by Holly Rayner
The words sounded bitter coming out of his mouth, and he wished they hadn’t. But Kehlan wasn’t sure why she was guiding the conversation down this path so directly. It was a disagreement that they’d let sit in a sort of passive stalemate for years now, with just side comments and gentle mentions of the conflict going gently touched on and then left behind. Why would she upset that balance now?
When Kehlan had first told his parents that he wanted to be a doctor, they had laughed. They had assumed that it was something so patently ridiculous that it wouldn’t last long, and they’d told him as much. They had assumed that as soon as he realized the sheer amount of work that would go into studying for that career, he would give up.
But Kehlan didn’t give up. If anything, their doubt in his determination fueled him. He studied pre-med in college and then went to medical school. And yet still, his parents had assumed that when he was done studying, he would abandon the whole notion and go back to the easy life of luxury and ceremony that he had been born for. They’d assumed that their son, having played his little game, would at last follow the path of least resistance.
He wasn’t sure what had made his parents so quick to assume that he would throw away years of his life in training if he wasn’t serious about becoming a full-time doctor, but when he’d applied for a residency in a hospital in France, their disapproval had come to a head. Those were tense days, full of shouted conversations and words that neither the parents nor their son had truly meant.
When they’d finally reached the compromise they had come to—that Kehlan would return to work at the hospital in Al-Derra’s capital city, Sadifah, so that he could perform at least some of his royal duties and be close at hand—it was hard to say who had been more relieved. It had brought a fragile peace to the relationships between the three of them that time, and avoiding the subject as much as possible had strengthened into a basic agreement of their family life.
And now, for seemingly no reason at all, his mother seemed intent on threatening that peace, in a way she rarely did.
“Mother, what is bringing this up? You know I’m on my way out of town.”
She waved her hand as though it were no big thing.
“Oh, I just want you to be prepared, son. That’s all.”
Concern began to grow in Kehlan’s chest. For the first time since coming in, he took a close look at his mother; she was as elegant as his earliest memories of her. Most of the family had been born to royal life, but she had married into it. She had chosen it. And the way she dressed and carried herself always seemed to Kehlan that it was the most natural decision that she had ever made.
And yet, she had definitely lost weight since the last time Kehlan had seen her. She seemed frailer. Her age was a taboo topic to anyone in the press or the household, but all the same, Kehlan knew that she was getting older. She’d left having Kehlan until relatively late for an Al-Derran woman, and he was 34. She must be in her late sixties by now, and it looked as though she was beginning to feel it.
“Mother,” he asked, his tone betraying his worry more than he would have liked it to. “Are you all right?”
She laughed, and the peals of her laughter rang off the walls in a harsh, unrelenting way.
“Oh, son, always the worrier. Maybe we should have found a way to drive that out of you when you were a boy. Maybe you would never have gone off to do your doctoring if we had done so. How much easier that would have been on all of us!”
Kehlan gritted his teeth.
“I understand you disapprove, Mother, but please answer the question.”
Mother and son sat looking at each other for a long, heavy moment. To the bystander, perhaps, it wouldn’t have seemed sensible for Kehlan to have gone from casual to deeply concerned so quickly. But a bystander wouldn’t know his mother—wouldn’t know the way she had always held her cards so close to her chest, as though telling anyone anything that wasn’t strictly necessary were a fatal flaw.
But Kehlan knew. And it was this knowledge that most worried him, and held his intent stare on her long after others would look away.
In the end, it was the Sheikha who broke first, casually leaning back as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“No,” she said, “I’m perfectly all right. But I am planning to retire from my official duties.”
A complex web of emotions greeted this news in Kehlan’s chest. First, there was frustration. She was freezing him out of whatever was actually going on with her. He knew better than most how dedicated to her duties his mother was. She wouldn’t be leaving them if there weren’t something seriously wrong. But here she was, refusing to tell him.
Then, there was relief, that at least she had the good sense to slow down and deal with whatever it was, instead of running herself ragged trying to do everything while she was unwell.
And then, there was the realization of why it was that she was bringing his career choice up, and the pit in his stomach that it opened up.
“I am glad you’ll be getting more rest,” he said, doing his best to limit the harsh, clipped tone that came into his voice when his entire way of life was under threat.
“Yes, I will be. Not that I need it, but a little more beauty sleep never goes unwanted. And, of course, I can rest easy in the knowledge that my one and only son, who I raised for this life, will be stepping up and taking over more of the duties he has been shirking for the entirety of his adulthood.”
And there it was, the conflict between them laid bare. The concern, the worry and the relief all fell to the side as anger flooded through his body. Did she even stop for a moment to realize what she was asking? Did she realize that he would be giving up something that actually meant something to people, and for what? For running off to attend every new luxury hotel opening? To make an appearance on the yacht of the latest up-and-coming royal acolyte? To trade on some overblown image of the wealthy prince as a commodity?
