BENCHED (42 page)

"I want you to be queen. It's a hard lesson, and yet you still clearly needed to learn it. You don't have a life, Ana. You have a crown. You have no right to shirk your responsibilities—"

"What does my love life have to do with my responsibilities?" I shout, rising to my feet. "What does it matter, tell me? Can I not approve a budget or write a law if I am taking the wrong cock in the bedroom? I already know what your life is like. Hours and hours and hours every day of matters of state from the small hours of the morning until nighttime, and then what? An empty bed filled with the memory of a man you despised? I know you, Mother! You can wear mourning blacks until you die, but I know you never shed a single tear for my father."

"Neither did you," she hisses.

"Why should I? I barely knew him. He was nothing more than a stud to you. I never played with him or danced with him or listened to a story from him, and I never did any of those things with you. People who have known me for a few months know me better than my own mother. What is my favorite color? My favorite food? Book? Film? What is my boyfriend's name that you hate so much?"

"His name is irrelevant," she snaps. "He's common. He's nothing."

"You don't believe that, you fucking hypocrite. Your man wasn't nothing. Thorlief deserves better than you. I can't believe he told me he's in love with you."

She blinks. "What?"

"My guardian, Thorlief. You know him—"

"Of course I know him. He guarded me when I was a girl too. He—"

"He loves you," I throw at her, clenching my fists. "You threw him away like trash and ruined him, and why? Over something I did. I wasn't tricked, Mother, I wasn't seduced or confused or whatever other excuse you want to feed yourself. I fell in love with a man! I slept with him! I did things with him!"

My voice echoes off the ceiling. My screams tear at my throat.

"He loved me more in a week than you have in your entire life. I'm just a tool to you. A legacy. All you care about is that I take care of your damned country."

"Because it's all I have," she shrieks, rising to her feet, looming over me. Even now, she still tops me by several inches. "They took everything else away from me."

"Now you're doing the same thing."

"He betrayed you," she screams. "He fucked another woman while he was sleeping with you. I saw the evidence myself. That bitch professor in the article described his damned body. Do you think I wanted that for you? I did everything I could to protect you from some pig with more cock than brains, and look what happened when you defied me. He ruined you. You're soiled."

My mouth falls open.

"I am not soiled," I snarl. "I made love to a man who loves me. Perhaps you should try it sometime. It might make you less of a scheming, arrogant bitch."

She slaps me, hard, across the face. I scowl at her.

"Eventually you'll realize I'm right and you're wrong. He doesn't love you. He never did."

"I'm not marrying that pig Mortimer. You can't make me."

"Yes I can. I'll read your vows for you and shove the ring on your finger myself if need be. I tire of this idiotic defiance. You'll be a proper queen, and that is the end of that. I'm through with this. I came here to comfort you and all you do is throw your entire life in my face."

"I don't want my life," I rage at her. "I don't want to be queen. I don't want any of it. I want to go back where I belong."

She turns to me with an icy stare, and I almost feel my blood freeze in my veins.

"Perhaps I should give it to you. Perhaps I should have you dropped in America with nothing I haven't given you. No well-appointed house, no education I paid for, no food, no resources. Oh, and your clothes, I paid for those too. I own all of it. We should see how long you last that way."

I take a step back from her withering gaze. Her look is like a pressure, pushing on me. I look down at the floor.

"I'll have the seamstress here in a few hours. The wedding is tomorrow. You'll marry Mortimer and you'll keep your mouth shut. You don't have to love him, you just have to breed with him. Pop out a few children and you can send him away, it doesn't matter to me."

"So I can raise them like you?"

"In wealth and luxury, yes. No more theatrics, Ana."

She turns on her heel and struts out of the room, and the door closes behind her. It always felt like a prison door, but even more so now with all its weight and finality.

I collapse to the floor in a heap.

J
ason

Y
ou know
what I hate worse than flying?

Landing.

I thought the taking off was bad. My knuckles turn white gripping the sides of my seat and my heart races as the plane begins to descend. It leans
backward
, which throws me as it happens and I start to shake.

"We must move quickly," Konstantin says. "Let me do the talking."

I chance a look out the window. I can see the island.

It's just as breathtaking as Ana made it sound. My jaw drops. The ocean is a dark, steely blue, except where the waves foam against the stony shore. The island is a giant, rocky cone sheared in half, and the interior is a vibrant, pastoral green with rolling hills and fields. The tiny, white specks must be sheep.

Like she said, the castle stands at one end of the island, surrounded by a quaint-looking town. Little fishing boats bob like toys in the ocean, and in the distance, so far away they look hazy, the oil rigs blink with red warning lights. The plane turns and levels out, and I press back into my seat and close my eyes.

My heart tries to escape through my mouth when the wheels touch down. It feels like five minutes between the back landing gear making contact and the front landing gear touching down with a sharp, angry squeal. The plane shudders and jerks left and right, and finally starts to slow down with such force that it feels like a giant hand pressing into my chest.

Man, fuck flying.

When it finally stops, Konstantin leaps to his feet and rushes forward, yanking open the cockpit. He steps back out a few seconds later.

"Everybody ready to getting off."

"Uh," Aheahe says.

Dee snorts and rolls her eyes.

"He means take your seat belts off," I shout, rising. I grab the seat to steady myself and take a deep breath.

They're all looking at me.

"Look, everybody. I know this is a huge thing you've done for me. It's a huge thing we're doing. Never in my life did I expect to go somewhere like this, do something like this, experience something like this. You've all come this far, but I have to say it.

"If you don't want to come with me, you don't have to. I'm not going to judge anybody for staying behind. I'm not going to hold it against anyone who doesn't want to go any farther. We're in a foreign country and we're about to break like fifteen different laws. If we get arrested, our parents aren't going to come pick us up and pay our bail. Also, midterms are in two weeks."

