“Well, that’s part of our life I guess,” I said. “We have to come to terms with stuff like this.”
“Yeah well what happens when I can’t make friends because no one wants to be around the kid who might get assassinated?”
I blinked, wondering how something that trivial could even occur to him at a time like this. I decided to leave it alone. “That won’t happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“And neither do you.”
The family glare session was cut short when there was a knock on the door and Aunt Sonia entered the room. We all jumped to our feet. No one would blame us if we forgot our formalities but it was our natural reaction anyway, because we had so many questions.
“Everyone okay?” she asked.
“We should be asking you that,” Dad said.
“I was the first out of that room,” she joked. “I don’t even get a papercut if these guys can help it.”
“We’re okay,” I said. “Shaken up, but okay.”
“Understandable,” she said, sighing. “The fact of the matter is, these attacks aren’t new, unfortunately.”
I tried not to roll my eyes when I heard my mother gasp. This was exactly the sort of thing that would make her want to ferry us away to hide somewhere. And it wasn’t even new information; it was just scary to hear someone acknowledge the truth out loud, for once.
“The group calls itself the Heledia Liberation Front,” she told us. “They want to abolish the monarchy, and establish a democracy.” She sat on the edge of an armchair, and motioned for us all to be seated, as well. “The liberation movement is getting bolder – and bolder, unfortunately, means more violent.”
“They want us to go, but what then? They can’t govern – they can’t be prepared,” I said, and my aunt nodded.
“That’s true. This is the most serious thing that has happened so far, but the movement itself is both poorly funded and poorly organized. It just means we tighten security and move on. It’s how life goes.”
I nodded. I would have to accept this as the reality it was, and the challenge that I would face. I wouldn’t be queen for a long time, but they were testing me early.
That was the mistake these revolutionaries were making. Instead of scaring me into signing away my rights, or hiding myself away from the world, they were making me a better queen. And I would be a better queen. I would care for my people, and stand against them. It was the best way to prove them wrong.
Chapter 5
Convincing my mother and father to leave at the end of the week was difficult. I think my mother was holding out hope that I was going to leave with them, change my mind and go running home. In the middle of the night, I’d considered something like that. It would be easy to run home, to curl up in the bed I knew in my parents’ house. I could be surrounded by familiar things, back where my parents took care of me.
It would be so easy to hide, but I recognized that everyone has moments like this, where they have to choose between moving forward in scary new territory, or hiding out in a safe spot. I wanted to curl up and hide. I wasn’t afraid to admit that to myself – I wanted to play it safe.
But I couldn't. I was grown now, slowly learning how to be an adult. I couldn’t hide away any longer, despite my instincts, and no matter how my mother looked at me. I wanted to run back into her arms and never leave. I wanted to wake up to pancakes every day and my brother’s face and my father’s nose shoved into a newspaper. I wanted everything I’d known my entire life.
But that’s not the way life worked. Whether or not terrorists wanted to scare me away, I couldn’t run. I had a job, a duty, and I wasn’t going to let someone intimidate me. So we went to the airport in a large procession and I watched my parents prepare to board the flight.
“Call me when you get home,” I said. “Even if it’s 3 a.m. here.”
“Yes ma’am,” my father said, kissing my forehead and pulling away.
Even my brother let me hug him. He told me to be careful, and then walked away before he said something a little too sentimental. We weren’t quite at that point yet, dangerous terrorists or not. My mother, not shockingly, hugged me the longest of any of them. She held me tight and I breathed her scent in deeply. I think she was doing the same with me.
It was the closest I came to crying, holding my mother. Everyone feels that deep, specific pain of leaving their mom. I loved my father and my brother, but my mother was my first and best friend. She was my protector and my best companion and the only ear I ever wanted to complain to when life got tough. And now she’d be thousands and thousands of miles away.
“One call away,” she kept insisting, as though phone lines somehow made mileage disappear completely. She did have a point, I supposed. Maybe a hundred years ago this would have been a much harder goodbye, with no clear and instant way of communicating. But now we had phones, email, and social media.
When my mother backed away from me and our hug ended, I was sure I could actually hear the way the music around us swelled, like we were in a movie and this was my moment, my coming of age. From this point on I’d be a different person entirely. I’d have to be a new, bigger version of myself that was much more willing to accept all that life was going to throw my way. It was just like any high schooler going to college – or that’s what I told myself, anyway.
I watched her back away, my father and brother on either side of her, and I felt the tears threatening. I wouldn’t cry. Not because I was ashamed of crying, but because I knew if I did then my mother might never be able to leave. I wanted her to know that it would be okay. I would be okay. Even if I was scared, she didn’t need to know that.
They moved until they were past the point of no return, customs. This was it. I stepped away, security closing in to help Aunt Sonia and I head out. This is the moment when the rest of my life began, and I knew my aunt knew it too, from the way she was watching me out of the corner of her eye. I pretended not to notice, and I walked with my head held high and the security guards on either side of me.