The hothead inside him that he had spent all of his early life learning to repress wanted to stand and shout these things at her. It wanted to jump over the table and tell her she was wrong, and that being royal meant that he didn’t have to listen to anyone, and so he would be ignoring her ridiculous demands.
But he pushed this reaction down, kept his emotions under control, and answered in as calm a manner as he could manage.
“It is my cousins who will rule. Not me. This is not my responsibility, no matter how much you want to pretend it is.”
He had never seen a smile on his mother’s face so cold and entirely without mirth. He wasn’t surprised she was capable of it, but he was surprised that it was directed at him.
“They may be directly in line for the throne, but ruling is a family effort. And whether you like it or not, you are part of this family. You certainly like it when you have servants to drive you around, and a private plane to shuttle you to your little conferences overseas.”
Kehlan’s immediate impulse was to tell her she was crazy, and that he would never do what she asked of him. He wanted to rebuke her for belittling his career, and implying that the trip to Washington was anything but professional development that he was mandated to undergo. Now, with his anger somewhat subsided, he felt he could do so in an acceptably calm manner.
But just as he was gearing up to tell her all this, and putting the words in order in his mind, he stopped.
He looked at her again, and sized up the same reasons for concern that he had seen earlier, with the new knowledge that she was taking such a drastic step, and acting so uncharacteristically cruel with him.
It was more than the fact that she had lost weight. She had always been such an imposing figure—his whole life, she had commanded every room she’d walked into. Something of that command was waning, and he didn’t know what. He only knew that the fact that it was fading was very bad news—worse news even than he had at first thought.
He shelved his biting retorts. This was bigger than a family disagreement over his career. Thi
s would need to be handled carefully. He wasn’t going to leave his life, and the work he did that actually made a difference. But neither could he upset his mother in the state she was in, whether she was willing to tell him about it or not.
He stood and leaned down to kiss his mother on the cheek. It was a familiar motion, but had never felt so rote and lifeless as it did now.
“We will discuss this when I return from Washington.”
As he walked out of the room, his mother’s voice followed him.
“So commanding. So regal. You’ll do well at this job, son.”
Chapter 3
Paige
When it rains, it pours. Not that it was actually raining in rural Washington—which was a nice change for spring—but no, her date cancelling and her son being out of town left Paige feeling lonely and empty. It didn’t help that on top of both of those things, the Coffee Cup was also uncharacteristically dead.
It worried her more than it should have worried a waitress. But she’d spent enough time working there that it wasn’t exactly short-term gig while she looked for something better. It was her life’s work, like it or not. She had come to love this diner, and the people that came and went. The regulars. The out-of-towners. Alvin. Dale, the head waiter.
So, on top of worrying about Dylan, and being annoyed at her cancelled date, and not having anything to occupy her mind, she also had to worry about the future of the establishment that was her life and livelihood. All morning, they’d had only a handful of customers, and about the only thing that had saved Paige from descending into a total funk was idly chatting to Alvin. And luckily, Alvin, if he was at all worried about the lack of customers, didn’t show it.
Alvin had more reason that she did to feel invested in the future of the Coffee Cup—she couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t the cook there. It was comforting, Paige had always thought, to be able to rely on him being there. On everything being the same, even as everything else in the world seemed subject to change. And maybe the fact that he had worked there this long was comforting to him, too. Maybe it was why he seemed so even-keeled about the lack of customers—he’d been through enough dead days to know they didn’t last.
She felt a sense of kinship with him. She was doing what he had done—spending her life at a diner in a small town. On a day with so much uncertainty and unhappiness, that was a nice touchstone. So, when Alvin told her that what she really needed to do was get out of town, she felt insulted in a way that probably wasn’t justified.
“But I love Stockton! Why would I leave?”
Alvin shook his head.
“Stockton is full of old fogeys like me. And you know everyone here. How are you going to meet someone new when you’re stuck with the past all the time?”
Paige couldn’t help but feel defensive. She didn’t expect this today. Not from Alvin. He usually knew her better than to kick her when she was down.
“I mean, there’s the dating site. I’m on that. It’s not like I’m not trying, and when you try with these things, they supposedly work. You know, eventually…”
There were any number of things Alvin might have said about how well that had worked out for her so far, in light of the canceled date she’d told him about in one of their first bored conversations of the day. But to his credit, he didn’t. Maybe he’d seen how upset he’d already made her without meaning to and figured it was better to back off and let her come around to his opinion on her own. So, instead, he just looked at her knowingly until she brought it up herself.
“Okay, so it didn’t work out great so far. But that doesn’t mean it won’t,” she hedged.
Alvin shook his head.
“That’s not meeting people. You need to meet them in person. To let them get to know you like we do. That’s the only way your life is going to move forward.”
Okay, now she was insulted.
“And who says my life isn’t moving forward?”
Alvin put a liver-spotted hand on her shoulder.
