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This was how it began.
“Matteo,” she said. “I know what you came from. And I feel deeply for all that you have endured. But you have it wrong. You don’t need to close your heart, you need to open it. You must. At a certain point, you must. If you don’t, then it will always be hard like this, and when things happen, when people make mistakes in your presence, they will be nothing but horrendously penalized for it. And you will not be able to see... You won’t be able to see. This is the problem. The problem is that you could not understand where his pain was coming from. And that is something I cannot teach you. It’s not about putting a smile on your face, it’s about learning empathy. He is upset because his own standing in life will not change. He is upset because mine did. It has nothing to do with thinking I am not worthy, so much as he thinks he should have been. It isn’t fair. You can accept a certain amount of poverty if you look around you and see others suffering with you, but when someone transcends... It gives you false hope. And this is not a typical trajectory, it is not something other people can dream of. What I was given is not... It is not about my own cleverness. I am made by an act of great mercy shown to me by you. But will all the people get so much mercy shown to them?”
“He is not homeless. He has work. He is not suffering.”
“It doesn’t matter. It is a feeling of not being able to move positions in life.”
“But I think you are wrong,” Matteo said. “It is not because I feel nothing, it is because I feel too much.”
The words were dragged from him, jagged bits of glass pulled through his chest, his throat. Feelings—good and bad—always existed alongside each other in his heart and he could never separate one from the other.
The trick for him had been to have none and here he was...bleeding with it.
“Matteo...” She put her hand on his arm and looked up at him. “Surely you must know by now how very much I love you.”
His whole body went stiff, and his heart turned to stone. Everything in him rejected that simple, softly spoken statement. “No,” he said.
“I do. I do love you and...”
“You were warned. You were told. There will be no love between us. Not ever.”
Love.
Love was the greatest enemy.
For him, love was toxic.
He wished it didn’t exist.
He wished it were so.
“It’s too late. There already is. And love is what you need, you hardheaded ass. You need to feel something in that great, mountain of a chest of yours. You cannot be a rock forever.”
“I must be a rock, immovable. For it is emotion that caused me to lash out at that man. A sense of anger. Of what I thought to be right, colored by the way I felt. It is not good. I must know what is right, and it must never change, regardless of the circumstances. You are right. I violated all which I had chosen to be in the way that I behaved tonight, and I did it in a room full of people. No. You will not entice me to more feeling, Mouse.”
“Then I never did remove the thorn. And I was never your mouse, not really. Because it’s still there, festering away, creating a wound that will never, ever heal. You don’t want it to heal. You wanted it to sit there, causing you pain, because it makes you feel good to know it’s there, because you can protect yourself. And you can say whatever you wish about protecting the kingdom but it isn’t the truth. You don’t want to feel because then you have to cope with being human. With being vulnerable. And we both know it’s the thing you fear most. Making mistakes. Being seen as weak. Crying out with pain. But... Perhaps Violet is right. Perhaps it is what you need.”
“What does Violet have to do with anything?”
“Never mind. Just tell me... Could you love me? Do you think there is a chance you could, even a little bit?”
“It is an impossibility. I cannot love you.”
“You cannot? Or you will not?”
“They are the same, for I am a king. And what I will is simply what is.”
The look on her face was devastated, crushed, but she had known. There was not another person on earth who knew him half so well as she did. She should not be surprised. She should not be so wounded. And he... He should not respond to it. “We wed tomorrow,” he said. “We have the rest of our lives to disagree.”
“I don’t want that.”
“You’re mine,” he said. “Mine.” And he pulled her to him and kissed her, fiercely. And she returned it. Giving back everything he gave to her. Matching him, with each and every kiss. He stripped her of her gown and allowed her to strip him of his suit. And then it was just the two of them, here in his room, this place where they had compared scars and nightmares. This place where they slept together, tangled up in each other, just enough that it kept the dreams away. And this was the only thing he could do now. The only thing that felt right. For he was a naked mass of too many feelings, and it was all her fault. This was all her fault. And tonight had demonstrated that what he was afraid of was exactly what would come to pass if he gave in.
Oh, but it was a short bridge, to firing someone and making threats of the dungeon to actually following through with it. To disallowing disloyal talk about the Queen, to demanding total control over a group of people who refused to live under the King’s command.
Such a short bridge to what his father had become. And the vision of it now, the clarity there, was a rolling tide of horror.
But her mouth was not. For here things made sense. She made sense.
