Glitter

  My mother made a startled sound in her throat, but the King spoke over her before she could form actual words.

  “If this situation is anyone’s fault, it’s hers,” he added, pointing a finger right at my face. “She dropped that godforsaken plate and made me jerk and squeeze too hard. That’s the moment it all went wrong.”

  Rage boiled off my fear and set me quivering. I wanted to speak up; I wanted to tell my mother about that awful sound. But my tongue was dry and I couldn’t move past my fiery indignation at having been accused of being responsible for the dead woman at our feet.

  “Do you truly think anyone will believe that when it’s your fingerprints bruised into her skin?” my mother asked, and I saw a smile hover at the corner of her mouth when the King’s face went pale. “Extenuating circumstances notwithstanding, you’ve done something unforgivable here, Justin. You have to make this right.”

  “Of course,” he said, with all the meekness of a mouse trapped beneath a lion’s paw.

  “You’ll marry Danica.”

  “What?” Our voices burst forth in perfect unison.

  “I will not,” His Highness said, sounding insultingly horrified.

  “You will,” my mother said calmly. “Or you’ll lose your kingdom.”

  At that the King stood back, scoffing openly, hands on his hips, a wide expanse of sleek skin showing above his perilously slouching breeches. I remember how my eyes fastened onto that skin and I couldn’t tear them away. We see so little bare skin at court, and this was the most desired boy in the kingdom. And a murderer. It was incredibly jarring. “You think the accidental death of a strumpet who forgot to use her safe word could take my kingdom from me?”

  “No, no, I don’t,” my mother said, still in that deadly calm voice. “But we both know the Board of Nobles are on the verge of doing just that, murder notwithstanding.”

  His Majesty opened his mouth as though to argue, then had the good sense to swallow his words.

  “Since we’re discussing marriage, here’s a proposal. Four years ago my husband inherited his stepbrother’s place in your palace and a surprisingly significant number of voting shares.” She paused, looking him square in the eye. “We have enough votes to preserve your position as CEO and King. I’ve run the numbers, as I’m certain you have. As of the next regular meeting, without my cooperation, the nobles will succeed in their planned coup. We both know it.”

  He didn’t counter her words—they must have been true. Horror lanced through me, despite everything else. Could Justin Wyndham’s rule truly be so precarious?

  She circled him then, treading silently on bare feet, the lace edge of her dressing gown trailing behind her. “If this scandal comes to light, I guarantee you’ll lose your great-grandfather’s kingdom, Justin.”

  He flinched at her use of his given name this time.

  “You’ll be nothing but a potentially brilliant nineteen-year-old forced-out CEO, with all your inherited wealth and no power to do anything with it.” She paused before delivering the killing blow. “Besides, the next regular meeting isn’t your only problem. At this rate even my husband’s shares can’t keep you in place for long.”

  “You’re talking about the Queen’s shares.” The King sounded wary, and I felt a prickle of unease at the Q word.

  “Just so. Those votes were mooted at your mother’s death and will only become active again when you wed. You need a cooperative bride even more than you need my husband’s support.”

  That was when I realized how calculated this move was. How calculated her placement of me in the King’s path had always been.

  “You want our silence and cooperation? Not to mention access to those final crucial shares?” she asked. “Marriage to Danica is the nonnegotiable price.”

  With those words I was reduced to a pawn in a corporate power struggle. The total worth of my entire life was thenceforth measurable as a tiny percentage of ownership in Sonoma Inc. I became a price tag.

  “Besides,” my mother continued, in a tone so businesslike it made my skin crawl with hatred, “without the backing of the King I won’t have the influence or resources to do what needs to be done to clean up this unfortunate situation.” She glanced over to where the poor woman’s small body lay: soft features nestled amid a sea of satin and lace. “Who is she?”

  The King sighed as though this had all become, at worst, a tiresome inconvenience. “Sierra. Sir Jared Jamison’s daughter.”

