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“Okay,” I said.
I chose not to dwell on the end of our time here.
I had to start thinking of it as a beginning. No matter how difficult it was. When we returned to the palace, we settled into a pattern. But it was one I didn’t expect. It was reminiscent of our first days on the island. Hercules avoided me. At least, that was what it felt like. Perhaps that wasn’t what was happening.
He was wrapped up in affairs of state. I discovered quickly that life as royalty did not simply mean a life doing whatever you wanted.
Not that I didn’t have a sense of that before—I had seen news stories about royals all my life, but it wasn’t as if I had paid close attention to them, and I definitely hadn’t considered it some kind of guide for my potential later life.
I had never imagined that I might become a queen.
But here I was.
I spent a few hours a day working on ideas for outreach to single mothers in the community. I looked at budgets and talked to palace officials about things like free day-care centers and maternity leave.
It was fulfilling work. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was taking care of Lily. Lily made me happy too, as she always had.
It was nice, also, spending time with my mother. We had years spent apart, and we hadn’t talked like we did in the palace in...ever.
But I was still lonely. I missed Hercules. I missed wasting hours talking to him about everything and nothing. I missed sleeping with him at night.
We kept separate bedrooms here.
I didn’t like it.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked one day as we sat in the garden of the palace, where a massive play structure had been erected for Lily. She was running around, her dark hair flying behind her as she ran, her laughter filling the staid silence of the royal grounds.
I loved that.
Especially knowing what I did about Hercules’s childhood.
“Nothing,” I said.
“That’s a lie,” my mother said. “I know you well enough to know that, even if I haven’t known you as well as I should have for the past few years.”
“You couldn’t help any of that. There’s no point in regret.”
“I don’t say this because I am experiencing regret. At least, not so much. But I can tell that you’re not happy. When you came back from your honeymoon you seemed...different.”
“Well, it’s nice to be on a private island without any responsibilities.”
“And now you have responsibilities.”
“Good ones,” I said. “But it is a lot.”
“I don’t think hard work has ever scared you, Marissa. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you.”
“It’s... Hercules has been very busy.”
“I’ve never known as much about the two of you as I should. I was forbidden from speaking about you when your father was still alive. And we never got a chance to...”
“I fell in love with him,” I said. “The first time I ever saw him. I was sixteen. He didn’t touch me then,” I said hurriedly. “But we got to know each other. Every summer. More and more. And I...I didn’t have the willpower to resist him.”
My mother looked thoughtful. I didn’t know what to expect from her. If she would judge me for that weakness or not.
“I was envious of you in some ways,” my mother said. “I was never carried away by passion of any kind. I married sensibly. I married a man that my parents approved of. There was no joy in our marriage. And we couldn’t speak. I could never tell your father what I wanted from life. I let him send my daughter away because I didn’t have the fortitude to stand on my own two feet and speak for myself. I let you be badly treated because I didn’t stand up for you. And I have regretted it every day since.”
“There is room for regret between us,” I said. “Mom, I know how Dad was. I don’t blame you.”
“Perhaps you should. I look at the way you protect Lily, how you’ve given everything to her, and I should have done the same for you.”
“You weren’t able to. I know that. I understand it.”
“I wish... I wish I would have had a different life. I wish I would have stood up and said what I wanted.”
“Do you really think that he would have given it to you?”
“He might have given me a divorce, and in the end, perhaps that would have been better.”
“Maybe,” I said.
But I didn’t really think so. I don’t know what my mother would have done. I was glad that she was coming into her own strength now, but she couldn’t regret who she had been all those years. She couldn’t change it.
And I didn’t want her to make herself sick over it.
“I guess my point in bringing any of this up is that if you want something different with Hercules, then you should speak up. Otherwise you end up with a lifetime of regret and sadness. You look back and you wonder how you spent so many great years just enduring. Brittle silence and the full absence of a loving touch. I don’t know how or why I subjected myself to that. And maybe I couldn’t have had a different marriage with your father, but perhaps I could have had a different life. Perhaps you could have had a different life. But you still can. Don’t build castles made of regret, because they’re what you’ll live in in the future. Believe me.”
“What if he doesn’t want different?”
Because that was the thing that really scared me.
“Then you’ll be angry. And hurt. But you won’t have to wonder. You won’t have to wonder if there was something you could have done but were too afraid. Your relationship with Hercules...it’s for Lily too. If you need that, then remember that as well. But if you could do it just for yourself... Marissa, that would be a very brave thing to do.” She sighed. “To do more than just endure is a brave thing.” My mother’s words stayed with me for the rest of the day.
I did know how to endure. I had gotten very good at it. I had accepted a life where I wouldn’t have love. Where I wouldn’t have Hercules. In many ways, I had accepted my fate as a martyr to the cause of my daughter, and that was what had made it so easy to go back with Hercules and use Lily as the sole excuse.
But that hope...
That hope inside of me meant something.
It was for me. It was for him. For us and for our love. For what could be.
I had seen the possibility of all that five years ago, and I could still see it now. I wanted it. I craved it.
But I was denying myself because I had looked into my father’s icy stare and been sent away before. Because my mother hadn’t stood up and told me to stay. Or that she would go with me.
Because I had felt abandoned, by my parents, by Hercules.
It had been so much easier to let go, to accept the fact that I walked through life alone, except for Lily. That I lived for her, that I breathed for her.
And there was nothing wrong with that. I did. She was my daughter, and it was my great joy to sacrifice for her.
But there was more
. I wanted more.
And wanting more for myself meant wanting more for Lily.
I wanted her to have a happy home. And no, it would never be conventional, because we lived in a castle. There would always be staff around; there would always be matters of state to see to. But we would never want for anything. There were incredibly wonderful, privileged things we could have as well, but why couldn’t we have love on top of that?
The house that I had grown up in had been stale.
My mother had been right. It had been gray.
And I had gone to escape the gray down at the shores of the ocean, where I had found Hercules.
He had been my escape. He had been my salvation, not my ruin.
But only if I was willing to reach out a hand and ask.
Ask to be saved. For both of our sakes.
Because we could have one of two lives. The gray and the bleak, or we could have it all.
We could have paradise. A walk through the fog, or a life staring out at the bright, brilliant sea.
And I knew which one I felt we were meant to have. I knew what I wanted. But one of us was going to have to be brave enough to take it.
I knew all that Hercules had been through, and I could understand why the inside of him felt a little bit too broken for things like love.
But I also knew that he could make a decision to put it behind him.
I also knew that we could have more, that bravery might have a cost, and love might take work, but it was worth it in the end.
For what Hercules and I could have was a jewel beyond price, and I had to be willing to sell everything I owned to possess it. All of it.
I had to be willing to do more than exist in the possibility of a relationship and throw down a definitive gauntlet.
Do you always do as you’re told?
He had asked me that once, so long ago. And that was when I had realized that I did, and that I didn’t want to, not anymore.
It was the same now.
I didn’t want to simply do as was expected. I didn’t want to do as I was told.
I wanted to live bright and brilliant, with him, with our hearts twined around each other as I knew they could be.
