All That Glows

Seventeen

Every word of his new speech is memorized. It rolls off of his tongue, sometimes even in his sleep. But he keeps reading it. Over and over. I’m always close. Listening as the words bore into me, weaving and slow like a river carving through bedrock. I too, know them by heart.

“Don’t you think you’ve studied enough?” I ask, looking at the paper in his hands. There are holes, minuscule tears, where the speech has been folded too many times.

“I don’t want to mess it up.” His eyes dart across the neat type, manic.

I reach for the sheet. Its paper is supple and worn, almost leatherlike. I can feel it about to tear under my fingertips. “You won’t.”

“How do you know that?” Richard holds his end of the paper with equal strength.

“It’s not the words that are the problem,” I say, and give the paper a sharp tug. Richard doesn’t yield. It seems that neither of us is letting go.

He looks across the crowd of letters and blank white at me, mouth tight with things unsaid. So many times he’s stared at me like this, since the poolroom. It’s a gaze that makes me want to put up the veiling spell, become invisible to his eyes.

There’s a shiver and buzz somewhere in the prince’s clothing. Mobile phone. The bubble of burn in my throat tells me this before Richard fishes it out of his pocket. I let go of the paper, edge far enough away so the nausea isn’t so sharp.

“Sorry,” Richard says when he realizes what the phone has done. He holds it far in the opposite direction. With the screen facing me I can make out a wan, pixilated version of Edmund.

Richard stares at the picture as it shudders, electric in his palm. It’s not hard to guess what the call is for. Past the yawning windows of the study, the sun beginning its long dive into darkness. The time when pubs spring to life.

His thumb hovers, then lands decidedly on the crimson button. The screen goes black.

“No more of that then?” I ask, watching carefully as Richard shoves the machine back into his pocket.

“He’s a prat. Always has been. Just took you for me to realize how much of one he was.”

“Really?”

“Well, maybe I always knew. But it’s not the easiest thing making friends when you’re born with a pedigree. When I first went to school, it seemed like I had heaps of pals. But so many of them were just looking for a way in. Muckraking stuff for the tabloids. Every single time. Eventually you just give up looking for real connections . . . because just when you think you’ve made one, a new story appears in the front of The Sun and you get hurt. It’s easier not to care. To get pissed in the corner of a pub,” he echoes his father’s words. “The only person I could ever trust in my life was my sister.”

I try and imagine what life would be like without Breena. Without anyone to talk to or trust. Being the only island in a sea of your own kind. How lonely the waters are when you’re surrounded by them, trapped.

“But now I have you.”

“You trust me?” I ask.

“I used to have a nanny, her name was Louisa. Back when I was very young. I was in her charge, she was supposed to watch every single thing I did. Louisa was usually very good at her job—kept me out of lots of trouble. But there were a few times when she failed.” He holds out his left thumb, where a pearly scar arches just over the knuckle. Then he pulls up the leg of his jeans to show a shiny patch of old hurt on his shin. “The first one was a little thing. I was trying to open a can of soda and sliced up my finger. I think Louisa was even more upset than I was. She even started crying. Begged me not to tell Mum and Dad about it because she’d lose her job. I still don’t think they know about it.”

“What about the other one?” I look at the mess of scar on his leg, hairless and raised. The remains of awful pain.

“After the soda can, Louisa watched me like a hawk. I was getting older, nine, and I started really hating it. Mum was having a garden party one night and she let us kids come. I managed to run away from Louisa and get off on my own. It was great fun for a while, until the dog came.” Richard gives the scar a slight prod. “Mum used to have a sheepdog. A big thing, all silver and white. Something got into it that night. Maybe it thought I was about to kick it. I don’t know. . . . Whatever happened, it got hold of my leg and didn’t want to let go. It was bad.”

“What happened?”

“I had fifteen stitches. Louisa got fired and then she went to the media and did some huge tell-all. I never saw her after that.”

“That’s . . .” I try and think of what to say. “Not a happy story.”