  “A nobody, then,” my mother said, and my jaw dropped. Not only because it was so cold and unfeeling, but also because before my father’s promotion, this dead girl would have been my social superior in every conceivable measure. Even now, it’s only my potential to inherit votes from my father that raises me above her. And only just.

  The titles and social status embraced by the court never mattered much to me. Perhaps because I had neither. But to dismiss a person entirely because of that lack? The sentiment struck at my belly like a bare-knuckled punch.

  “That’ll make things easier. A coroner will need to be bribed, false scans produced…of an aneurysm, I think. And any sign of bruising covered thoroughly enough that the entire world will be able to scrutinize high-resolution footage from her open-casket funeral without finding any sign of misdeed.”

  “We can’t have an open casket,” the King piped up impulsively. Foolish man. You don’t argue with Angela Grayson.

  “A closed casket for a nobleman’s daughter—even a minor one? You may as well release a public statement that you’ve something to hide.”

  “Mother—”

  “I don’t need you,” His Majesty spat, anger overriding his pathetic act of contrition. “I can fix this myself.”

  “Can you?” She paced slowly before him, her eyes never leaving his. “How will you find a coroner? How will you justify his bribe to your accountants? Do you intend to mask those bruises on her neck yourself? And those are just the easy parts. The sad truth is that a boy stupid enough to accidentally kill his own lover is far too stupid to cover it up.”

  My fingers rose to my mouth at my mother’s boldness.

  “Or,” the King said, sounding bored, “I could simply make you and your lovely daughter disappear. Tomorrow.”

  Shards of fear ribboned down my spine.

  “Can you?”

  My mother and the King stood toe to toe. It looked like a perfect stalemate—until she raised her head so the Lens in her right eye caught the dim light.

  “You’re recording this!” the King accused. And in the most foolish action I’d ever seen him take, he grabbed a lace-edged handkerchief from the dead woman’s décolletage and used it to cover his face.

  “I think the European Parliament would be fascinated to see the footage of the last few minutes, don’t you?” my mother said with a razor-sharp edge of danger in her voice.

  The King swallowed visibly. My mother had made sure to capture everything in her recording. And the lack of sound made no difference with our lip-reading technology. Creating an accurate transcript would be child’s play. Possibly not admissible in a court of law, but since when was the legal system required to utterly ruin a man?

  “You may feel powerful, Justin; you may be the King and CEO of one of the most prosperous companies on Earth, but if you don’t cooperate, you’re going to remember the hard way that this is not the seventeenth century, no matter how your employees live and dress. You are not God, and you are not even the Sun King. Can you imagine, I wonder, the lengths to which France might go to see you dethroned? This kingdom disbanded?”

  “This—this is blackmail!”

  “And this is murder,” my mother said, flinging one arm toward the body on the floor. “Take your pick.”

  “She’s a child!” he snapped, flinging an arm in my direction. “An enfant!”

  “Danica is hardly younger than your illustrious self, my liege,” she said acerbically. “You’re nineteen; she’ll be eighteen in six months. You marry within a week of he
r birthday or this deal goes away.”

  That snapped his mouth closed. He stared at her. And though the seconds rolled past slowly—drawn out in that way terrible situations have of bending time—I was certain that a full minute ticked by before something changed in the King’s eyes and I saw surrender.

  For both of us.

  And I said…nothing.

  “HOW CAN WE bear such secrets?” my father asks, as though sharing in my silent rememberings. He sounds oddly lucid as the drug takes hold of him. “You had such a bright future ahead. With your computer programming and math skills, you’d have been a brilliant researcher, or engineer. But a Queen hasn’t got time for such things…all that potential, squandered,” he whispers, his eyes closing in an expression of bliss that makes bile rise in my throat.

  Typical. Even after recognizing his responsibility, he does nothing. I sit back on my heels and try to think clearly. He’s grinning to himself, and though his eyes are closed, he’s conscious. He does look happy, and the drug obviously works quickly. Temptation licks at my conscience, and I pick up one of the patches and hold it up to the light. Six hundred euros a week. Six hundred. A prickle traverses my spine. I know a lot of people who would pay well for such euphoria.

