Helios Crowns His Mistress

by Michelle Smart

  Forgive me.

  * * *

  ‘You look troubled, Helios,’ his grandfather said, in the wheezing voice Helios hated so much.

  They were playing chess, his grandfather’s favourite game. The King was in his wheelchair, an oxygen tank to his right, a nurse set back a little to his left.

  ‘I’m just tired.’ Helios moved a pawn two spaces forward, unable to stop his stomach curdling with the fear that this might be the last game they played together.

  ‘How are the wedding preparations going?’

  ‘Well.’

  Not that he was having anything to do with them. The palace staff were more than capable of handling it without his input. And without Catalina, who seemingly had as much interest in the preparations as he had. None at all.

  His grandfather placed the oxygen mask on his face for a minute, before indicating for the nurse to take it off.

  ‘I remember my own wedding day well.’ The misty eyes grew mistier. ‘Your grandmother looked like an angel sent from heaven.’ Then the old eyes sharpened. ‘Your mother looked beautiful on her wedding day too. It is my eternal sorrow that your father couldn’t see her beauty. Your mother was beautiful, inside and out.’

  Helios’s spine stiffened. His parents’ marriage was a subject they rarely touched upon other than in the most generic terms.

  ‘The biggest regret of my life—and your grandmother’s, rest her soul—was that your father couldn’t choose his own wife. Would it have made a difference if he’d been able to choose?’ He raised a weak, bony shoulder. ‘We will never know. Despite our best efforts he was a vain and cruel man. He thrived on power. Your mother didn’t stand a chance.’

  He moved his castle forward with a quivering, gnarled finger.

  ‘We pushed through the changes in law that would allow you and your heirs to select your own spouses in the hope that your parents’ marriage would never be repeated.’ His voice weakening with each word he said, the King turned his gaze to Helios again. ‘However important duty is, marriage to someone you feel no affection for can only bring misery. And for ever is a long time to be miserable.’

  The nurse, attuned to his weakening, placed the oxygen mask back over his face.

  Helios waited for him to inhale as much as he needed, all the time his mind was reeling over what it was, exactly, that his grandfather was trying to tell him. Was it a reproach that he wasn’t spending enough time with Catalina and that his indifference to her was showing?

  But how could he feel anything but indifference when his head was still consumed with thoughts of Amy? She’d left the palace a week ago but she was still everywhere.

  He moved his knight, then opened his mouth to pose the question, only to find his grandfather’s head had lolled to one side and he’d dozed off mid-game and mid-conversation.

  He looked at the nurse, who raised her shoulders sympathetically. Helios exhaled and gazed at his sleeping grandfather, a huge wave of love washing through him.

  Whatever his grandfather had tried to tell him, it could wait.

  ‘I’ll put him to bed tonight,’ he told the nurse, whose eyes immediately widened in fright.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he assured her with a wry smile. ‘I know what I’m doing. You can supervise if you want.’

  Half an hour later the King was in his bed, his medication having been given and the oxygen mask attached to his face. His gentle snores were strangely calming.

  Helios placed a kiss to his grandfather’s forehead. ‘I love you,’ he said, before leaving him to sleep.

  * * *

  Movement beside her woke Amy from the light doze she’d fallen into. Since returning to England a week ago she’d slept a lot. She liked sleeping. It was the perfect route to forgetting. It was waking that was the problem.

  Her mum handed her a cup of tea and sat in the deckchair next to her.

  When she’d returned to England she’d given the taxi driver directions to her childhood home rather than the flat she shared in central London. Sometimes a girl just needed her mum. Her real mum. The woman who’d loved and raised her since she’d barely been able to open her eyes.

  And her mum had been overjoyed to see her.

  Amy’s last lingering doubts had been well and truly banished.

  A late-night confession between them had culminated with the admission that her mum had been terrified that Amy would forge a relationship with Neysa.

  ‘Never,’ Amy had said with a firm shake of her head. ‘You’re my mum. Not her.’

  ‘Good.’ Ferocity had suddenly flashed in her mum’s usually calm eyes. ‘Because you’re my daughter. Not hers.’

  ‘Then why did you encourage me to learn about my roots?’ she’d asked, bewildered.

  ‘We all need to know where we come from. And I was scared that if I discouraged it you would do it in secret and one day you’d be gone and I would lose you.’

  ‘You will never lose me.’

  The tears had flowed easily that night.

  Now they sat in companionable silence in the English sun, the only sound the chirruping of fledgling birds in the garden’s thick hedges. It was a quintessentially British beautiful late-spring day.

  ‘Are you ready to talk now?’ her mum asked.

  A lump forming in her throat, Amy shook her head. For all their late-night talks, she hadn’t been able to bring up the subject of Helios.

  To even think of him was too painful.

  She’d had only one piece of correspondence from him since she’d left—a text message that said: I do.

  He forgave her for running away.

  Judging by his silence since, he’d accepted it too. She had no right to feel hurt that he’d made no further attempt to contact her.

