A Royal Renewal: The Royals of Heledia

by Hart, Victoria

  School was back in on Monday and there was heightened security. They seemed to have taken the weekend to completely redo every security measure they had, and lock everything down.

  It was more than a little uncomfortable. I stepped out of the car and walked onto the campus to find there were men in uniforms everywhere. It wasn’t like my guards, who hid themselves by wearing suits and sometimes plain civilian clothing. These men wanted to be seen. The university was flexing its muscles. It was intimidation against terrorists, but unfortunately it also seemed to be intimidating the students.

  “Maybe that was their goal,” Carlo said, a little bitterly. “Maybe they wanted the school to freak out, and basically get people to mistrust institutions and their response to stuff like this. I mean, right now I’m more scared of the sniper on the roof than I am of someone throwing another firecracker at us.”

  He had a point. The men with the guns and the body armor were very intimidating and it didn’t seem like the best way to react to what was happening around us. They were responding to violence and force with the threat of violence and force, and I didn’t like it.

  “This is awful,” I said, looking despairingly at the men.

  This was the kind of attitude I’d been hoping to escape when I left America. This was how the government there reacted to things. It was the type of thing that made people angry, and it caused protests and then people getting hurt at protests because they were showing more force. It was an awful feedback loop.

  “Well, I guess we should just ignore them,” Carlo said. “If we can.”

  If we could. They were everywhere. We were being watched all the time, and it was awful. I looked straight ahead every time we crossed the campus and ignored the eyes of the men. I wasn’t a threat; I wasn’t a suspect. Everyone knew that. But I might be a target, so virtually everyone but Carlo stayed away from me.

  In fact, the possibility that I might be in more danger than the people around us seemed to bring him to stand closer to me. To be that much more alert. It made my stomach do some flips that I was absolutely not going to tell anyone about. I hoped it didn’t show on my face.

  It wasn’t lost on Carlo that he was the only one willing to walk around campus with me. In fact, it seemed to only perturb him more as the day went on.

  “They’re being ridiculous,” he said. “They act like you’ve got the plague.”

  He had a point. It seemed like there was a 10-foot radius around me that had not existed before. When my bubble came near a crowd of people they dispersed, separating into large groups on either side, like the parting of the Red Sea. And that was the best case scenario. Other people looked up, saw me, went white as a sheet, and immediately turned around and started walking in the other direction.

  That was embarrassing.

  I knew it had nothing to do with me personally. They were scared they were going to get hurt, or worse. I understood. But the more it went on, the more they looked at Carlo too. They looked at him like he was taking his life into his own hands.

  I felt bad for him. I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to sit near me, he didn’t have to walk with me, but every time I opened my mouth to say something about it he seemed to sense that’s where I was going to go with my sentence and gave me a look that stopped the words before they left my mouth.

  He was a good friend, an excellent friend. I was probably never going to have another friend like him. But that’s what made it all that much harder the day that the truth came out. This was one of the last weeks I had with Carlo that were bliss, uninterrupted by personal turmoil, even if political strife was everywhere. It was unfortunate that it was bogged down with things like this, the fear of bombs and violence on the streets.

  “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he said when I looked at him after our second class.

  “Why? Are you on a secret security detail I don’t know about?”

  “Well, no. but I’m not going to leave my friend to fend for herself,” he said. “I’m not going to leave you to be lonely and sad and scared. That’s what they want. They want you by yourself and they want you to feel like you have no friends.”

  “You’ve given a lot of thought to what they seem to want.”

  I meant it as a joke. I even smiled, but his face went pale. I cursed myself, realizing I had offended him in some way. He swallowed thickly. I opened my mouth, intending to apologize, but he said something first.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” he said. “Not here, because it’s a long story and it’s kind of been eating away at me.”

  “Okay…” I said both nervous and excited at the same time. I, of course, had a fantasy in my head of what I hoped he wanted to talk to me about, what I imagined he’d say. But I needed to keep my cool and keep my head. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

  “I want it to come from me,” he said. “I mean, there’s a chance you’d find out incidentally or the wrong way, and that’s not what I need right now.”

  I frowned, knowing that whatever this was, it was going to change things. He could be planning to tell me he didn’t like me that way, that we were just friends. I’d accept that. I supposed that finally being over this stressful ‘yes or no’ part of the crush would be nice.

  “Do you want to meet for dinner?” he asked. “I know it’s last minute and you probably have a million things to do, but I really want to discuss this somewhere where we actually have time to sit and talk. It’s going to take a little while to get everything out that needs to be said.”

  I wasn’t sure this was going to be a positive thing, but I nodded.

  “I’m free,” I said. “Just tell me where.”

  “I’ll text you the address. It’s a nice restaurant in town.”

  “Okay. Are you alright?”

  “Yes. I will be. It’s nothing bad. It’s nothing about you, I promise. There are just some things I need to get out there and I need the right venue for it, so you can understand.”

