“Danica, Dani, where are you?”
“Lord Aaron!” I stop walking, and when the tears flow down my cheeks, it’s from relief and joy rather than frustration. Still, I swipe at them hastily, cursing myself for losing control, not because something bad happened, but because I’d stopped expecting anything good.
“They’ve just released me. No explanation. I blame you.”
“Perhaps,” I confess with a hiccup and laugh that make me sound on the verge of hysteria. Maybe I am.
“Where are you? Your Queenly credentials must have kicked in—you’re completely off my grid.”
“On my way to the medical center to see my father.” Panic is a hurricane within my belly. “Can you meet me? I could use your…advice.”
“I confess myself surprised you’re not surrounded by petitioners. I’ve gotten fifty coms since opening this call.”
“Don’t think they aren’t trying. I left the palace without speaking to anyone. I’m at the west end of the Orangerie. Are you on your way?”
“Have you ever seen me jog?”
A mental picture of Lord Aaron running about with his brocade coattails flying and his coiffure all askew makes another bubble of laughter rise in my throat. “Of course not.”
“You’re about to,” he replies, noticeably breathless.
I turn toward the palace and wait, scanning the various possible exits. Less than half a minute later, my humorous imagining becomes reality before my eyes. I hadn’t even considered his heels, which make his already-stiff gait even more awkward.
“You look ridiculous,” I observe as he takes several deep breaths before touching his damp cheeks to each of mine, faire la bise.
“Only for you, darling. I can’t believe His Highness let me out.”
“You were right; it was me.” Saying so feels more like making a confession than claiming credit. “I told him it was in his best interest not to appear to have kept you specifically from the vote.”
Lord Aaron’s panting stops completely. “Did he ask why?”
“I think he was afraid to lose my momentary good graces,” I say seriously. “I would never spill your secrets.”
“You helped him.”
“I helped you.”
Lord Aaron nods, as both statements are entirely true.
“What do I do?” I whisper.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re Sir Spencer’s love—how can you not know?”
“It’s hard for him to talk about. You think you’re closely monitored?” Lord Aaron shakes his head. “He doesn’t want it.”
“He’d be a good King.”
“Indeed. If only we were actually voting for a King. Well, if we vote for Justin Wyndham, we will be voting for a King. But a vote for Sir Spencer is merely a vote for a pawn of the duke.”
“I made a deal with Justin,” I confess after several long, tense moments. “The Queen’s shares for Saber’s release.”
Lord Aaron’s response is a cross between a snort and a sad laugh. “I wish I could join you. How can I vote against Spencer? And yet a vote for the takeover is a vote to destroy even the tiniest possibility of a future with him.”
“But why? I know it could be a long wait, but divorce—”
“No. Above all, a CEO must curry favor. An ex-wife with the power and votes Lady Julianna will inherit? It would be the end of his career for certain. Look how many power couples stay together despite hating each other.”
“If it’s something Sir Spencer doesn’t want, why does that matter?” What I don’t add, but am certain Lord Aaron hears, is that I know a thing or four about unwanted thrones.
“I’ve thought about it for days, Danica—weeks—and I’m still unsure what the right answer is. How am I supposed to advise you?”
“Ultimately you’ll vote for Sir Spencer, though, won’t you?”
“I will always support Spence, Danica. Always. I just don’t know what that means in this case. Win or lose, he ends this day with an enormous target on his back.”
MY FATHER IS still shirtless when I arrive at his room, but his hair is brushed and pulled back into a queue, his breeches and stockings freshly laundered. A nurse is dusting him with talc, using a broad, short-bristled brush.
“Ah, you’re here,” she says. She helps him into a loose linen shirt, and my throat constricts at the sight of the father I once knew, making an appearance for the first time in over a year. His eyes are clearer than I can recall since the night Sierra Jamison died, with the hands of the man who’s now my husband around her throat. Mere weeks ago I turned down a tempting compromise from His Murderous Majesty, in part because I was afraid my father wouldn’t survive cold-turkey withdrawal from the high doses of Glitter he’d been using. Part of me resents that, with the help of the medical staff, he’s actually done rather well. Another part is simply grateful I’ve caused the death of only one of my parents.
The nurse turns my father’s care over to a liveried dressing-bot, who helps him into his gilet and formal frock coat as the older woman gestures me to the side of the room. “I don’t like releasing him, even for this brief time,” she says sternly.
“But—”
“I understand the necessity. Your Highness,” she adds as an afterthought. “I’m simply asking you to keep a close watch on him. I could send one of my assistants to escort him if you wish.”
I’m already shaking my head. “I need him to appear healthy and hale. The next few hours are of grave importance, even for you.”
The woman purses her lips but nods. The staff of the medical center are rarely natives of Sonoman-Versailles, but their livelihood is as much at stake as any Louie’s. “I’ll have to depend on you to assist him personally, then.”
“I wasn’t raised to be a pampered, helpless Queen,” I say softly.
