. “Would they use the sirens for—”
“Dauphin!”
Bastian yanks me toward the river, toward Captain Jacquard. He’s older and wrinkled, his skin worn in a rugged kind of way. A thin scar runs over his right eyebrow, up into his salt and pepper hair. He’s at the dock at edge of the river where a small motorboat is tied off at the end.
To the east, a wall of water is descending on us.
The ghostly form of Death rides down the valley, his cloak opened wide and rippling darkly.
“It’s a flood,” I mutter.
“We’ll never make it,” Bastian breathes grimly.
It’s in that moment, in the complete absence of his arrogance, I know I’m going to die.
I run for the boat with all the strength in my legs. My satin shoes fly off my feet but I keep on running, my toes digging into the cold, wet earth. Bastian is there next to me. He outruns me, his shoes thundering over the dock like cannon fire. He grabs frantically at ropes. Jacquard jumps inside the boat to get the motor going.
“Get in!” Bastian shouts at me. His face is contorted with panic, his eyes squinted against the spray of water that’s raining sideways. A precursor to our watery end.
The engine roars to life.
I leap inside. My feet slip, my body slamming against the hull. I imagine it hurt but I can’t feel it. I can’t feel or see or think of anything but the wave that’s chasing us down.
Bastian jumps inside after me. He shoves us away from the dock. The current takes us far, the engine farther. For a second I think we might actually be okay. I think we have a chance.
I’m wrong.
“Brace yourselves!” Jacquard shouts.
I close my eyes.
I hold my breath.
Blackness.
Silence.
Agony.
chapitre vingt
When I was a little girl watching Gable bleed out, I wondered what death was like. It looked like an animal eating him alive. Slowly. Patiently. Death is rarely in a rush. He is not swift or surprising. He is not a thief or a demon hidden in the shadows. Death is a bold thing. He is loud. He is brash.
He is sadistic as sin itself.
My body is entrenched in mud, my sodden dress pushing down on me like the weight of the world. It’s so heavy it almost hurts, or maybe that’s just how my body is now; in pain. I have cuts and bruises and maybe a broken bone somewhere. I really can’t tell. I’m terrified to move and the weight of my dress is telling me not to bother. I doubt I have the strength to lift the fabric more than an inch before passing out again.
I feel like Death drug me to the bottom of the ocean, beat me mercilessly, and tossed me back on land to see if I could survive it.
A hand touches my head tenderly. Someone is pulling my eyelid open, even as I fight it. I don’t want to open my eyes. My head is screaming, my brain on fire inside my skull. It feels like last Christmas when Clare and I snuck into her dad’s study and drank an entire bottle of wine between the two of us. It’s the only time I broke the family’s One Glass Rule and I’ll never forget it. I threw up for a full day after. My head felt like it would explode every time I moved.
That’s what this is like. Pure misery.
“She’s alive,” Bastian says roughly. His voice is hoarse like he’s coming down with something. I worry that he’s getting sick; a ridiculous thought considering what we just went through.
“Good,” Jacquard says. “We have to start moving. We can’t stay here like this.”
“We’ll leave as soon as she’s ready.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
“We aren’t going to leave her,” Bastian snarls.
“I wasn’t suggesting we would.”
The fire in my brain is beginning to die down. It’s made of smoldering ash that aches almost unbearably, but the smoke is clearing.
“My head hurts,” I croak.
Bastian takes my hand. His fingers are icy cold. “Does anything else?”
“Everything.”
Captain Jacquard touches my shoulder gently. “Mademoiselle Villette, I need you to tell me what hurts. Can you squeeze Monseigneur’s hand? As hard as you can.”
I give it everything I have.
Bastian nods to Jacquard. “She’s weak but I can feel it.”
Jacquard goes on to check my neck and legs, looking for serious injuries. He’s worried when I tell him I can’t lift my legs but once he moves my heavy, wet skirt out of the way, I can lift them just fine.
Bastian stays at my side through the examination, my hand held loosely in his. His hair is spiked with water. It looks inky black under the pale moonlight. He’s looking down at me with this expression… I don’t know what it is. It looks annoyed but I don’t think it’s with me. He also looks drunk, his eyelids hanging low. His body sways slightly, left and right.
