Ele’s heels clicked on the parquet floor, announcing her arrival before she rounded the corner into Jamie’s office.
“None of the etiquette training quite paid off for the elephant feet,” Jamie teased.
Despite herself, Ele smiled. “I blame walking with a book on my head. It weighed me down, and I had to work harder to get anywhere.”
“Quite a believable theory actually,” he said with a smirk.
Jamie came out from behind his desk, unrolling his sleeves and fastening the buttons. When he reached Ele, he pulled her into a brief hug. “It’s lucky we’re here at the same time. I feel like our schedules have been opposite each other.”
Ele smoothed her skirt for something to do with her hands, refusing to address the deliberate avoidance she’d engaged in over the past two months. “We see each other.”
Jamie turned away and walked to the sitting area. “Sit,” he invited as he lowered himself into the brown leather club chair.
Once Ele was settled, she got straight to the point. “I’ve been summoned to the palace.” When no reaction was forthcoming, she continued, “Do you know what for?”
Jamie didn’t say anything for a bit. His gaze was focused just beyond Ele, into a distant thought only Jamie could see.
“James?” Ele said finally when the silence threatened to drive her mad.
He blinked, returning his gaze to her. “Do you want me to go with you? I’m sure Charlotte can make my excuses if you need me.”
Ele startled. “Do I need you?”
Before, as children, Jamie and Ele had been inseparable. Mischievous, often indulged, and adventurous, they enjoyed their share of scrapes. When Jamie was diagnosed with Leukemia, their dependence on each other only increased. And when he went into remission, the bond was so cemented, no wrecking ball or chisel could come between them. They bore their studies, their troubles, their triumphs, and their punishments together, as one. As the official duties had increased over the last couple of years, they’d found less and less time together. And they’d learned to fight for themselves rather than for each other. Jamie’s offer, therefore, indicated a summons more serious than Ele had imagined.
Jamie didn’t look away. “Perhaps,” he answered cryptically.
Ele instinctively shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine.”
“If it’s any consolation—”
“Your Highness,” Robert said from the door, “we need to leave for the palace.”
Ele stood.
Jamie grabbed her hand as she walked by. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
With that ominous promise ringing in her ears, Ele followed Robert to the car.
“Her Royal Highness, Princess Eleanor, Your Majesty.”
Ele dropped into a deep curtsy at the entrance to the royal chambers. She waited, head bowed, for the command of her queen.
“Eleanor,” the queen intoned, “come in.” The words were delivered, a jovial package wrapped in maternal ribbons, but nevertheless, Ele had waited for them. Because while the words were infused with a warm fondness, protocol must be observed at all times in her presence. She might sound like a doting parent, but you dared not cross her.
Eleanor straightened and walked as regally as she could to the Louis XIV chair awaiting her in front of the queen’s antique desk. In her mind, she replayed Jamie teasingly referring to her as Ele the Elephant, so the smile remained cemented on her face. Before she could sit, she rounded the desk and placed two dry kisses on her grandmother’s cheeks before kissing the royal ring on the hand held out for her.
Ceremony completed and settled in the seat, Ele found herself studying the woman before her. The youthfulness of her grandmother never failed to impress Ele. Of course, she had wrinkles—what seventy-year-old person didn’t carry the passage of time written on their body? But a few wrinkles, a head of mostly chestnut-brown hair streaked liberally with silver, and a blazing intelligence made her grandmother appear half her age.
Lilian’s reign spanned thirty-nine years. She had weathered an economic depression, a number of prime ministers, the death of her only son, a few sordid family scandals, and now, a dull rumble of the masses crying for independence. Her kingdom had been born from the aftermath of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles. A former British colony, the three regions of her country—Nava, Armenta, and Toledo—had lived symbiotically for the past one hundred years. But the aftermath of the depression left one region, Nava, in a more prosperous state. Nava’s trade was tourism, and nothing, not even economic woes, kept people away. Weary of the heavy burden of Toledo and Armenta, Nava’s call for an independent state had grown louder in the last decade. As the strife mounted, Lilian remained steadfast in her refusal to part with Nava.
“You’re looking well.”
“Thank you, Grandmama.”
Queen Lilian Charlotte Eleanor Altamirano studied Ele, her penetrating perusal cutting the space between them so much that Ele couldn’t help but feel like a cell trapped underneath the most powerful microscope on Earth.
“Are you well, Grandmama?”
Queen Lil actually cackled. “The health of a woman one-third of my age.”
Ele offered a jaunty smile and let the comment pass. She could calculate quite rapidly and knew her grandmother’s aim to be true. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
The queen stood and walked to the window, seemingly lost in thought. It was a power play Ele knew intimately. If it were a hundred years ago, the queen would have put Ele in a straw house and stood outside with torches, setting little bonfires all around so Ele could feel the heat.
Thank God for the Geneva convention.
“You are nearing your thirtieth year,” Lilian began.
“As is Jamie,” Ele couldn’t resist saying.
Lilian sliced a look at Ele, surely leaving little bloody scratches in her wake. “James has time yet.”
An uncomfortable tingle began in the back of Ele’s neck, one of those sixth-sense feelings that made people duck to avoid a direct hit.
Lilian turned from her view through the bulletproof glass. “I’ve given you time to adjust and deal with the trauma you suffered. Far too much time, if you ask me, and against my better judgment. It’s been twelve years, and still, you adhere to these ridiculous rituals as if they would save you if someone really wanted you dead.”
The starkness of the delivery, the truth of the statement, prompted the heat to rise in Ele’s belly. Not now. She kept her gaze trained on the woman in front of her, the queen who had been both mother and grandmother to three orphans. The woman who viewed all emotions as a weakness to be utilized. She remembered Tristan’s hands on her face, and she calmed.
“Had that day never happened, you would be married by now.” The harsh light in Lilian’s face softened as she transformed right in front of Ele’s eyes, like a reverse Superman. Lilian came to Ele—as a grandmother, not a queen—and sat in the identical Louis XIV chair. She pulled Ele’s lifeless hands onto her own. “It’s time for you to move on, Eleanor. You won’t do it on your own, Jamie won’t force you to, and your staff initiates all sorts of contortions for you.”
“I don’t know what you—”