  ‘What’s that you keep fingering around your neck?’

  Wordlessly, Amy leaned forward to show her the garnet necklace.

  Her mum took it between her fingers and smiled. ‘It’s lovely.’

  Amy couldn’t find the words to answer. When her mum let the necklace go Amy clasped it in her own hand and held it close.

  ‘Broken hearts do mend,’ her mum said softly.

  Amy gave a ragged nod and swallowed, terrified of crying again. ‘It hurts,’ she choked out.

  Her mum took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Do you know what to do when life gives you lemons?’

  ‘Make lemonade?’

  ‘No. You throw them back and get yourself an orange.’

  Amy spluttered, laughing. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what that means.’

  ‘Neither do I! It was something my mother used to say when I was a child.’

  Still holding on tightly to each other’s hands, they settled back in their deckchairs, sunglasses on, and basked in the sun.

  After a while, her mum spoke again. ‘I think what my mother was trying to say is that, whatever life throws at you, there are always choices and options other than the obvious ones. When your father first brought you home the obvious solution for me would have been to throw him out, and you with him. That would have been me making lemonade. But when I looked at you all I saw was an innocent, helpless newborn baby—a sister to the child I already had and a sister to the child I carried in my belly. So I chose to get myself an orange instead. I kept you—you were my orange. And I have never regretted it. My only regret is that I never carried you in my womb like I did your brothers.’

  She took her sunglasses off and smiled the warm, motherly smile Amy loved so much.

  ‘This man who’s broken your heart...is he a good man?’

  ‘He’s the best,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is he worth the pain?’

  She jerked a nod.

  ‘Then you have to decide whether you’re going to make lemonade or find an orange. Are you going to wallow in your pain or turn it into something constructive?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘You start by accepting the pain for what it is but refusing to let it define you.�
��

  Amy closed her eyes. If anyone knew how to cope with pain it was her mum. She’d handled a mountain of it and had never let it define her.

  Compared to her mum she had nothing to complain about. Her mum had been innocent. She, Amy, had brought her misery upon herself.

  * * *

  Helios stood at the door to his grandfather’s apartments and braced himself for the medicinal odour that would attack his senses when he stepped over the threshold.

  Inside, all was quiet.

  Stepping through to what had once been the King’s bedroom and now resembled a hospital ward, he found his grandfather sleeping in his adjustable medical bed, with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

  At his side sat Helios’s brothers. A nurse read unobtrusively in the corner.

  ‘Any change?’ he asked quietly. He’d only left the room for an hour, but the speed of his grandfather’s deterioration over the past couple of days had been frightening. They all knew it wouldn’t be long now.

  Talos shook his head.

  Taking his place on the other side of the bed from his brothers, Helios rolled his shoulders. Every part of his body felt stiff.

  Theseus was holding their grandfather’s right hand. Leaning forward, Helios took the left one, assuming the same position his grandfather had taken when his Queen had lain in an identical bed in the adjoining room, the life leaching out of her.

  After a few long, long minutes their grandfather’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Water...’ he croaked.

  With Helios and Theseus working together from separate sides of the bed to raise him, Talos brought a glass to his mouth and placed the straw between his lips.

  When he’d settled back the King looked at his three grandsons, his stare lingering on each of them in turn, emotion ringing the rapidly dulling eyes.

  The pauses between each of his inhalations grew. Then the corners of his lips twitched as if in a smile and his eyes closed for the last time.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AMY SAW THE announcement on the morning news.

  ‘A statement from the palace said, “His Majesty King Astraeus the Fourth of Agon passed away peacefully in his sleep last night. His three grandsons were at his side.”’

  There then followed some speculation by the presenters and royal correspondents about what this meant for the island nation.

  Without warning a picture of Helios and Catalina flashed onto the screen. It was an unofficial shot taken at the Gala. And then there was an off-screen voice saying, ‘It is believed the heir to the throne will marry the Princess before taking the crown.’

  Amy switched off the television, grabbed a pillow and cuddled into it, her head pounding.

  Helios’s grandfather, the King, had died.

  She’d known it was coming, but still it hit her like a blow. She’d created his exhibition. During those happy months of curating that tribute to his life and the ancestors closest to him she’d felt as if she’d got to know him. Somehow she’d fooled herself into believing he was immortal. He had been a proud, dutiful man and she’d been privileged to meet him.

  And then she thought of his eldest grandson, who had revered him.

  Her phone lay on the floor beside her and she stared at it, wishing with all her heart that she could call Helios.

  Would he even want to hear her condolences? The condolences of the woman who had sneaked out of the palace while he was dining with potential investors, supporting the island he loved?

  She’d told him she would stay.

  He’d forgiven her lie, but he had Catalina now. Without Amy’s presence there, distracting him, he would turn to the Princess for comfort. Just as he should. Maybe grief would bring them together properly.

  And as she prayed for a happy ending for her Prince and his Princess, hot tears spilled out of her eyes. She brought her knees to her chest and cried her broken heart out for the happy ending that would never be hers.