I felt a prickle on the back of my neck, and this time it wasn’t from fear.
It was, for a brief moment, the chill of excitement. I was where I wanted to be, about to do something I was sure I would be able to do. I felt the beginnings of possibility, like when someone walked into their new house for the first time as a homeowner, or started a new career. It was the first time I’d been in this country on my own, the first time I was going to be doing something here other than sitting around at dinner parties and lounging on vacation.
This was me about to do the job I was born to do. I was about to embark on something very few people in the world have even dreamed of doing. I was learning to be a queen, a leader.
“How do you feel?” Aunt Sonia asked as we walked out of the airport.
“I’ll let you know after I think about it for twenty minutes,” I said with a breathless laugh, and she laughed too.
“Well, you’ve got the ride back to the palace to think about it.”
We took separate cars, and that was a slightly unpleasant reminder of the danger that was lurking. We travelled separately so if one of us was attacked, the other would be safe. The door closed behind me and I was left to my own thoughts.
No one had gotten hurt the night of the party – we were lucky the attempt on our lives was not better organized or more determined. No matter that the attacker had been incompetent – this time – he had intended to hurt us and that was something I’d never forget.
Careful, my father’s voice said in the ear of my mind. He’d told me once about the dangerous power of vengeance for people who were in positions like this. And my history classes in school were full of stories about how monarchies had failed, all over the world. Russia, France…both were cases where the rulers were threatened by their people, and reacted with a heavy hand – much to their detriment.
As the heir, I wasn’t in a position to do much damage. But the feelings, the thoughts, the
temptations were very dangerous. One day, if I tried to retaliate, then I would truly be lost. So I needed to learn to control these feelings now, while I still had time. The car ride home from the airport was that for me. I looked closely at my anger toward the people who had tried to hurt me, and I thought about the impulse to get back at them. After all, we had the power here, right? This was temptation without consequence. If I could learn to avoid it now, when I knew nothing bad would happen, then I could do it when it mattered and when I was facing real consequences.
I was never one for meditating; my mother sometimes tried to force it on us when she was in a weird bout of holistic healing or some other nonsense. But I wished, just then, that I’d retained something from those sessions because I felt like if I could control my breathing then I could find a way to pattern my thoughts, measure them, make them small.
A horn honked loudly and my eyes shot open to see a small car zipping by us, disregarding or not noticing the official flags on the front of the car, or the way the motorcade was all linked together. Cutting off a royal motorcade was an offense that warranted a fine, but I hoped he’d got away. Everyone makes mistakes. That was what I needed, to show compassion, I thought.
We continued back to the palace, and I was very aware that I was entering another world now. Everything was going to change completely. I looked at the palace with new eyes.
This was home. This was destiny; the reason I was born. Everything that began here would end in a crown, a throne, and an entire country looking to me for guidance. I smiled into that future because what else could I do? What else should I do?
I got out of the car and told myself when I walked through those doors I would be the princess and never stop being that person until they day I was queen. That was the decision I made when I stepped out of the car and walked up the stairs, the whole of Heledia behind me, spread across the hills.
The doors were opened for me by two footmen in purple tailcoats and I moved into the grand foyer feeling my own sense of pride. This was important, and so was I.
* * *
“I think it’s only fair that you have all the facts,” my aunt said as we sat down together in the salon after dinner that night. This time, it hadn’t been a big affair with staff members bringing us course after course and refilling our glasses. It had been simple. We had a pitcher of water and a cooled one of wine, and our food and bread for the table all set out in the salon, and we sat there together talking about things.
We didn’t talk about anything official. She was asking me about school work and about my life at home, about my friends. It was nice, because it felt like something normal families do. It felt like she was really just my aunt, and we were really just talking.
“The facts?” I asked, wiping my mouth as my mother had instructed me to do since I was little. Take a bite, wipe. Even if you don’t think there’s anything there, do it anyway.
“This little rebellion we have on our hands – my advisors would prefer that I not use the term rebellion, since they say it gives these people agency and more power than they should seem to have – but I also know what I’m looking at. These few don’t define the masses; the majority of this country loves us. But there are some that want the monarchy gone, and they’re are tired of waiting for that to happen,” she said. “With you as my heir but not my direct child, it makes things a bit weaker, you see, in their eyes. There’s no direct link. There’s no one born with unquestionable, undeniable divine right to rule – so they’re using our own doctrine against us. They see my lack of children as a sign from God that the monarchy should not go on.”
I nodded solemnly, hearing the guilt in my aunt’s voice and reading it all over her face. I wished I could help her in some way. I wasn’t sure the exact reason why she and Antonio didn’t have children, but I doubted it was a sign from God.
“What can I do?” I asked, but it wasn’t like I was helping someone with math homework or cleaning up a house of after a wild party while the parents were out.