  I shake my head against the thought, but math has always been a strength of mine, and the sums are stacking up and multiplying in my brain without provocation. I stand and pace. There are several thousand people living and working in the palace. Could I get one hundred buyers? More? Numbers add themselves in my head until I reach a quite satisfying total. It puts me into the realm of possibility in a way that selling jewelry never did.

  But drugs?

  I glance up at the ceiling. A room M.A.R.I.E. doesn’t monitor? Here in my home? I stare around the familiar study; it’s a typical Versailles room, with paintings on every wall and gilded trim along a plaster ceiling, painted with a faux-rococo fresco. It’s not just a bit of hallway, like that stretch downstairs—now haunted in memory if not in actual fact. A truly private room. The possibilities sprawl out before me, as though I were gazing into a pair of mirrors angled to reflect each other into infinity. Terrible, unthinkable possibilities.

  If you truly think your pathetic life is worth five million euros.

  Is my life worth doing what it would take to get my hands on five million euros?

  A thunderous pounding puts an end to my number-crunching. My mother wouldn’t knock, and none of my friends would pound that hard. The King, then.

  I sent the bots away without my belongings. It appears I defied the King.

  I want to weep from the bone-deep weariness I’m already feeling, only to have to face my fiancé again. I rise from the floor, grab my box from the desk, and turn to my father. “Do not come out,” I order, pointing a finger down at him as though he were a naughty child. Not far from the truth tonight.

  As I approach the atrium the pounding grows louder, but over the noise, His Majesty growls, “I will override your security in ten seconds.” It’s possibly an empty threat; personally forcing his way into the private rooms of nobility, even untitled nobility like my father, would almost certainly cost the King more influence than he’s willing to lose.

  But the angrier he gets, the less I can count on him to act in his own best interest. I spend a few precious seconds pushing back my fear and revulsion, then fling the front door wide, and my liege nearly clocks me in the face.

  “Ah, Justin. It’s you.” I rest a hand on the doorframe and strike a pose, cocking my head to one side, my hip to the other. “I was retrieving a few personals from my father’s safe and must not have heard your knock.”

  He rolls his eyes, and I vow I can hear his teeth grind. “You sent my bots back.” When I say nothing, he adds, “Empty-handed.”

  “Is that where they went?” My face is utterly impassive. “I didn’t realize. I simply told them to go while I packed some”—I clear my throat and arch one dark eyebrow—“delicates, and when I finished they were gone. Personally, I’m not very impressed by M.A.R.I.E.’s inability to detect obvious intention. Perhaps she’s in need of an update.”

  I see his jaw working furiously; he wants to accuse me of something, but my story is too simple for holes. The best lies always are. “What’s in that box?”

  My lashes don’t so much as flicker. “You wouldn’t ask a girl to spill all her secrets, would you?”

  He glares at me with eyes darkened by anger that spark like obsidian. “We are now your guardian as well as your intended; We would like to know what is being brought into Our wing of the palace.” The We again. Though this time it’s rather satisfying to have driven him to it.

  “If you must know, it’s photographs. I’m leaving hearth and home tonight; it seems only fitting to bring a few mementos of my life before you hijacked my freedom.”

  He hesitates, his eyes narrowed, the spots of rouge on his cheeks looking nearly—but not quite—gaudy. “I want to see them,” he says, more like a two-year-old than the ruler of a wealthy principality, teenager or not. He’s always been fascinating to watch in that way. A spoiled childhood has left him an emotional infant.

  I don’t break eye contact as I raise the top of the box.

  The top compartment holds just what I said it did, and the false bottom is well crafted—though if he were to take the box from me he’d be bound to notice its unusual heft. His hands move forward, reaching for the box as though he heard my private thoughts. His gloved fingertips are centimeters away when I snap the lid closed with a clack that echoes through the chamber.

  “Not yours,” I say simply, enjoying the ability to deny him something. Anything.

  Without being dismissed, I turn—my heavy skirts whispering against the faux-weathered-wood floor.

