Page 28 of Coronation
Last night may have been the best of my life.
This woman is everything I never knew to want, and even if I did, I would never have imagined I’d be so lucky as to find her. It’s been so easy to get swept up in this, to lose myself in the dream that is Zelda Flowers, that I haven’t thought about what waits for us beyond this tiny window of time.
I do now, though.
As the phone stops vibrating, then starts up again seconds later, I tear my eyes from Zelda’s sleeping face. A deep, hollow ache has appeared in the center of my chest. It expands as I get to my feet and cross to where the device is resting, and stare down at the name on the caller ID:Nelson Harrold: Private Secretary.
For a moment, I imagine walking to the open window and throwing the wretched thing out. It would be gratifying, watching it smash into a thousand pieces on the ground below. Or it would be if the destructive act would make any difference at all. It won’t, though.
I don’t look at Zelda as I pick up the phone and slip from the room, walking to the end of the hall before finally accepting the call.
“What?” I snarl, not troubling myself with civility.
“I apologize for the interruption, sir,” Harrold tells me calmly. The man was hired simply because I found him theleast obnoxious of all the candidates presented to me. Unfortunately for both of us, I still can’t stand him, and my distaste for the sound of his voice has deepened with each unpleasant announcement he’s brought to my attention over my tenure as king.
Something tells me that this particular call might be enough to bring the miserable fuck over the line of wholly intolerable.
“You’re needed back in Wyngate as soon as possible. A highly unpleasant scandal has broken in the press regarding the prime minister, and he has scheduled a press conference for noon. It’s expected he will resign.”
The brand-new ache in my chest throbs as I swallow, the harsh reality of my situation with Zelda setting in as it never has before. I didn’t think about it, didn’twantto think about it, not when I like her so damned much.
The brutal, ugly truth is that for such a rich man, I have absolutely nothing to offer her. A sitting monarch must gain approval from Parliament to marry a foreigner, and Parliament would never give their permission for me to take an American actress, sixteen years my junior, as queen. Then there’s her job to consider, which is surely preferable to the suffocating existence I lead.
This isn’t simply a matter of incompatible lifestyles or the difference in our ages, not even my miserable fucking personality is the issue here. It’s The Crown. Just as it always has been. Just as it always will be.
Before I ever laid eyes on Zelda Flowers, fate was hard at work, ensuring I could never love her. Regardless of her intentions, or mine, we were doomed from the first moment we met.
It’s clear now, as a brand-new kind of pain spreads through my chest like poison, that I’ve made a grave miscalculation. When we came here, I believed the extra time wouldmake it easier and would satisfy some of the deep, painful yearning for more of her. It hasn’t, though.
It’s made it so much worse.
“A car is waiting for you, sir,” Harrold speaks up after a long moment, obviously unsettled by my lack of retort. I still don’t respond. Ending the call, I allow the hand clutching my phone to fall to my side.
As I stare at the aging wallpaper without truly seeing it, the pain grows more acute the longer I stand here. I’m thinking in circles, frantically searching for a way out, even as I steel myself to do the thing which must be done.
Leave.
Every step back toward the bedroom is an exercise in will, forcing my body on, even as every muscle is stiff with protest. I pause outside the door, scrubbing my hands over my face as I listen, straining my hearing for signs that Zelda is awake. There’s nothing, though. Not a rustle of sheets or a footstep or water running in the bathroom, only birdsong outside the window, and the weary beats of my own battered heart.
My throat is impossibly tight as I turn the corner, staring at my lover’s sleeping form. I have never felt this way about a woman, and certainly not one I just met. I was married for ten years and didn’t experience even a shadow of the raw devotion which fills me now, illogical and confusing as it may be.
Zelda’s hair is spread over the white pillowcase, her beautiful face relaxed in sleep, and a hand resting on the empty place I occupied only a few minutes ago. It’s that small facet of this, her reaching for me, even as her conscious mind is far… Tearing my gaze away, I cross to the crumpled pile of clothing I arrived in, careful not to make a sound.
I don’t look at her as I dress.
I don’t look at her as I stride to the door.
I don’t look at her as I leave.
It’s better this way.
The sunlight has turned from blue to yellow in the moments I lingered after the call, filling the old house with a warmth that makes me furious. Reality was always coming, but in the back of my mind, I thought I had more time, another day at least.
My brother is the one waiting when I step outside, still aching with the pain I can now recognize as grief.
“I thought you’d look more refreshed!” Damien calls as I approach. He’s leaning against the side of the car, arms folded over his chest, and looking amused. “You owe me, by the way. You have no idea the shit I had to pull to keep palace security from flooding that pub. I hope she was worth it.”
I don’t respond. I can’t speak. I can’t even look at him. Never in my life have I resented anyone quite as much as I do my bastard brother in this moment. Not the perfect prick, Arthur, or my absent father, or my unfeeling mother. No. There is not one person I hate in this life more than Damien.