“You can have knowledge, and defend yourself with it,” she said. “I love your mother dearly, but I’m glad she’s gone so we can discuss this openly. I know what she wants – if you had even so much as muttered it she would have taken you home with her in a heartbeat.”
I chuckled and nodded because it was painfully true. My aunt smiled sadly and swirled her wine in her glass, staring at the dark tide in the crystal goblet in her hand.
“These people are dangerous, I’ll admit that,” she said. “We’ve got plenty of protocols and escape plans in place to deal with any and all possibilities, but I’m sad to even have to tell you – they will try to hurt you. So you need to be vigilant, and know what they are capable of. They will have guns. They want a show, so it won’t be poison or a knife in the back. It will be bombs and loud noises and others may get hurt too, which is the worst part of all of this, for me.”
I swallowed thickly and nodded, suddenly very uninterested in the wine in my glass, not liking the acidic way it was sitting in my stomach.
“These are things that are not going to go away on their own, nor are they going to go away soon,” my aunt said. “They are going to last into your reign, no matter when mine ends.”
I felt a cold shudder as I thought of the possibilities, the implication of a sentence like that. It was serious enough that she suspected the possibility of going soon, of being in real danger. I knew she wasn’t telling me everything she knew – and what she wasn’t telling me scared me a great a deal.
“This is the wheel of modernity,” she said. “And while I don’t think we should fight it – after all, some real horrors exist in our past that only progress has been able to fix – we need to be mindful of too much too soon, and too little too late. It’s a balance. And you and I are going to work together to find that balance.”
I was being called upon to do work – good, real work. This was the beginning. She wanted my help in an official capacity. I was being given a task, a job to do, and I didn’t plan on letting her down. I nodded. She smiled and reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. It could have had the effect of ruining my entire demeanor of seriousness, but it calmed nerves I hadn’t realized had turned into live wires in my stomach. The wine wasn’t helping at all.
“Good,” she said. “The best ally we can have is family. I’m glad you’re here. It’s probably a selfish thing, with everything that is going on. But I’m glad you’re here with me.”
“I’ll help any way I can,” I said. “This is my home too and I want it to be the best it can be for everyone.” I thought of what I’d been told, about how I wasn’t inheriting her seat but, rather, she was keeping it warm for me. That’s what this was. She wasn’t asking for my help because she needed it for herself, to stabilize and control the masses for her. She was asking because she wanted to give me a fighting chance for my own future. It was the greatest gift she could give me.
“We can do this,” Aunt Sonia said. “You and I. That’s one of the reasons the monarchy is so important. The government in other countries is decided by a group of people who got elected to work together. But we’re family. We have a bond that no one can break, and it’s going to see us through this whole ordeal.”
I nodded. I believed her. She had a very real point about that. The president of America was elected and chose their own vice president and cabinet of advisors to go with them. We didn’t choose each other, but destiny did. We shared a bond, we shared DNA, we shared a common history and close relatives. That was going to make us a lot more invested than elections and money and lobbyists ever could.
“Where do we start?” I asked.
“We start with patience. I’ve already ordered an investigation into the matter. When we have more information, we can act,” she said. “That’s one of the most important things to know about being queen. Information is critical and you don’t want to move without it. We have the ability and the resources to seek it out and that’s very importan
t.”
I nodded and felt like I should be taking notes but my mental notepad would have to do for now. Besides, I didn’t want to miss the look in her eyes or the way she seemed to light up while she was sharing information to me. This was an important moment. And it was a moment that was all ours, no guards or servants or guests. It was aunt and niece together.
“When we have the information we need, you and I will decide together what we’re going to do with it,” she said. “We’ll reach a conclusion together.”
She was trusting me to help her make a decision; she wanted me to be a part of it. This was more respect than I ever got even doing a group project at school before. I suddenly felt more important than I ever had in my life.
I nodded and took a poised and poignant sip of my wine. This would be the beginning of a future we were building together, and I was going to be one of the architects of it. I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.
* * *
Things don’t always work out perfectly, of course. I didn’t realize exactly how things would play out the day I met Carlo at that reception, and I’d forgotten all about him in the aftermath and the days leading up to the beginning of school.
But the universe had a way of correcting these things, bringing the grand design back into play. I was beginning school, with freshman orientation starting that morning and me in my pencil skirt and suit and all sorts of professionalism. I wanted to make the best impression possible. I wasn’t here just because my aunt was queen and I was one day going to follow in her footsteps. I was competent, and I would prove I was.
I walked onto campus to the beat of my clicking heels with as much authority as I could muster. Each step was purposeful, demanded attention, and demanded that people take me seriously.
I turned heads and I hoped it was because of my air of authority and not simply because they knew who I was. I couldn’t really be sure I was earning the kind of attention I wanted, but half the battle was attitude, so I did what I could. I walked and pretended I wasn’t flanked by two intimidating gentlemen in suits waiting to strike down anyone who came after me.
A Royal Renewal: The Royals of Heledia Page 5