She cracks a smile, clears her throat and turns her attention to her tablet, swiping through information on his eChart. “He’s been going back and forth between sweats and chills, thus the talc; trying to prepare him for anything.”
I spare a glance at my father, almost regal in his velvet coat as the bot nimbly ties his cravat. It’s truly a transformation. But I see what she’s saying—it’s a delicate veneer.
“We think he’s through the worst of it. But only in the last twenty-four hours or so. He—” She hesitates, then plunges on. “He responds remarkably well to small doses of morphine.”
She lets her sentence hang and peers closely at me. Sweat builds up under my arms as I hold a pose of patient, ignorant expectation. “And?” I prompt once the silence grows excruciating.
“My lady—Your Highness,” she corrects. “There’s nothing on our charts, but has your father been seeing a Parisian doctor, perhaps? Is there any chance he’s been receiving prescription pain relievers?”
I blink, letting my heavily coated eyelashes sweep as far up and down as possible in a show of innocence. “Pardonnez?”
“Pain relievers: oxycodone, hydrocodone?”
I mask my guilt with an expression of utter befuddlement, even though I know the main ingredient in Glitter is from the opioid family.
“It’s just that we found traces of adhesive on both arms when he was admitted.”
“Ah, the nicotine patches,” I say, as though finally understanding. “He had to stop smoking when we moved into the palace—about four years ago. He tries to keep them out of sight. I assumed he got them from the clinic, but if he was going into Paris—”
“I had the same thought. But his blood work doesn’t support it.”
I scrunch my face up in confusion as my heart starts to race. “I don’t understand.”
“No nicotine in his blood. Just traces of opiates and atropine. It would help a lot if we could get a better idea where those came from.”
“Traces—” I cut myself off by biting the tip of my tongue so hard I
flinch. With the massive doses my father was using, there should have been far more than traces. But then, I hardly know what sort of processing goes into the production of Glitter, or how the body metabolizes it. Perhaps this is normal. Part of the drug’s success, even.
I keep my silence behind a mask of daughterly concern.
Whether she interprets my silence as ignorance or callousness, the nurse moves on. “Whatever caused this massive reaction has had an effect on his neural pathways. We seem to be looking at irreversible mental impairment.”
“Mental impair—”
“Brain damage.”
I can’t hide my horror, but I suspect it appears to be a normal reaction. The kind of reaction any concerned family member would have to the news that an “illness” has damaged a loved one’s brain. Not the guilty conscience of a drug dealer who’s been told that she helped her father fry his mind. “But he looks so clear,” I rasp, the distress in my voice for once unfeigned.
“He is. And were he a twelve-year-old boy, we’d be overjoyed.”
I physically draw back at that.
“He walks, talks, cares for himself, processes information. But compared to his annual evaluations, we see a steep decline.”
I swallow hard and draw myself up, trying to regain control of this situation. My father. My bright, smart father, who was my only parent to encourage my love of math and tech. “You said it seems to be irreversible?”
“Well, it’s always hard to say for certain—”
“At the moment you can only speculate, yes?”
“Informed speculation is—”
“So, as far as you’re concerned, my father is much improved and well on his way to a potentially full recovery.” I stand tall, towering over her by several centimeters, and stare down with every ounce of Queenly grace I can scrape together.
She stammers a few incomprehensible syllables and her cheeks flush red, until she looks up into my eyes to reply. Then the color seeps away, leaving her white-faced, her mouth hanging open a crack.
“I will appreciate your official pronouncement to that effect,” I say slowly and quietly.
The woman’s mouth gets tight again, and I can see the indecision in her eyes.
“It’s not a lie,” I say softly, cajoling. “You said it yourself—difficult to predict for certain.”
“It is,” she says grudgingly.
“Excellent.” I walk over and lay a finger on the cravat the bot has tied neatly about my father’s neck. “This truly is a lovely facility. The Queen holds a place on its board of advisers. I look forward to sharing my enthusiasm for your work at the next budget meeting.”
The look on her face says the veiled threat has been understood.
After repeated and varied warnings, my father and I are finally seen off at the front doors of the clinic. My father carries a carved walking stick that could be mistaken as simply decorative, and his other arm is clasped tightly on my arm.
One recommendation was particularly helpful—that he not stress his eyes or brain by wearing his Lens. A ready-made excuse for failing to receive the coms doubtless pouring in to pester him about today’s vote.
“Father, how are you feeling?” I ask once we’re out of earshot.
“It’s…it’s hard to say. I—I would like to feel better, Dani. You know what would make me feel better.”
“Father—”
“Please. You pay the man; you must know how to reach him. You have to—”
“Father!” I face him, grasping both of his shoulders and wondering momentarily when he got so short—but he’s merely slouching. “If you want any hope of feeling better ever again, you’ve got to get through this vote, then finish out your hospital stay. There’s nothing I can do while you’re in there.”
He swallows hard. “But after?” he asks hopefully.
“One thing at a time,” I say, rage and regret simmering like acid within me. If I have anything to say about it, he’ll never see a speck of Glitter again in his life.