  * * *

  The funeral, a full state affair, was a sombre occasion.

  People lined the streets in tens of thousands, all there to bow their heads in silence and pay their respects to the man who had served them with such dedication for fifty years.

  The wake was an entirely different matter.

  Out on the streets the atmosphere changed markedly. Television coverage showed military re-enactments from throughout the ages, even children dressed in loincloths and armed with plastic tridents. Barbecues lit up Agon’s famous beaches, music played on every corner and there was food, drink and dancing everywhere in abundance.

  Agon was putting on a show in the only way it knew how.

  In the blue stateroom of the palace solemnity had given way to merriness too. The King was with his Queen. His suffering was over. His country and his family had laid him to rest and now they could celebrate his life.

  For Helios, the occasion brought no joy. He accepted that his grandfather had moved on to a better place, but the hole in his heart felt so great he didn’t know how it would ever heal.

  To know he would never talk to him again, dine with him, play chess... All the things he’d taken for granted were all gone. The man he’d worshipped, a man ten times the man his own father had been, was gone.

  Helios watched his brothers, stuck like glue to the sides of their respective fiancées, and smiled for them. Their parents’ marriage had been the worst template a child could have asked for. That his brothers were heading into marriages that would be more like their grandparents’ gave him much hope. They would be happy.

  He was under no illusions that he would follow suit.

  Although he had seen little of her since his grandfather’s death, Catalina had been at his side throughout the funeral service, a calm presence who had known exactly what to say in all the right moments.

  But, however perfect she might be, he knew that fifty years of marriage wouldn’t bring them the bond Talos and Theseus shared with their fiancées.

  That last smile his grandfather had given them was a white shadow in Helios’s mind. It gave him comfort. His grandfather had welcomed death. He’d left the world knowing his grandsons—all of them—would take care of his beloved island, freeing him to move on to his beloved Rhea.

  His three grandsons.

  Three boys raised to be princes.

  Catalina came to stand by him. He stared down at her and met her thoughtful gaze.

  ‘Marriage to someone you feel no affection for can only bring misery.’

  Those were the words his grandfather had said the last time they’d spoken lucidly together. And in that moment he knew those words hadn’t been a reproach. They’d been a warning from a man who knew how powerful love could be and had witnessed the destructive nature of his son’s contempt for the wife he didn’t love.

  And in that instant everything became clear.

  He couldn’t marry Catalina.

  If he’d never met Amy everything would be different. He would be different.

  If he’d never met Amy he would be marrying Catalina with no expectations or knowledge of how things might be. He would be King. She would be Queen. Their only bond would be of duty. He wouldn’t know what it felt like to love or be loved.

  Love.

  The one word he’d never expected to apply to himself other than in an abstract form. Familial love he’d felt and believed in, but romantic love...? That was not something he’d ever been able to hope for, so not something he had ever allowed himself to think about. And, if he was being honest with himself, it was something he’d hidden away from. The scars of his parents’ marriage ran so deep that what he’d convinced himself was rational acceptance of his future union was in fact a mask to hide the real truth—that love in all its forms was the most terrifying emotion of all.

  But also the most wonderful.

  Because, Theos, he loved Amy. With everything he had.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t get used to walking into the museum and not seeing her there. He couldn’t get
used to being in his apartment and seeing the connecting door, knowing she wasn’t at the end of the passageway.

  Not a second of his waking day was spent without him wondering where she was and what she was doing.

  After his grandfather’s death had been announced he’d kept staring at his phone, willing it to ring. Knowing it wouldn’t. Knowing she was right not to call him.

  But his intellectual acceptance that she was gone and that it was all for the best wasn’t something his heart had any intention of agreeing with.

  He’d long trusted Amy with his confidences. Now he understood that he’d also trusted her with his heart, and that a relationship with any other woman was doomed to failure because he belonged to Amy. All of him.

  When the day of his own death came the last thing his conscious mind would see would be her face.

  Three weeks without her.

  The time had dragged like a decade.

  How could he think straight without her?

  How could he breathe without her when she was as necessary to him as air?

  He loved her.

  He cast his eyes around the room until he found Theseus, deep in conversation with his fiancée, Jo, and a Swedish politician the three Princes had been at school with. Theseus was settled. He had a child. His marriage would be taking place in a week.

  Helios took a deep breath. Before he spoke to his brother there was someone else who needed to be spoken to first.

  He looked at her, still by his side, the silence between them stark.

  ‘Catalina...’

  ‘We need to talk, don’t we?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  Weaving their way through the crowd, they walked through a corridor, and then another, and then stepped out into the palace gardens.

  ‘Catalina, I’m sorry but I can’t marry you.’

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

  ‘I’ve been grossly unfair to you. I’m not...’ It was his turn to take a breath. ‘I’m in love with someone else.’

  She bowed her head and eventually met his gaze. ‘Thank you for finally being honest with me—and with yourself.’

  ‘I never meant to hurt you.’