The Dragon
The palace isquiet and something in me aches. I’ve never felt this before. I’ve known grief. I’ve known the impossibility of missing people you can never see again. This is something else.
Everything echoes. The halls, my chest.
I’ve forgotten how to be alone, after years of knowing nothing else.
Chapter Thirteen
My accommodation isnothing standard for a university student. It’s not on campus, but in a building nearby that offers more luxury, which I would never have asked for, but Lucian insists. I don’t have a roommate and it’s… Well, it’s nothing like I thought. In that it isn’t spare, and I’m certainly not scraping pennies together. Lucian made sure that I have the most up-to-date computer—I wasn’t even sure how to use it at first because I have such an old one and I’m so used to letting everything lag for a while. There is no lag.
The room is fit for a princess—and I guess I’m a queen. That’s a strange aspect to all of this. Alabria is a small enough country that I’m not so well known that I’m recognized at fifty paces, especially when I’m dressed down like any other college student—no makeup and I’ve taken to wearing glasses I don’t need so that I look a bit more serious and a bit less like myself.
I’m not a campus celebrity—but I’m not anonymous either.
In the three weeks since I’ve started school I’ve had three private meltdowns, about four out-of-body experiences, two texts from Lucian and I’ve made four friends. They’ve been very polite about getting details on my personal life, but tonight we’re having a girl dinner in my room—a smattering of cheeses, meats, bread and a lot of candy and wine—and all circumspection has ended.
“So, you’re a queen,” Tefi says, looking at me as somberly as she can after two glasses of wine.
“I suppose,” I say, sounding as regretful as I can after my own two glasses of wine.
“But you’re at university,” Alexandra says.
“Yes, but at first my husband said—”
“Husband!!” Elektra and Zuri howl.
“I mean,” Zuri says, looking apologetic, “I knew you had a husband but it’s just so odd to hear you say it.”
Yes, of course, because everyone else here is experimenting with dating and kissing and sex. I’m somewhere pastexperimentation. I’ve had what I’m sure is the best sex anyone could hope for.
I miss it. I miss him.
“Lucian de Mornay, King of Alabria. Age forty—lord girl, that’s dodgy.” Tefi is eyeballing her phone, with the stats she’s just googled on my husband. “And you’re his third wife. Blink if you need help.” She’s giggling but I wonder if she’s half serious. “No, for real, were you trafficked?”
Yes, she is serious.
“No,” I say. “He’s paying for me to go to school. I’m not a prisoner or anything. And yes, he’s older than me and he’s got a past, but he…”
“Is it a love match or are you in a marriage of convenience?”
“Complicated,” I mumble, grabbing a pillow and holding it to my chest.
“Ohh.” Tefi looks wide-eyed now. “You love him.”
“Well, I… He’s great in bed.” I say this to get a reaction out of them, and maybe even to sound experienced, which, in some ways I am, because Lucian is a creative lover even if he’s been my only one.
“That’s something anyway,” Elektra says.
“Not a small something,” Zuri says. “All the boys I’ve slept with here are shit.”
Tefi laughs. “That’s what you get with an older guy, I guess. Skill.”
I snort. “Yeah, well, there is that. But also the added complication of the other wives.”
“He doesn’t still have them, does he?” Zuri asks.
“Did he murder them?” Tefi shrieks, still looking at her phone.