“Who should I vote for?” he asks, and there’s confusion in his tone. I’m not sure he comprehends what’s happening—how close the kingdom is to a complete overhaul. He might not even be able to name the candidates. I don’t dare ask; the votes of mentally incompetent shareholders are moot until a proxy is appointed, and there’s no time for that.
“No one,” I say, more sharply than he deserves, then struggle to put my emotions in check. “You’ll sign in to your account and hand your tablet to me. I’ll vote for us both.”
We walk for nearly a minute before he speaks up again. “Who will you vote for?”
I hesitate, and my ribs throb where my stays dig in. “I haven’t decided.”
We enter the palace and there’s a line outside the theater, but my father and I go around the crowd and into the royal box. I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed to find the box empty. Is it better to know where your enemy is, or avoid them entirely?
The first and only time I attended another meeting like this one, my father had just inherited voting shares from his stepbrother and brought me along. He wanted me to see how our kingdom was run. At the time, I’d been far more interested in the technology than the politics—Amalgamated, the company responsible for creating the palace’s mainframe, M.A.R.I.E., and the household bots that replaced human servants many years ago, was also contracted to oversee our electronic voting system. As a budding programmer, I peppered the technicians with questions about their encryption devices. Sometimes they even answered me.
They’re here today in their dark jumpsuits emblazoned with the Amalgamated logo, so drab among the coiffed Sonoman crowd. Even as they distribute slates to shareholders, they might as well be invisible. Like the technology hidden throughout the palace—ubiquitous and mostly unseen—the technicians are intended to be overlooked. Intended to be forgotten.
My father submits to the Amalgamated slate’s biometric scans and hands me his tablet computer. Literally hands me control of his shares. Those, combined with the voting shares on my own device, make me one of the most powerful people in the room. I feel nothing of the sort.
As the techs finish their work and head for the exits, the door on the far side of the stage opens and Justin enters, trailed by several highly placed members of the board, including Duke Tremain. Amid a buzz of whispers, the audience rise to their feet. Justin doesn’t so much as glance my way, but my throat tightens and I feel oddly threatened.
We take our seats and the meeting begins.
The opening speeches are predictably dull. Profit and loss, quarterly projections, asset depreciation. The sorts of things we mostly leave to accountants, really. From my vantage point above most of the audience, I see several courtiers playing flash games instead of listening. If I weren’t feeling so nauseated, I might be doing the same.
Duchess Wakefield, our chief officer of operations and the person conducting the meeting, comes to the agenda item we’re all waiting for. “Duke Raven Tremain, to speak in support of proposal forty-two, the removal of Justin Wyndham as chief executive officer and King of Sonoman-Versailles.”
There are a few gasps from the crowd, and I’m shocked that anyone didn’t know. I slide a glance over to Lord Aaron, sitting with friends in a neighboring box, pretending to be half asleep, with his normal devil-may-care affectation. In another box across the way is Lady Mei, and when she catches my glance, she waves and tips her head toward the stage with wide eyes. I shrug in response, as though it couldn’t matter less.
The King sits on the stage, one arm draped languidly over the back of the empty chair beside him, a knowing half-smile on his face. The nervousness evident only an hour ago in his private office has vanished. Even Duke Tremain seems a touch ruffled by His Majesty’s nonchalance as he stands at the podium and passionately lays out his case for deposing Justin Wyndham and replacing him with the Honorable Sir Spe
ncer Harrisford.
The speech is over before I fully appreciate that it’s begun. I suspect that the duke is suffering from an abundance of confidence—in his mind he can’t comprehend who would vote for this veritable child over him. Or, at least, for another child guided by his heavy-handed counsel. After Duke Tremain concludes, Sir Spencer doesn’t rise to speak. He remains seated beside the wife he doesn’t love, barely moving a muscle. The message is clear—the board will be voting in a puppet.
The King rises and makes a show of rebuttoning his velvet jacket. When he raises his chin to face the audience, he doesn’t even look threatened. I haven’t the slightest idea what he intends as his response. An emotional plea for the name of Wyndham? A scalding rebuttal pointing out the obvious trickery in Duke Tremain’s plan?
But he does neither.
Instead, a chart appears on the screen just above him. It’s labeled PHARMACEUTICAL DIVISION, and my father, even in his diminished mental state, lets out a whistle of appreciation.
Seven hundred percent growth over the next three years, declares the text beneath the graph.
Another chart appears over our monarch, this one titled ROBOTICS DIVISION and separated into Sonoman profits and Amalgamated derivatives.
Three hundred and fifty percent growth in the next five years, the words beneath the chart declare.
Murmurs are rising from the audience, and Duke Tremain looks as though he’s being force-fed lemon juice.
A third chart, labeled simply LABOR.
Sixty-five percent overhead reduction in the next five years.
Once more the screen changes, and it’s not a chart this time, simply the words OVERALL INDIVIDUAL SHAREHOLDER PROFIT.
“Two hundred and ninety-nine percent,” the King says. Slowly. Clearly. His words reverberate around the silenced auditorium.