Page 61 of Omega’s Fealty

We take the elevator down to the ninth floor where the hotel keeps its restaurant and bar. I haven’t been down here before. There is a wide stone terrace that runs the length of the river side. All of it has been cleared.

The chairs are stacked and the bar is dark.

The terrace doors are open, cold air rushing through it from the river.

The river.

The river where Roan’s body might still be.

I’m not going to think about that.

He is still alive. He has to be.

The security team herds me out onto the terrace. The whole width of the river is below us with the light going down the far end of it, gold and then red. The bridges are lit and the towers on the other bank are catching the last of the sun on their glass. The wind comes up the river and over the balustrade and into my face, smelling of water and cold and the city.

The camera is on a tripod at the balustrade, facing back toward the building so that the river will be over my shoulder. A small light on a stand. Two crew, a woman and a man, both betas, both in black and both careful not to look at me. Reinhardt stands off to one side with his coat buttoned to the throat and his hands behind his back.

They’ve put a mark on the stone to show me where to stand. I move toward it without being asked. I know how to do this. I’ve done it a thousand times. Stand on the mark, look at the camera, say the words that have been put into my mouth.

The woman comes forward and puts a small microphone at my collar. She has to lift the edge of the gold to clip it and she does it with the very tips of her fingers.

She steps back and says in English, “Whenever you’re ready, Your Highness.”

I nod, putting my hands together in front of me, then I look into the lens. I wait until the cameraman signals he’s ready for me.

I know how to do this. I school my face into that neutral pleasant expression that I always use. I find the place in my head.

“People of Monteverra,” I say. “Friends in America and across the world. I have asked to speak to you myself tonight, because there is something I wish you to hear from me and not from anyone else.”

I hear my own voice go out over the terrace and away over the river. It sounds right.

“Over a month ago now, I was taken. Many of you know the outline of what happened. I have not spoken about it, and I will not speak about it in detail now, because there are parts of it that belong only to me. But I will tell you this. In the dark, a man learns what matters to him and in the dark, I was only thinking about one man.”

I do not look at Reinhardt. I can feel him watching me intently.

“I have known Prime Minister Reinhardt all my life. He stood beside my father before I was born. He stood beside me when I could not stand. And when I was returned to the light, it was his face I looked for. Our traditions say that a prince of Monteverra may not give his hand to a beta. I honor our traditions. I have given my whole life to them. I am a loyal prince of Monteverra. I always will be. But my heart is desperate to break with this one tradition.”

The sun has gone down to a line. The light on the stand is doing most of the work now.

“I have my dear father’s blessing, and now I beg you for yours. I—”

The wind changes.

It comes up over the balustrade the same as before, river and cold and city, and there is coffee in it.

Not the hotel’s. Not a cup somewhere on a table below. The scent is dark, and roasted, and warm. I know it the way I know my own. It goes into me through the nose and down and every part of me stops.

I stop.

My mouth is open on the next word and the word does not come. My eyes go past the lens, over the camera, over the balustrade, down, into the dark on the near bank where the park is, where the lights have not come on yet under the trees. I cannot see anything. There is nothing to see. There is only the wind on my face and him in it.

He is alive.

He is here.

It is one second. Perhaps less. I feel Reinhardt’s head turn.

I bring my eyes back to the lens. I find the word.