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At one in the afternoon, for the second time in twelve hours, Zahra bursts through his bedroom door.
“Pack a bag,” she says. “We’re going to London.”
June helps him stuff a backpack with jeans and a pair of shoes and a broken-in copy ofPrisoner of Azkaban,and he stumbles into a clean shirt and out of his room. Zahra is waiting in the hall with her own bag and a freshly pressed suit of Alex’s, a sensible navy one that she has apparently decided is appropriate for meeting the queen.
She’s told him very little, except that Buckingham Palace has shut down communication channels in and out, and they’re just going to show up and demand a meeting. She seems confident Shaan will agree to it and willing to physically overpower him if not.
The feeling rolling around in his gut is bizarre. His mom has signed off on them going public with the truth, which isincredible,but there’s no reason to expect that from the crown. He could get marching orders to deny everything. He thinks he might grab Henry and run if it comes down to that.
He’s almost completely sure Henry wouldn’t go along with pretending it was all fake. He trusts Henry, and he believes in him.
But they were also supposed to have more time.
There’s a secluded side entrance of the Residence that Alex can sneak out of without being seen, and June and his parents meet him there.
“I know this is scary,” his mom says, “but you can handle it.”
“Give ’em hell,” his dad adds.
June hugs him, and he shoves on his sunglasses and a hat and jogs out the door and toward whatever way this is all going to end.
Cash and Amy are waiting on the plane. Alex wonders briefly if they volunteered for the assignment, but he’s trying to get his emotions back under control, and that’s not going to help. He bumps his fist against Cash’s as he passes, and Amy nods up from the denim jacket she’s needling yellow flowers into.
It’s all happened so quickly that now, knees curled up to his chin as they leave the ground, is the first time Alex is able to actually think about everything.
He’s not, he thinks, upset people know. He’s always been pretty unapologetic when it came to things like who he dates and what he’s into, although those were never anything like this. Still, the cocky shithead part of him is slightly pleased to finally have a claim on Henry. Yep, the prince? Most eligiblebachelor in the world? British accent, face like a Greek god, legs for days?Mine.
But that’s only a tiny, tiny fraction of it. The rest is a knot of fear, anger, violation, humiliation, uncertainty, panic. There are the flaws everyone’s allowed to see—his big mouth, his mercurial temper, his searing impulses—and then there’s this. It’s like how he only wears his glasses when nobody’s around: Nobody’s supposed to see how much he needs.
He doesn’t care that people think about his body and write about his sex life, real or imagined. He cares that they know, in his own private words, what’s pumping out of his heart.
And Henry. God, Henry. Those emails—thoseletters—were the one place Henry could say what he was really thinking. There’s nothing that wasn’t laid out in there: Henry being gay, Bea going to rehab, the queen tacitly keeping Henry in the closet. Alex hasn’t been a good Catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament. They were supposed to stay safe.
Fuck.
He can’t sit still. He tossesPrisoner of Azkabanaside after four pages. He encounters a think piece on his own relationship on Twitter and has to shut down the whole app. He paces up and down the aisle of the jet, kicking at the bottoms of the seats.
“Can youpleasesit down?” Zahra says after twenty minutes of watching him twitch around the cabin. “You’re giving my ulcer an ulcer.”
“Are you sure they’re gonna let us in when we get there?” Alex asks her. “Like, what if they don’t? What if they, like, call the Royal Guard on us and have us arrested? Can they do that? Amy could probably fight them. Will she get arrested if she tries to fight them?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Zahra groans, and she pulls out her phone and starts dialing.
“Who are you calling?”
She sighs, holding the phone up to her ear as it rings. “Srivastava.”
“What makes you think he’ll answer?”
“It’s his personal line.”
Alex stares at her. “You have his personal line and you haven’t used it until now?”
“Shaan,” Zahra snaps. “Listen up, you fuck. We are in the air right now. FSOTUS is with me. ETA six hours. You will have a car waiting. We will meet the queen and whoever the fuck else we have to meet to hash this shit out, or so help me God I will personally make your balls into fucking earrings. I will scorched-earth your entire motherfucking life.” She pauses, presumably to listen to him agree because Alex can’t imagine him doing anything else. “Now, put Henry on the phone, and donottry to tell me he’s not there, because I know you haven’t let him out of your sight.”
And she shoves her phone at Alex’s face.
He takes it uncertainly and lifts it to his ear. There’s rustling, a confused noise.