When Jacquard is done with me, he pats my knee with satisfaction. “Nothing is broken. No spinal injuries.”
“So she can walk?” Bastian asks.
“Her shoes are gone.”
“They were probably useless anyway.”
“Still. She’ll be barefoot. We’ll have to do something about that eventually.”
“But not right now.” Bastian stands, pulling me up slowly.
I wobble on the loose stones of the river’s edge. He grips my elbow to steady me before I can fall back into the rushing current. I swear I didn’t hear it before but now that I see it, it’s screaming in my ears. My body aches to get away from it.
“Are you dizzy?” Jacquard asks.
If I say yes, he’ll make me sit. I’ll have to stay here with the river.
“No,” I lie.
Bastian looks unhappy. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.
My voice is shaking. Bastian can feel my hands trembling against his but he’s decent enough not to say anything about it.
I wish I was stronger. I wish I was tough like him and Jacquard but I’m cold and afraid, shaken deeper than I ever have been in my life. It’s only just now dawning on me as I stand here in the muck and chaos of the flood that I nearly died. I should be dead.
Others definitely will be. So many of them.
Where is Clare?
Where is Gable?
Where is my family?
“The others at the theater,” I say, my voice growing frantic. My heart is a hummingbird. “Did they make it?”
“Breathe,” Bastian tells me.
“It’s the adrenaline.” Jacquard explains. “She’s shaky.”
“We all are but we can’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking,” I insist, shaking him off.
He takes an angry step back. “Stop lying.”
“Where are we? What side of the border? Do you know?” I ask Jacquard.
His eyes are apologetic. “We passed the wall, Mademoiselle. We’re outside of France.”
“We’re in Brûlé,” Bastian clarifies coldly.
I look at him – at his face that’s as famous as the moon. At Jacquard in the golden uniform of the Royal Guard. At my ring, my name, that could save me if I was alone, but with them… Nothing in this world could save me from the hate the Brûlén feel toward The Crown. They’d do anything to put a stop to it. To Bastian and his mad father.
They’d even kill a Villette if they had to.
“We have to go,” I whisper.
Bastian nods knowingly. “We’ve already been here too long.”
Our options are few. There’s a field along the river and a forest on the other side of that. There’s good coverage to hide inside but we run the risk of getting turned around. The river, on the other hand, is more exposed but it will lead us straight into France. There’s a French fort on the wall bordering the country. Once we’re there, we’re safe. They’ll feed us, give us clothes, and get us back to Loire immediately. Assuming the fort is still there.
The flood will have washed out everything in its path. Even in the pale moonlight, we can see debris floating by on the current. I haven’t seen any bodies yet, but we’ll get there. That’s my argument against the river – I don’t want to look Death in the face for a second time tonight. Both Bastian and Jacquard are against the forest for a myriad of reasons, so it really doesn’t matter what I want. I’m outvoted immediately.
We march for what feels like hours, Jacquard ahead of us like a scout. Bastian and I walk together, silent and sloppy. I’m suffering a head wound and he’s drunk out of his mind. Even a near death experience can’t sober someone instantly, and he had five whiskeys tonight. At least. He’s going to be drunk for a while.
Pretty soon, the shock wears off and the fear really sets in for me. I don’t want to talk because I don’t want to be found by the Brûlén. They’ll recognize Bastian immediately and then we’re all dead. Also, I don’t want Bastian to hear how terrified I am. I can’t tell either of them how bad my head hurts or how loud my ears are ringing. How bright the moon is. How cryptically dark the woods feel, watching me from a distance.
“There are bears,” I whisper to myself.
“What’dya say?” Bastian slurs.
“Wolves. And bears.”
“Where?”
“Over there.”
He squints into the shadows. “I don’t see it. Jacquard,” he calls softly.
The older man stops. “What?”
“Villette saw an animal.”
No, I didn’t.
Bastian grabs my arm. “Where are you going?”
“Quit grabbing at me,” I snap.
“Quit tryin’ta wander off.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I think it’s her head,” he says, but not to me. “She doesn’t make sense. And she’s drifting when she walks. I had to stop her from falling over a hundred times already.”
