Page 78 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

My arm aches where the bullet went through. It does that now when it’s cold. The doctor says it will do that for the rest of my life. I can live with it.

Aurelio doesn’t seem to feel the cold. He is in white again, the same gold sash he wore to the cathedral in Washington, because he said he was damned if Reinhardt got to ruin it for him. It sits higher than it did. His hand keeps drifting to the curve of his belly and then away again, because there are cameras on him and he was raised not to fidget.

There are cameras on me too. I am trying not to think about that.

Three weeks, the doctors say, until the baby arrives. Aurelio says fewer. He says he can tell.

Havel is on the far side of the altar in a gray uniform with the household crest back on his collar. He looks like he has never been anywhere else. Gerhard is at the door we came in by, with a radio in his ear. Count Varga is in the front row with his bad hip stretched out into the aisle, and beside him is the dresser from Zurich, who tried to dress me this morning while I argued about it.

I am a grown man. I don’t need anyone to dress me. Not even if I am married to the almost-King.

The rest of the pews are the Assembly, the heads of the great houses, the ambassadors, and a few hundred people who have never seen the inside of this building before and were let in off the square by lottery. That was Aurelio’s idea too. The Archbishop didn’t like it. The Archbishop has had to get used to a lot of things he doesn’t like.

It seems that Reinhardt’s plan to use Aurelio to charm the world and grab power worked at least partly. Aurelio has charmed the world.

But the power is his. He now has strong American allies, both in security and in the political parties.

To use a phrase from my own country, everyone wants a piece of him. And the more progressive politicians in Monteverra have seized the chance to use him to make changes.

He is to be King, yes, but at the cost of absolute rule. He has handed over substantial powers to parliament. He seems fine with that. My prince was never a dictator.

Three streets from here, Reinhardt is being tried for treason. It started Monday.

I gave my statement on the first day. I stood in a box and told them about the barge, and Sully.

The money trail turned out not to be as cold as Havel thought. Trails warm up fast when the man at the end of them has his accounts frozen and his secretary offered immunity.

There is a transfer from a foundation Reinhardt chaired to a shipping company that never shipped anything, dated six weeks before Aurelio ever got on the plane to America.

They read Sully’s name out in court. I hadn’t expected that. He was a shit and he sold me, but somebody said his name out loud in a room full of people, and that is more than he would have gotten otherwise.

Aurelio has not gone to the trial and he is not going to. He made a written statement instead. He says he has already given Reinhardt every minute of his life that he intends to. The verdict will come when it comes.

The organ starts.

Aurelio’s father is not here. He is in a room on the second floor of the palace with a fire lit and a nurse.

He does not know what day it is. Aurelio goes up every morning before breakfast and sits with him for half an hour. Sometimes the old man calls him by his dead brother’s name. Aurelio doesn’t correct him. The Council signed the abdication under the incapacity clause in November, with three doctors and the Archbishop in the room, and the old man signed too, or made a mark that they accepted as a signature.

Aurelio told me about it afterward, in bed, in the dark. That was the only time I have seen him cry since the cathedral.

The law went through the Assembly eight weeks ago. Two hundred and eleven to forty. It is a page and a half long. An omega may inherit and hold the crown alone. An omega may own property, sign contracts, refuse a marriage, and testify in a court of law on the same terms as anyone else. Adultery is not a crime. There are more pages coming, Aurelio says. That page and a half was only the one he needed first.

So he is not being crowned today because of who he married. He would have been crowned if he had walked in here alone. I know that. He made sure the whole country knows that. And then he chose to bring me anyway.

The Archbishop begins to speak. They are in old Monteverran. I have been trying to learn it but I still only catch one in three.

Aurelio answers. His voice is steady and it carries. Nobody is holding cue cards. He doesn’t kneel for the crown. He asked about that, at the first rehearsal, and it turned out that the King of Monteverra has never knelt for it. Only the consort does.

The crown is small, made of gold and dark red stones. The Archbishop lifts it and sets it on his head, and the cathedral goes so quiet I can hear the snow ticking against the windows.

Then it’s my turn.

I still think this is insane.

Havel walks me the six steps to the front. I have done this in rehearsal with a folding chair in place of my prince, soon to be my king.

I kneel. The stone is cold through the good trousers. Nobody else in this building has knelt today. Aurelio was very clear about that. Nobody kneels. Nobody bows.