  We made the plans and then we went our separate ways, because we had different third classes at the end of the day. But I was mystified. It sounded ominous, like he wasn’t who I thought he was. Like he was living a double life.

  I was distracted all the way through my last class. I found myself unable to take notes, unable to really sit and focus on what the professor was saying about the succession crisis and the Time of Troubles in Russian history.

  At least I wasn’t doodling hearts in the corner of the paper, or writing our initials next to each other. I was a little too worried about the fate of our friendship for that. He seemed so serious, so intense about whatever it was. I knew this was something that had been bugging him. At the very least, good or bad, I was going to have a conclusion to the strange mystery of Carlo.

  I remembered how my aunt and Antonio had got started, how he’d lied to her. He’d known exactly who she was when he approached her, and he pretended not to. At first she’d been really angry about that, but then when he explained and she understood, everything had worked out. Eventually. After he stood in front of the whole of Heledia and said he loved her. It brought the city to a standstill.

  Maybe this would be a situation like that, without the public demonstrations. Maybe there was some misunderstanding, it was going to be a little bit painful, but we were going to get through it just fine. All I knew was that I was intrigued, and looking forward to hearing what he had to say.

  Now, if I could just get through my class.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, he did not get the chance to tell me what he wanted to say in his own words and on his own terms, because the universe can’t help but be dramatic and ironic. Someone else got to me first. After it was done, after I knew, I very much wished that Carlo had gotten the chance to speak with me because it was just as devastating as he was afraid it would be to hear it from someone else, the way I did.

  After my last class, I went to get into the car to take me home. That’s where the truth that I didn’t w
ant to know was waiting for me. There was a man in the car I didn’t recognize, a member of security detail I didn’t know. That was a little scary at first, all things considered. I’d read about coups recently and the possibility of security turning on me was horrifying. I trusted them with everything.

  But this man was not against the monarchy; he was not an anarchist. He was the opposite, actually. He was very serious, very upright, sitting there with his hands on his knees as if he wanted me to see them there and know that he held no weapon. It put me even more on edge.

  “Your Highness,” he said with a head bow.

  The custom was that I was bowed to and addressed by title upon the first meeting. After that, people were permitted to call me ma’am, though they were never allowed to show me their back and still had to bow at the waist every time they greeted me. This was the closest that this man could get to making the correct, traditional greeting while we were seated together in car.

  “Who are you?” I asked, then turned red. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask that so rudely. I’m just – cautious, is all. I’ve had the same security team for weeks.”

  “It’s good that you’re curious,” he said. “It’s one of the things I wanted to speak with you about, Ma’am, making sure you know who people are.”

  It sounded like he was talking down to me. It sounded like I was in some trouble. I didn’t know I could still get in trouble as the princess, queen-in-waiting from anyone other than the queen herself, but here we were. I was about to be lectured about something, though I had no idea what.

  “”You’ve been in contact with Carlo Vaspasian, correct, Ma’am?” he said.

  “Well, if by ‘in contact’ you mean he’s a very good friend, then yes,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “He visited the palace recently.” It was not a question.

  “He did.”

  The car drove on and I felt more and more uncomfortable. This man knew something I didn’t. Carlo was involved but I couldn’t imagine how, or why. The man was flipping through papers in a folder and it occurred to me he had still not introduced himself.

  “Who are you?” I asked, with more force this time, and no care for how rude I sounded.

  He looked up at me with mild interest. “I’m Benecio LeBlanc, the director of security for Her Majesty.”

  “I’ve never met you.”

  “Because I work for the queen, not you.”

  There it was: the tone, the snark. The man was rude, and he was watching to see how I was going to handle that. I was no stranger to people not liking me for being an American, for being an outsider in their country, poised to rule it. I understood the mentality and the irritation there. But this man served the crown, and one day I would be the crown. I felt like this was a test of how well I could hold my own against those who didn’t want to give me the time of day.

  “I want to know what this is about,” I said. “Now. You’re going to tell me or I will stop the car and have you removed.”

  He looked up again, lazily still, but this time I held his eyes with all the intensity that I could muster. He stared at me. He was going to do what I said or he would leave my presence. He had to treat me with respect because that’s what decent human beings do. They respect each other. And, for all intents and purposes, I was his boss.

  “Well?” I said, waiting, ready to hit the button that signalled for the driver on the other side of the partition to stop.

  He sighed and closed the file. He was going to make a show of playing my game, doing what I said. He was only going to do it because he had to, because his job dictated that he follow my orders. One day I’d see to it that he was fired, but right now I wanted answers from him. I wanted him to stop playing games with me.

  “Your friend Carlo is a member of an anti-monarchist operation, to put it quite plainly and bluntly,” he said, and I felt my stomach drop, my face lose all color. “He was one of many operatives at the royal dinner a few weeks ago.”