  “Did you bring the bots back with you, Justin?” I ask over my shoulder. “I wasn’t finished with them.” Sometimes I think his boiling rage is the only thing left in the world that can still warm my heart.

  Under the King’s watchful eye, I play the perfect mistress, directing M.A.R.I.E. as the bots pack my things, from gowns and cloaks to chemises and stockings—even my rather extensive collection of silk and satin underclothes. I refuse to allow him to see how uncomfortable that makes me. Instead, I stand perfectly straight—so straight I can barely feel my corset—and point languidly, with long, graceful motions, making full use of the poise my mother drove me to acquire.

  I see now that I shouldn’t have worried about hiding the box of euros from the bots to begin with; halfway through the process, I proffer the box to a faceless bot that places it in a gilt-and-lacquer chest, where it’s soon covered by a Venetian lace shawl. Curiosity isn’t in M.A.R.I.E.’s programming.

  I wish I’d invited Molli to spend the night instead of tearing out of the ballroom. With Molli here, I wouldn’t have checked my box, I wouldn’t have gone to confront my father, and I wouldn’t have discovered his drug habit. Or the temptation I’m fighting. It’s odd to think that my entire world would be far brighter right now if I’d only stopped to grab my best friend.

  “I don’t know why you’re bringing all of this,” His Royal Highness says, fluttering his hands—almost hidden by lace cuffs—at the heaps of satin and damask. “Half of this clothing is utterly unsuitable for a consort to the King.”

  “Perhaps if you had given me more notice,” I say, refusing to cringe at the word consort and all it implies, “I could have culled my wardrobe properly. As it is, I’ll have to organize later.”

  He mutters something unintelligible, and I return to my bored pose as the bots finish their work.

  “Dani?” the King says as the final chest closes.

  “Danica,” I correct, for perhaps the millionth time. My family is permitted to call me Dani, not because I approve but because there’s really no way to keep the people who changed your nappies from calling you whatever they wish. I suppose I was trying to make that very point when I started calling him Justin, but as usual, His Royal Obtuseness didn??
?t catch on.

  He rolls his eyes and grips my upper arm. Instantly I’m transported to the past: those hands squeezing Sierra Jamison’s neck in the same sort of punishing grip. It’s the first time the King has attempted to physically bully me into anything. But I’m not small. I’m only perhaps six centimeters shorter than him, and I’m solid rather than willowy. I’m simply too big to drag about thoughtlessly. With my heels planted against the floor, I force myself to resist his strength despite the pain in my arm.

  His fingers slip away and he peers down at his empty hand in a moment of surprise before looking up at me. My blood feels like ice, but this is one battle I must win. Or I’ll never win again.

  “I am not your whore,” I say very quietly.

  The fury flashes again, but he says nothing, only gives me a curt nod and proffers me a more gentlemanly elbow. Resigned, I slip my fingers onto the embroidered sleeve as lightly as I can. With both of us in our finery and my arm on his, we appear to be a blissful couple headed off to a night of feverish revels—not a jailer escorting his prisoner to her cell in the first blush of sunrise.

  WE BEGIN TO climb the ornate Escalier de la Reine, the grand staircase that leads to a set of double doors covered with gold-plated curlicues. They are perhaps the most fanciful prison bars I’ve ever seen.

  As His Majesty approaches, the vestibule doors of the Appartement du Roi swing open automatically. The tremors begin in my spine, and I clench every muscle in my body to keep them from traveling down my arm, to my fingers, where His Highness might notice. For all his lofty titles, His Oh-So-Royal Highness is like any common predator—the secret is never to show fear.

  We follow a plush red carpet down the middle of the rooms—the Guard Room, the Antechamber, the Salon des Nobles, their doors flung wide—and all too soon we’re standing before the only set of closed doors.

  The Queen’s Bedchamber.

  “At your word,” the King says.

  There’s a surprise; he’s instructed M.A.R.I.E. to open the doors only to my voice. Not his. Though I can’t imagine it’ll remain so for long, I’m shocked he granted me even this temporary courtesy.