“You’re not like Louisa, Embers. You’ve saved me every time.” Richard lets his trouser leg drop. “That’s why I trust you.”

“How do I look?” Richard stands in front of the mirror again, tall and ramrod straight, like all those portraits of his predecessors.

I take in the picture of him, immaculate in his Turnbull & Asser suit. “Very mature. Very pre-kingly.”

“That’s what I’m going for.” He tugs down the front of his suit, fixing it just so on his shoulders. His stare slips to the door, eyes flooding with apprehension.

“You’re not thinking of running, are you?”

“I can’t.” He shakes his head, his hair spilling over the edges of his face. “The crown’s coming to me whether I want it or not. I’ve always known that—from the first day I went to Wetherby, and the other children treated me differently.” He takes my hand. His palm feels so warm and right in mine. Reminding us both of the impossibilities, the worlds between us. “Stay close please. I need you close.”

“I’ll be with you the whole time. Someone has to block you from the exits,” I tease.

“Ha-ha!” His fingers squeeze my hand. “The least you can do is give me a good-luck kiss.”

The memory of blood on his lips and my awful, unlifting guilt flash back through my mind. I know that if I kiss him, if I allow myself to get caught up in the tenderness of his touch, the consequences could be even worse.

“Just one kiss,” Richard urges. “For me.”

“What . . . what if I get blood on your nice suit?” It’s a stupid defense. The only one I can fumble up in such short, breathless seconds.

“So be it,” he whispers, and bends down.

It’s so easy to lose myself in the feel of him. His tongue, just barely grazes the edge of my lips. My hands slide up around his neck, anchor in his shaggy hair, pull him closer. With a single finger he traces the ridged pathway of my spine all the way down to the small of my back. The touch discovers shudders I cannot control.

It’s like being in another universe, a time apart. Nothing else in the world matters but how he’s touching me, making me move.

Just as it’s Richard who begins the kiss, so he ends it. He pulls away and I gasp, fighting the intense need to bring him back to me. But I feel traces of magic stirring like a lioness at a zoo, pacing just behind the glass, waiting for it to shatter. This feeling is enough to bind me back, to keep me from consuming him whole.

“There.” He smiles down at his spotless dress shirt. “Completely blood free.”

I try to mirror his smile, but the thought of what almost, what would’ve happened if Richard hadn’t pulled away, corrodes my thoughts. I wouldn’t have stopped. I couldn’t do what Richard did.

“Right. Well, here goes.” He squeezes my hand again and pulls us toward the door.

The pressroom we enter is brimming with journalists and machines. Digital cameras, bright, novalike flashes, the large bulging lenses of video cameras. There are too many of them. Nausea flares the lining of my gut with near-crippling pain. I suck in a sharp staccato of breath and follow Richard up to the podium.

The prince wears his charming, for-press smile, the one no onlooker (particularly female) is able to resist. He waves to the room of scrutinizing cameras and jotting pens as he settles at the podium. I stand to the side, invisible.

“There’s a well-known saying: better late than never. I believe it serves me well in this scenario.”

A faint echo of laughter rounds the room. The shoulders of the reporters in the front row begin to relax. Mine are the opposite, tense and bursting as I look at Richard. What he’s saying wasn’t on the paper. It’s not some contrived speech written by people on the opposite side of London. These words are his own.

“Most, if not all of you, know of my rather infamous no-show on our last scheduled meeting. I’m here today to officially apologize for my infraction. The truth is, if I must be blunt, I wasn’t ready. To be in the public eye—to have your every move watched and judged—is trying even in the best of times. But in the midst of grief and loss it’s unbearable. What happened in Hyde Park is an example of that. I ran because I wasn’t ready to face the world. I wasn’t ready to talk about my father’s death, but the cameras found me anyway.”

A few of the photographers shift their weight. I wonder if they’d been present for Richard’s escape to Hyde Park.

“All I needed was time and support. I needed to find who I was in the face of all this.”

Cameras flash, blindly sickening as they spot my vision. I look at Richard instead. He stares straight into the bursts of light without flinching.

“I’m ready now.”