  “He protected me that night,” I said lamely, like that one piece of information would suddenly make the rest of it disappear.

  The man shrugged. “We’ve been doing research on him for some time now. We didn’t know until very recently who he was and whom he was affiliated with. That’s the only reason he was allowed near you, and allowed in the palace. We cannot prove he has committed actual violence, so we cannot arrest him on any charges. It is legal to speak out against the government here, and that seems to be all he has been doing.

  “That being said, we cannot continue to allow him to be in your presence, nor can he come to the palace under any circumstances. We’re working to have your schedule changed around so you will not have classes together, nor will you come into contact with each other in any way, if we can help it.”

  I felt like everything had dropped out from underneath me, and I felt the weight of every lie coming crashing down on top of me. Carlo had lied. Carlo had tricked me. Carlo might be a danger to me. Carlo hadn’t told me who he really was.

  And he expected me to go to dinner with him that night.

  Chapter 9

  I didn’t know what to feel. Well, that’s not entirely true – I knew exactly what I should be feeling, what people expected me to feel. There was the hint of revulsion, the overwhelming feeling of betrayal, and the embarrassment of being so stupid. It all cobbled together into anger, which I knew everyone expected me to focus and act on. I should demand that Carlo be arrested, demand that he never enter my presence again, and maybe even demand that they lop off his head.

  And I did feel these things. I did have anger bubbling inside me. Carlo had been so close to me; he’d pretended to care so much. I should banish all thought of him. I should never think of him again.

  But I still wanted to talk to him.

  I couldn’t, I knew. That would be dangerous – but I needed to hear what was happening in his head, from his own mouth. This didn’t feel right. Everything about this reeked of incorrect information; something was missing here.

  We did know some things for sure: Carlo had lied to me. He’d been helping those who had been trying to hurt me. He’d come to the party that night with the man who had the gun, and he’d missed school the day of the explosion because he’d known about the homemade bomb. Maybe he’d even helped build it.

  But why had he saved me? Why did he protect me the night of the party?

  It had been a trick. It had been a way to get me to trust him. Maybe he was deep undercover, deep in his own lies and it was part of the con.

  “Ma’am,” said a voice. I turned around. It was the security guard from a few days ago. The new one, Vince. “If you give us the address of the meeting point tonight with Vespasian we can have him arrested.”

  Did I want that? I was a little surprised to find that I didn’t, at all. I didn’t want him to be arrested, or charged with anything, or locked away. I wanted to talk to him. If he was arrested, that wouldn’t happen. Not in private, anyway.

  “He didn’t tell me,” I said. “Yet.”

  “Have you had contact with him?”

  I didn’t like this version of Vince. I preferred the scared young man from the car who was just as nervous as I had been about dealing with a bomb and a possible assassination attempt. This man had matured in the days since then. He was turning into one of them, a mindless drone in a suit with a bud in his ear. I didn’t want that. I needed at least one of them to be my friend. I needed one security guard who wasn’t so intent on doing the job he’d been trained to do.

  “No,” I said. It was true. Though the phone in my pocket could easily have a text message or voicemail on it, as long as I didn’t know about it, I couldn’t offer it up as evidence against him.

  “I know this is a shock,” Vince said, his voice changing, softening. “You must be reeling right now. Your feelings are valid.”

  “My feelings are valid?” I blurted, incredulous. He turned red.

  “I majored in psychology,” he mutter
ed.

  “How did you end up doing this job?”

  He opened his mouth to answer but stopped. “I…uh. They asked me to ask you if—”

  “Vince,” I said with a tired sigh. “I know you have a job to do and all, and I’m going to help you with it soon, I promise. But for right now I could use the distraction. The person I thought was my closest friend turned out to be ready to sell me out to some unfriendly compatriots. So please, tell me how you ended up as a bodyguard for the royal family.”

  I sat down on the upholstered hallway bench. He still looked uncomfortable with the situation, turning his head around on a swivel, perhaps waiting for someone to come along and interrupt us, or maybe hoping one of his superior officers would appear out of nowhere to reprimand him. We were fraternizing, and I knew that wasn’t allowed. But I couldn’t help it. I needed to bend this guy my way.

  “They plucked me from my program,” he said, shrugging. I had left room on the bench but he wasn’t about to go as far as to sit down. “There were aptitude tests they had me take and I passed them. I met the physical requirements, and things just went from there.”

  It wasn’t as interesting a story as I’d hoped, and it was short. I frowned, and he blushed, standing uncomfortably with his hands in his pockets.

  “You will let us know when he contacts you?” he said. “If he doesn’t, don’t worry. We’ll still find him, and we’ve got more than probable cause. We won’t need to slow things down with a warrant process or anything.”

  He was saying all this like it was what I wanted to hear, like I was going to be glad to know that Carlo was going to get caught and arrested no matter what. I wondered how long the penalty was for treason and terrorism. He was probably going be locked up for the rest of his life.