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This was the first time we’d slept in a bed together and not touched each other. And it made me feel very cold. I didn’t want us fighting, but I was so upset, even still.
And what was worse was the fact that I felt like I had failed, too.
Elspeth warned explicitly that I had to “think very carefully about the times when you choose to add your burdens on to his already heavy shoulders.”
I knew it. I just knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I had tried, but I didn’t last a week. I couldn’t be like her. I couldn’t suffer quietly and alone. If I was upset, I wanted Gale to know. I needed him to know. So, did that make me a bad queen? Did that mean I was failing to take care of him? Was I wrong to be so upset?
I wanted to call my mom, but I couldn’t just keep running back to my mother every time I had an issue. I needed to put on my big-girl pants finally. The only problem was I felt like I had them on backward.
I had so many things on my mind.
One thing I was damn sure about was us coming back to Rozem with the whole family. We were all going to take a new photo to replace the one in the entrance downstairs.
That was a fact!
When my door burst open, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Until I saw it was him glaring with the fury of all our ancestors. I expected it, so I got up off my bed. “Iskandar—”
“If you ever pull the stunt you pulled today, I promise you I will break your legs!” he snapped at me, and this was the first time I’d ever seen him so damn furious. He was always calm. Then again, he had a right to be pissed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to look at my phone when we were on the train? Then why else would you pick up a damn phone that is not yours?” he hollered at me. “How the hell did you even know the password?”
“I saw you enter it during the wedding—”
“Wolfgang!”
“Sorry!” I hollered; he was right. “It wasn’t like I did it on purpose!”
We shared a room on the train. It was the second biggest room for staff, next to Mr. Balduin. We each had our own bed. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Normally the guards shared, but one rotated being up at night and the other during the day. But the room had electrical issues, so there was no heat, and it was freezing, so we all had to move around and make adjustments. “All of the standard issued phones look the same. I thought I had picked up mine.”
“And once you saw the screen, you should have known it wasn’t yours. But then you saw the alert. And got nosey, and broke every protocol, including my personal space, and looked at my phone. And if that wasn’t good enough, you went and opened your big mouth to the queen! And now look at the situation you have caused.”
He was right. I had fucked up everything. “I tried to keep my mouth shut—”
“I want to smack you!” he snapped, and my hand went up to the back of my head, waiting for it. “Grow up, Wolfgang. If not for your sake, for the damn queen’s! She listens to you. You have influence. You cannot go around telling her half a story.”
I bit the side of my lip, already annoyed with him for always telling me this. Everyone kept saying this.
“If I have influence, so do you!” I snapped, looking him in the eye. “You keep saying you don’t have an opinion. You only do as you are told. Sometimes doing nothing and watching him make a mistake is not a good choice.”
“I’m sure Ambrose thought that, too.”
My mouth dropped open. “That is not fair. It is not the same.”
“It is! When we start to think we know what a good choice is for them…we cross the line.” I saw his point, but I wasn’t going to back down on mine.
Standing taller, I looked him in the eye. “You are right. It was wrong of me to look through your personal belongings. It won’t happen again. But just like you have a duty to the king, I have a duty to the queen. I get that everyone thinks I am just the kid who failed! How my mother pleaded with Queen Elspeth when I failed to become a guard…the first ever in our family to fail. And the queen, given thought to my family’s prestigious and noble history, allowed me to become an assistant to her second son, Prince Galahad, thinking at the very least I’d be able to be her spy in her sons’ affairs.
“It was clear as day nepotism that I became an assistant, with such little training to begin with. I was lucky I knew so many of the palace rules because of how hard I had studied to become a guard. But there was stuff I didn’t understand. And the prince—and the king made fun of me a lot for it. Everyone made fun of me for it. The one person who always had faith I will get it done is Queen Odette. So, if she tells me to tell her the truth, I will tell it to her as I know it. So next time, if you don’t want her to know, do a better job of keeping it from me! I’m on her side!”
“The king is the monarch you serve—”
“Her. Side,” I repeated. “Like the king put me here to be. If he doesn’t like that, he may fire me.”
He stood and stared at me for a long time before walking over. He didn’t say anything. I expected him to smack me over the head, but instead of doing that, he set his hand on my shoulder.
“First, stop letting all the talk get to you. That’s why they talk. So you mess up and they take your place. Secondly, if you were not good at your job, you would not have lasted this long.”