“I’m not trying to insult you. I just hate to see you stay here like this when you could have so much more.”
Paige tried to stand down her offense. He meant well, she knew. It had just been a rough morning for her. She wasn’t exactly herself. She shouldn’t take it so personally. But still, she felt the need to defend herself.
“I like my life just fine. Dylan is amazing. And my parents are here. All the people I’ve known my whole life—they’re all here.”
“Except for all the young people. Don’t you ever wonder why that is?”
He said it gently, but he said it all the same. He cared. And he thought he knew best. But he was wrong.
“I don’t wonder why it is; I know why it is. It’s because they don’t see in Stockton what I see in Stockton. And they think they need to go out into the world to find something when they have everything they need right here. And that’s their mistake. But it isn’t mine.
“I love this place. I love the mountains, and I love how close we are to nature. I love the history I have with everything I see when I walk around downtown, or when I walk through the neighborhoods. I love that I can give some of that history to Dylan, too. And yes, he’ll grow up, and maybe he’ll decide that there’s something out there he needs, like you think I should. But for me, I’m happy. I mean…okay, yeah, I maybe wish there were a few more eligible men in town. But right now, I’m fine. I’m good here. It’s just a hard day, that’s all. Okay?”
Alvin fixed her with a wisdom-filled stare, but Paige stood her ground. If she weren’t so fired up from the frustrations and worries of the day, she probably would have been embarrassed about the way she’d gone off at him. But as it was, all she felt was the courage of her convictions running through her veins.
After a long moment, the older man smiled.
“You know, you’ve always been this way,” he said.
“What way?”
“Stubborn. Always think you know better, don’t you?”
Paige smiled, then shrugged.
“Oh, Alvin. Have you ever stopped to wonder if maybe it’s because I do?”
And with that, Alvin laughed, and the conversation turned as it always did to the well-meaning gossip of a small town, and mercifully away from any suggestion that Paige would ever leave it.
Chapter 4
Kehlan
The flight was fine. Comfortable. Kehlan had slept for some of it and had used the rest of the time to go over the scheduled speakers and workshops. As it often did, the advantage he was at with having the wealth he did played at the back of his mind, especially after the conversation with his mother and the veritable mountain of emotional baggage it had dredged up.
But, as he usually did in response, he only dedicated himself to the work more thoroughly. For every advantage he was born with, he thought, he should turn it into that much more expertise. Or else, what was the point of it all? He might as well just give in and be the son his mother expected him to be—entitled, useless, and worthless.
And so, by the time he had arrived at the convention venue in Seattle, Kehlan was thoroughly prepared for every portion of the conference, and every way the discussion with his colleagues might turn.
Except for one.
“I’m sorry, sir. After a slew of storms throughout the northeast, many of the speakers have been postponed or had to cancel, and the conference has been postponed indefinitely. You should have been notified of this by email.”
Kehlan had not, and by the looks of the poor intern stationed at the door to the venue, he wasn’t the first would-be attendee who’d arrived unaware. The poor kid had quite clearly drawn the short straw and was now the one having to disappoint a group of doctors with high opinions of their wasted time.
“If you’re stuck in town, there’s a lot to see and do in Seattle. There’s a visitor center not far from here, and they have information on the city’s biggest attractions…”
The intern’s voice trailed off, as though he were w
aiting to be yelled at. Was it ethical, Kehlan wondered, for his employers to throw him to the wolves this way?
Without responding, Kehlan brought out his phone and pulled up his emails. He usually would have done so upon landing, but between his rush to get to the conference center and the worry about his mother simmering at the back of his mind, he hadn’t done so.
He sorted through the mess of them. He could have gotten an assistant to do it for him, of course, but he’d never quite liked the idea of that. He’d been surrounded by servants for his whole life when he’d grown up at the palace; essentially hiring another of his own after leaving there seemed like a step backwards.
And yet, it would have saved him from his current situation, Kehlan couldn’t help but think to himself. For there, nestled in between a note from Hakim telling him that he had been right about the patient, and a letter from some unknown social climber that had somehow gotten his email address, was a notice from the convention leadership telling him that the event had been cancelled due to unforeseen weather events.
When Kehlan thanked the intern for the information and didn’t explode at him, he seemed relieved.
“And we’re sorry again for the inconvenience, sir!” he called after him, almost more as a thank you than an apology, but Kehlan was already on his way out.
Again, Kehlan thought, his privilege was showing. It was probably much easier to keep his cool when his transportation was a private jet, and he had no actual need to find some way to occupy himself in Seattle the way those other, angrier doctors must have done. There had never been any real reason for Kehlan to stay anywhere any longer than he wanted to. He could just head back to the airport, acquire a properly-rested pilot for the trip from the ranks of pilots that were always willing to work for anyone with a prince’s budget, and head back home.
And yet, Kehlan found himself walking in the direction that the intern had indicated, heading for the visitor center.
