I sighed, staring back out the window. What a vacation this had been so far.
22
Trip
General Hardcourt paced across the front of the room, a long pointing stick in his hand. He gestured at the map in front of him and I suppressed a yawn.
I checked my watch. It was early the next morning. I’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep the night before, since it was one emergency after the next as my advisors began to figure out what our response should be.
I knew what our response should be. We needed to destroy the rebels and restore order to the country for the sake of my people. Enough was enough.
“And so, Your Highness, if we place fifty tanks here and here, we can choke them off and they’ll starve before winter.”
The room looked at me. I nodded and pretended like I was listening. “Yes, very good. Go ahead.”
He nodded, pleased. It was always the same thing with the generals. They came up with some great strategy that would win the war, and then they were always wrong for some reason. Sometimes it was troop shortages, sometimes it was not enough equipment, and sometimes it was bad luck. But it was always something.
Starkland used to be a great warrior nation. We’d conquered neighbors and carved out a tiny empire in the midst of Europe. When all the great European countries were rising up and destroying each other, we persevered. We survived world wars and worse. Other monarchies toppled, but Starkland soldiered on, day after day, its people flourishing.
But we hadn’t been at war in a very long time. We didn’t have a large military and had never really needed or wanted one. We had no interest in getting involved in foreign affairs and had never needed to fight our own people before.
And so the war was dragging on. It wasn’t such a simple thing to destroy a group of your own people. My brother had tried and failed, and he was supposed to be some great Starkish savior.
Well, I wasn’t any better. I almost got my ass murdered in my own palace.
I glanced over at the window, and for a second, I thought I saw Bryce. I thought I saw her wearing a light green dress, the skirt blowing in the wind, her hair loose and free in the breeze. But no. It was nothing, just a figment of my imagination.
Damn my fucking pride. I couldn’t have just listened to her and brought her parents to the country estate? I knew it wasn’t that big of a deal. My ministers and advisors would all get over it. Sure, there might be some minor little media scandal, but who fucking cared about that? We were in a war, and someone had nearly killed me in my own bedroom. That was bad. Some shitty news story in a tabloid was nothing compared to that.
But I’d pushed back, and I’d pushed her too hard, all because I was an asshole who couldn’t listen. I was supposed to be a king. I was supposed to know what to do and what to say.
When it came to Bryce, I felt like I knew what to do and what to say, but somehow something came around to fuck it all up. First it was that slap, and then it was the assassin, and now it was my own foolish pride.
General Hardcourt finished his presentation, and some other minor general got up to speak. He went on and on about water movements in the western regions, and as much as I wanted to give a fuck, I just couldn’t.
The meeting dragged on, speaker after speaker, their presentations getting more and more obscure and useless. I gave my assent to almost all of their requests since they were of nearly no consequence at all.
Finally, we came to the break. I stood and the room followed. They bowed, said “Long live the King of Starkland,” and then I left. It was all ceremonial and symbolic, but the stuffy ministers needed their tradition to stay relevant.
Meanwhile, I had nearly no patience for any of it. I found myself walking through the halls without much thought at all about where I was going.
I used to wander these halls when I was a child. We’d summer in the estates when Father was too busy with work. Mother would bring Leo and me out to the country, probably just to give us something to do and to keep us from annoying our dad too much. I’d spent a lot of time in this house, a lot of formative time.
As I walked, I realized where I was gradually. I was one hall down from Bryce’s room.
I made up my mind in that instant. I went to her door and knocked.
“Yes?” she called out.
“It’s me,” I said.
There was a pause. “Come in.”
I opened the door. “I was wondering if you’d like to go for a little walk with me,” I said.
She was sitting on the couch watching television, her legs up on the coffee table. She glanced down at herself and then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a second.”
I leaned up against the doorway. “Take your time.”