There's a hush. I cough.

"I'm going to get my girl. Anybody that wants to come, come with me. Let's go."

The cheer that rises in the airplane shakes the windows and hurts my eyes. I turn and walk down the stairs with Konstantin, and I don't need to look back; I can feel them piling out behind me.

"What the hell do we do now?"

Konstantin shrugs. "I am having a plan!"

"Great, that's fantastic. Let's do it."

"Do you not wanting to know what it is?"

"Fill me in as we go along."

I take my first look around the airfield.

This is definitely an airfield, not an airport. The prince's plane isn't huge as commercial jets go, and I can tell the airfield can barely handle it. There's one control tower and a concourse, and big hangars with curved roofs. It's a lot colder here, and the wind whips hard across the landing strip.

When I turn back to Konstantin, he's on the phone. My breath catches when I see a fleet of vans driving across the tarmac toward us.

"Is that the cops?" Akele says.

"Do they have cops here?" Aheahe says.

"Of course they have cops, dumbass."

"I mean, don't they have like knights or something?"

Akele groans.

The vans roll to a stop, and the very closet driver throws her door open and runs out. A tall, busty woman with red hair in pigtail braids runs out and shouts something at Konstantin.

"What's she saying?"

He looks at me. "Ah, she is saying she is wanting to have my babies."

"What, seriously?"

He shrugs. "It is good to being the prince. Getting in the vans now."

There's barely enough room. The cheerleaders and band members end up sitting on player's laps, but we don't leave anybody behind. I wedge into the lead van with Konstantin. He speaks in his native tongue—it does sound like Swedish—to the driver, who gives him a saucy look and spins the van around, sending my stomach lurching to the side before she floors it.

"Where the hell are we going?"

"The castle is having a service entrance," Konstantin says. "We are needing to bring in food for the wedding. Also for tourists."

"Tourists?"

"Yes, we are selling tours of the castle. Very much money. The younger female tourists are personally escorted by the prince."

"Right."

He grins.

I look over my shoulder. There's five more vans behind us. The road is narrow and has no shoulders, with fences blurring past on either side. There's sheep. A lot of sheep. The sheep look up in silent judgement.

Quincy is still wearing his mascot costume, and the plume of his big foam-rubber knight helmet is crushed up against the van roof.

It's not a long drive. The airfield is close to the castle. I can see it through the windshield. It climbs up the side of a mountain slope, tall, round towers proudly lifting banners into the air, like in a fairy tale. It's a clear day, the sky a bright blue, the sun shining. I'm fuzzy on exactly what time it is, except it's midmorning.

The castle gets bigger and bigger as we get nearer and nearer. It's one of the largest buildings I've ever seen. The main gate must be fifty feet tall. There are guards on the walls, though they're wearing uniforms and carrying rifles rather than armor and shields.

Konstantin chatters with the driver and the vans drive along the wall, away from the main gate. They keep going until we reach a security checkpoint. The driver rolls her window down as a soldier walks up to the van door.

The man is genuinely shocked when he sees Konstantin, who barks orders at him. Moments later, the gates open.

"What did you tell them?"

"I'm bringing entertainers, for the feast. That will purchase us some hours, but it will not lasting long. Mother knows there will be no entertainers."

"Right. How do we get in?"

I look around. This all seems modern to me. It's a loading dock, connected by a tunnel to the castle, or so I would expect.

"I will lead the way. Hmmm." Konstantin looks at me. "You are maybe being a problem."

"Me? Why?"

"Mother knows what you look like, from the tabloid news paper."

He pronounces "news paper" as two clear words.

"So?"

"So she will be making all the guards have your picture so they will not let you in."

"Why would she even expect me to show up?"

"Mother is very cautious. Stranger things have happened. After all, you are here now."

"So I need a disguise. You're telling me I need a disguise."

"I am telling you so, yes."

Well, shit.

I need to conceal my appearance somehow. Hide.

I look at Aheahe, and Akele, at Thorlief, at the driver, who gives me a blank, smiling look but is mostly paying attention to Konstantin.

We all look at the back of the van, where Quincy is wedged in with his mascot suit.

A
na

I
read the article
. I read what Professor Grandolf said, I looked at the pictures, and I believed it. I believed Jason had betrayed me, stolen my heart and slept with another woman while he was making me feel so wonderful and alive.

Now that I am here, I am not so sure. I knew she had something for him, some perverse lust, but I never knew him to look twice at her. How could he be so totally loving and giving with me and betray me? How?

I scoot along the cold stone floor and sit against the side of the bed and try to weep, as if weeping all the salt water from my body will give me an answer. Perhaps they'll find me here as a dried-out husk and take me down to the crypts of my ancestors and put me away and I won't have to marry anyone I don't want to or be a queen or any of it.

The seamstress comes in an hour later. I rise mechanically, like a puppet, and stand there with my arms out while she measures me and fits me with a wedding gown.

After she's gone I curl up on the bed and wish I could sink through it, down through the castle and into nothing.

I hear a faint buzzing sound and roll over. I thought I'd left my phone behind. I barely remember this morning—or was it yesterday?—between the jet lag and the confusion of leaving America and flying here.

Here, not home.

The phone buzzes again. It feels like my limbs are made of cement, like my head weighs a thousand pounds. I fumble with it, almost knock it on the stone floor. That would surely destroy it.

Somehow I manage to recover it and roll over, sighing.

J
ason
: Ana I'm on my way there.

A
na
: No you're not.

J
ason
: Ana it's all a lie I never slept with grandolf.

A
na
: I saw you coming out of the locker room with her.

J
ason
: You saw a picture of her coming out.

J
ason
: She was in there with me.