He nodded. “And factually inaccurate. Emperor Commodus sent one hundred men to execute his sister, Lucilla. Compared to that, we are angels.”
“Now that you mention it, I do see a halo above your head, brother.”
“Ugh! Whatever! I’m leaving.” She stomped her foot and marched out the door.
“If you need help with wedding invites—”
Slam.
Once again, Persephone grumbled in protest as she dashed to Arty’s feet like a tiny child, and of course, he picked her up. “Do not mind the silly humans, Persephone. They are all grumpy today.”
“Should we be leaping for joy at what just happened?” I asked, and though I did not want to even seriously entertain any of this, I still needed to ask. “Are they truly serious with this, Arty? An arranged marriage in this day and age?”
He sighed, setting the dog on her feet. “Are you forgetting I also had an arranged marriage?”
“That does not count! You’ve been in love with Sophia since you were, like, twelve.” Though everyone knew Sophia could not stand him when we were kids. He was shy, quiet, lanky, and possessed a severe case of foot-in-mouth syndrome whenever it came to socializing with those of the opposite sex. It was so severe that I still cringed when I thought about how he used to be.
“It counts because God knows I wouldn’t have been able to ask her out.” He smirked, walking up toward the windows to stare out at the moon.
There were a dozen jokes I could have made to tease him about those days. However, this wasn’t the time to reminisce about the past. My future was on the line.
“Arranged or not, you knew about her and loved her well before you married her. We may be ‘royals,’ but that doesn’t mean we have to act like it’s eighteen hundred, Arty. It is not normal to throw two strangers into marriage and let them figure it out for money.”
“That might actually be the most normal thing in the world.” He snickered, reaching into his suit pocket and taking out the red package of mints. “Everyone marries for either love or fortune. More often than not, it is fortune under the guise of love. People convince themselves they love someone because it is in their best interest to do so. But the truth is, love often does not survive under poverty.”
“And fortune cannot withstand a lack of love,” I added, outstretching my hand for some of the mints on his desk.
He frowned and shared only one before tossing a few into his mouth. “Then what will you have us do, Gale?” he questioned. “Dismiss the help and staff? Liquidate assets? What are you willing to give up to the state first?”
“Arty, it cannot be that bad! What mistakes could you of all people have made? You’ve been running the family affairs like a general for years now. If we have to make adjustments, we make adjustments—”
He turned from the window to me. “Father is ill, Gale.”
All of me froze.
I wasn’t sure if my heart was beating faster or slower, but I was certain it was no longer regular. I stared into the blue-green eyes of my brother, the same eyes I had, the Monterey eyes.
“What?” was the only word I could utter.
He, however, calmly walked over and lifted my journal from the desktop. “I thought you had stop journaling after Grandfather died. However, to all of our surprise, you followed his instructions and made it a point of habit to write down at least one thing every day. I have, but for some reason, I am not constant.”
“Arty, enough about the journal. What—”
“Father called journaling monotonous and never bothered with it. But I now wish he had. Maybe Grandfather was right. The secret to avoiding ‘the family curse’ might be in writing.” He mocked the words the family curse because neither he nor I believed in it and truly hated the outlandish old man from the seventeenth century who had made a fortune writing about our royal family.
That’s not important now!
“What you are trying to tell me is—”
“Father has early-onset dementia, Gale.”
“How long?” I whispered, hoping he was wrong.
However, Arty merely nodded, placing my journal back in front of me. “Long enough for him to nearly bankrupt the monarchy,” Arty nearly sneered.
“Bankrupt? Do you hear yourself, Arty? Our family is worth millions. How the hell does one man burn all of that?”
He just kept shaking his head. “I thought I had it under control. I took over the accounts, but he’d go back and give loans in such stupid schemes... I can’t even begin to explain it, Gale. It is not as if we are going to just lose everything at once or even in months. Of course, we will always have the money we gain from the sovereignty tax. We have enough to coast for a while. But eventually, we may need to give up estates, lands, and the moment we begin...”
“They will call it the death of our monarchy.”
The press would hound us, claim that it was the curse of Monterey, and we were coming to an end. The people would fear they would need to support us, which meant more taxes. The people of Ersovia loved us, but I was not sure they did that much. If the taxes led to anger, that could lead to calls for abolishment.
Such a mess.
My chest felt tight. My fingers ached with a sensation I could not describe. Gripping my chair, I looked up at him. My brother, his face now grim and pale, had bags under his eyes, appearing almost out of nowhere. His shoulders slumped forward as he stared, transfixed by nothing in particular on the desk.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He told me not to. No one but Mother, Doctor Schulz, and I know,” Arty whispered. “I wanted to tell you. But then part of me thought he’d overcome it like he’s overcome everything before. He’s king. He’s held up Ersovia without fail. How could he not win? How could he be sick, I thought? Everything I know, I learned from him. I watched him give his life to this family and country. It is his pride and joy that we are who we are. So, how could I tell him it was he who caused our problems? All that hard work, shattering in his own hands? It would crush him.”
This was one of the things I found insufferable about being a monarch; with each generation, the pressure grew. No one wished to be the king that lost the kingdom. No one wanted to be the last royal family. It was too heavy a burden, and I had always done my best to avoid any and everything that could burden my life any more than it already was. For nearly twenty-seven years, I had been free to do whatever and go wherever I pleased...within reason.And I knew such a thing was only possible because my father and brother held the world on their shoulders for us. But now that my father was ill, Arty couldn’t possibly do anything more.
I could hear my grandfather’s voice in the back of mind, saying with his deep vibrato, What did I tell you? The further you try to run from your duty, the narrower the path becomes.
I could finally hear my heart beating. It was loud and painful, begging me to do the right thing, the selfless thing.
I really did not want to listen, though.
“I will seriously consider it.” I sighed, hanging my head. “Whoever is it that they wish me to marry.”
“Whomever? Even Lady Maeve Cudmore?”
“Oh, dear God!” I cringed, my skin crawling.
“I’m merely joking,” he had the audacity to say, a small smile on his face. Though the rest of him still looked weighed down.