Page 101 of Spearcrest Prince

Thelimodrivetothe closest private airport is tense and quiet. My father spends it on phone calls, making arrangements with staff and employees, my mother looking mournfully out of the window.

It’s only when we’re on the jet and mother’s had a sip of her white wine that she finally explodes.

“How could you, Sev?” she says in a tragic tone. “During your final year? With exams coming up? And that exhibition? Why on earth would you do something like that?”

My father reaches across the space between him and my mother and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers. His eyes, green as serpents and peridots, remain fixed on me.

“Alors, vas-y,” he says curtly. “Explique.”

I take a deep breath and hold his gaze when I speak. “I want to break the engagement with Anaïs.”

My father’s eyes widen almost imperceptibly, but my mother splutters, almost choking on her wine.

“Quoi?” she exclaims. “But I thought it was going well between you two!”

“That’s the problem,” I say. I try to keep my tone light—I don’t want my parents to see me emotional, I don’t want them to realise how important this is to me—but it’s hard to do when my throat tightens at the mere thought of Anaïs. “It was going well, but the engagement thing? It’s ruining everything.”

“How?” my father asks quietly.

To be fair to him, I expected a stronger response, an instant “no” or a stern bollocking, at least.

“Because.” I gesture. “It’s fuc—it’s strangling us. Like… it’s like trying to grow a flower, but instead of watering it, you’ve thrown it into the ocean. It’s too much.”

“You young people are so melodramatic.” My father sighs, relaxing into his seat. “Love isn’t a little flower drowning in the ocean, you young fool. Love is an inferno. It’ll burn wherever it’s growing.”

“I don’t love her,” I snap.

Don’t I?

Of course not.

How could I love her? I’m like fire, like a trembling volcano simmering with emotions. She’s like ice, like a glacier, like a star, remote and cold and untouchable. How could I love her? I want her too much to love her.

“If you don’t love her, then what’s the problem?” Father asks with a shrug.

“Je la veux,” I choke out. “Je veux qu’elle soit à moi. Je ne veux pas l’avoir parce que tu me l’as donné. Je veux pas qu’elle soit enchaînée à moi. Je veux l’avoir, de son gré.”

I want her. I don’t want her because you’ve given her to me. I don’t want her chained to me. I want her to be mine of her own free will.Saying this out loud, in my own tongue, to my own parents, is the strangest sensation.

Like having wings that were tied down and have finally been freed. It’s like pure freedom, sweet and elating.

For a moment, my parents stare at me in complete shock. Then my father shakes his head slightly. “And what does that have to do with the fighting and the defacing and the anti-social behaviour, then?”

“I fought the Pembroke boy because he said he would f—” I interrupt myself and cast a glance at my mother, who’s listening with raised eyebrows. “He said he would have sex with Anaïs and make her forget the Montcroix name.”

“Non,” my mother whispers against the rim of her glass.

“Si.” I straighten myself in my seat. “I told him that if he ever touches her, I’ll kill him with my own hands. And I meant it.”

My parents exchange a glance. The way they look at each other is both sickening and heart-warming. They have this way of looking at each other as if their gazes are reaching deep into the other person’s heart.

“And the exhibition?”

I sigh and sit back. I didn’t even realise how tense I was when talking about Pembroke until my fists unclenched.

“That was… I was drunk. I had an argument with Anaïs, and I got really drunk, and I wanted her to… I wanted to get back at her, or to… I don’t know what I wanted. Honestly, I barely remember that night. I regret it.”

I look out of the window, watching the clouds below, the distant earth, and the sky above, getting bluer and bluer the longer I look. Is this how Anaïs feels all the time? Distant and safe? How do I feel like that when I crave the heat and terror of being near her?

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