Page 41 of Heavy Crown

“Huh. Interesting. This is all very interesting.” She makes a circular motion with her finger. “You gave me the nickname for the ex, so does that mean you’re in for a Bellerive adventure?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’m in. Thanks. This is—this is really kind.”

Posey loops her arm around my shoulders and draws me into her side. “We’re going to be great friends. I can already sense it.”

Turns out, Alex isn’t just skilled at running a country, he’s also found me someone who already feels like a genuine friend. The first person, other than him, who I’ve experienced an instant kinship with.

While Posey continues peppering me with questions about places in Bellerive I have yet to see, my mind strays to Alex.

How did I get so lucky to end up in his orbit?

seventeen

Alex

My fingers hover over the keyboard on my phone as though threatening to detach from my brain. Yesterday, I told Rory I wouldn’t have time to see her before I left.

I lied.

She agreed to be my friend, but from the moment her lips lingered on my cheek, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her in ways that are anything but friendly. The air around us crackles with sexual tension the instant we’re within reach of each other. Despite my efforts to keep distance between us, she’s dismantling my walls one question at a time.

How can someone be bad for you and so good for you at the same time?

Even if there wasn’t the issue of her being Canadian, she’s ten years younger than me. That’s an age gap I specifically rejected when we were narrowing my wife criteria. Five years in either direction was the most I was willing to concede. On top of that, our lives have been so different. Me, a prince in charge of a country. Her, a farm girl who bakes.

If I’m honest, that’s part of the appeal. She’s so open with her life experiences, as though she’s never learned to put up any walls or airs or played pretend with anyone. From the routines of a milk cow farm to her college exploits, she’s answered every query with unabashed sincerity. She is a joy, an absolute joy to be around, and I’m sucking up every ounce of it. A leech attached to an angelfish.

Tomorrow I leave for Europe, and when I return, I’ll be forced to narrow my choices for a wife. We’re just over two months out from my brother’s wedding, and I agreed to bring my future bride there to let the public and press ooh and aah over the woman who will be their queen.

Will there still be room in my life for Rory after that? By my calculations, as long as we remain just friends, I can keep her for the year until her visa runs out and my coronation is finalized. My slice of normalcy. A bright, glittering diamond in the drudgery of everything I must do.

There’s a knock on my office door, and Brice pokes his head in. “You all set for your whirlwind wife tour?”

“All packed.” I gesture to the seat across from my desk and toss my phone onto the surface. Texting Rory is a bad idea in a list of terrible notions where she’s concerned. “How are you?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Brice shrugs.

I search his somber face. “Somehow I don’t think that’s true. What’s really going on?”

He runs a hand down his face, and his shoulders slouch as though weighed down. “I was visiting with Alzheimer’s patients today, and I had a round of PR for the referendum. Just a shit day, you know? I used to feel sorry for those families when I went to visit. What would it be like to have someone you loved so much completely forget you? Awful. Abso-fucking-lutely awful. And here we are. If the referendum doesn’t succeed, that’ll be us. The lucid days become fewer and fewer. A king reduced to a childlike existence. If we’re lucky, we won’t get the irrational rages, but if we’re not, we won’t even recognize him. It’s fucking terrifying.”

I lean back in my chair and run a hand through my hair. Am I surprised he’s more afraid of the disease than our father’s death? Perhaps not. I haven’t spent the same time with patients and families. Of the three of us, Brice is intimately acquainted with what’s ahead for us. Most days, I try not to think about it. There are so many pieces we need to slot into place before I can consider our father’s mortality. I can’t imagine sitting with it on a regular basis. At the moment, I can barely handle the present, let alone the future.

“The referendum will pass,” I say. “We’re polling at sixty percent. That’s a decent margin, even if we’re not voting until after Nick and Julia’s wedding.”

“What if we don’t succeed? What if something happens and it all goes to shit?”

“If our father, if the king, is adamant about taking control of his… of his death, there are places we can go, things we can do.” Despite our father’s insistence that he wants to die at home, I wasn’t confident in the referendum plan when he laid it out. Yes, the Advisory Council was a split decision on the issue, but we could have broken the tie. Leaving his life-or-death outcome to a public vote seemed foolish to me. We could make the result what he wanted—why chance it? I almost overruled him. But his argument that being the sovereign meant we weren’t allowed to be selfish put the issue into perspective.

Beyond my father, there are many people in the country who’ll have a view on the subject. As leaders, we give Bellerive our best, and the correct path includes the opportunity for debate and a vote. Love, family, life, and death unite us all, and my father believes an issue tied so closely to those fundamentals deserves an open discussion.

He’s a better man than me. I’d have grasped the outcome I wanted. What’s the point in having power if I can’t exercise it once in a while?

Guess I’ll have to work on the instinct to wield my power as I see fit.

“Would he do that?” Brice’s voice is thick.

As the youngest, he’s been the peacemaker, the comic relief, the one Nick relies on, but our father’s disease has rattled him to the core. I’d love to lie to him about our father, and I suspect he wants me to. Truth and reassurance are the only things I can offer.