“The royals used to think they were chosen by God,” Thomas said. A private smile crept over his face. “Juli used to say that if that was true, they were being punished, not rewarded.”
“I’m going to go ahead and agree with her.” I stared at Thomas; when I told him that Juliana had left the Castle and gone with Libertas of her own free will, he’d be shocked and hurt—but would he be surprised? “You’re close, aren’t you? You and Juliana?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but I interrupted him. “I know, I know, you say that you’re not allowed to have relationships with your ‘assignment.’ But you’re not totally ambivalent to me, I don’t think.”
He hesitated. “No,” he said finally, if abstractly. “I’m not.”
“And you’ve only known me a little while,” I pointed out. “You were her bodyguard for a year before she … disappeared. You can’t tell me you don’t care about her.”
“Of course I care about her,” he confessed. “I can’t help it. We’re all alone together, she and I. I mean, we’re never actually alone, at least not very often. But we’re so young compared to everyone else. And we’re both, you know …”
“Lonely,” I supplied. It was something that I’d recognized in them—Thomas just from spending time with him, and Juliana in my visions. I recognized it because I felt it, too, sometimes. I figured it was the residual effect of being parentless. Granddad had never neglected me, but as long as I did well in school and didn’t have any tattoos, he pretty much stayed out of my business. Now that I was older, I appreciated the independence, but when I was growing up I wanted so badly for someone to take more than a passing interest in the day to day of my life, to prove that they loved me by asking questions and keeping track of where I was. Maybe that was why I felt the way I did about Thomas; his mere presence, his investment in what was happening to me, made me feel less alone.
He shrugged. “Something like that. It’s complicated.”
“Are you in love with her?” It was an inappropriate, much too personal question, but I had to know.
“I—” The door chime stopped him, and he looked sheepishly grateful for it. His KES mask descended and I couldn’t even divine from his expression what he had been about to say. “That’s probably Gloria. I wouldn’t tell her about …” His eyes wandered up to the ceiling. “If I were you.”
“Oh believe me, I don’t want her to know any more than you do,” I said. I arranged my hands in a more normal way, so as not to draw Gloria’s hawk-eyed attention.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she bustled in, with Louisa and Rochelle at her heels. “My mobie’s been ringing off the hook with interview requests from reporters, the florist lost their permit to import tropical plants, and—” She paused, her eyes darting back and forth between Thomas and me.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, suspicious. “You two seem very serious.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I told her, climbing off the bed.
“No,” she corrected herself. “Not serious. Guilty.”
“Don’t we have a schedule to keep?” I asked pointedly, inclining my head in the direction of Juliana’s aestheticians. Even if I was going to tell her what had happened on the roof of the Tower, I wouldn’t have done so in front of them. She caught the hint and backed down.
“Yes, always.” She sighed. “Thomas, get out.”
“I was just leaving,” he said.
“Okay,” Gloria said when he was gone, examining the state of me. I wasn’t as disheveled as I had been when Thomas and I first arrived at Juliana’s bedroom; I’d tidied myself up as much as possible, mostly so that I didn’t tip Gloria off. I hadn’t done as good of a job as I thought, because she seemed exasperated by my appearance. “Where do I even begin?”
Dinner was a strange, tense affair. The queen was outwardly polite, to both Callum and me, but there was something dark and bitter lurking behind every word she spoke. I was used to the queen’s barbed comments by this point; what bothered me was her undisguised resentment of Callum’s presence. He’d done nothing to deserve her scorn except be born in a country she despised; even his presence in the Castle was outside of his control. I felt sorry for Callum, and strangely embarrassed. This wasn’t the way to welcome a guest, even a foreign one from an enemy country. After all, they’d invited him in; they’d even handed over their princess for him to marry. The least the queen could do was be civil over a meal.
Callum looked miserable and homesick, but he made a valiant attempt to win the queen’s approval nonetheless. I was glad when dinner was over and we could escape—so glad, in fact, that it wasn’t until Callum and I were alone in the White Parlor with mugs of warm tea in our hands that I realized I had no idea what to say to him.
Luckily, I wasn’t the only one. Callum seemed similarly tongue-tied. We were sitting about three miles apart from each other on different sofas, sipping at our tea, the silence punctuated by a ridiculous round robin of polite, throat-clearing coughs and nervous laughter. Callum smiled at me shyly, and I smiled back. I was starting to understand how deep the animosity between Farnham and the UCC went, because there was no other reason why anyone could dislike Callum. Even Thomas, who was usually so even tempered about other people, had warned me to be wary of the Farnham prince, but by all appearances he was just a teenage boy like any other, albeit a little bashful and self-conscious. Admittedly, he didn’t seem like the sort of guy Juliana would’ve chosen for herself. I could see why, outside of the fact that she was being forced to marry him for political reasons, she wouldn’t have particularly appreciated the match.
“I’m sorry about dinner,” I said, after the awkwardness had gone on so long I couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m afraid my stepmother and I don’t really get along.”
“I’ve heard that,” Callum said. He seemed grateful for my attempt at conversation and latched on to it with enthusiasm. “She doesn’t seem to like me much, either.”
“Oh? What makes you say that?”
Callum laughed and I relaxed. He seemed determined to like me, which was going to make my job a lot easier. “You don’t have to be diplomatic with me, Juliana. I get it. My mother would hate you, too. The feud is in our blood.”
Well, it wasn’t in my blood, and I thought it was awful. “It really doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it bothers me,” Callum admitted. “I wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. That’s what this is all about, right? Bridging the gap? Bringing people together? Making amends for history?”
“I suppose.” I couldn’t help thinking of Thomas’s parents, and their deaths at the hands of the Farnham military during the last big Farnham-UCC conflict. If Juliana’s marriage to Callum could prevent future bloodshed, then who was I to say it was wrong?
“This whole thing is pretty strange, isn’t it? Us getting married, I mean.” He ducked his head, incapable of looking me in the eye.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good, I’m glad you think so, too.”
He nodded. “I never thought that I would be married off. I didn’t think things like that happened anymore. Although my mother loves to remind me that my grandparents had an arranged marriage.”
“It’s barbaric,” I said, recalling my conversation with the queen earlier.
“Is it?” He raised his eyebrows in a questioning challenge.
“What do you mean?”
“War is barbaric,” Callum said, with a seriousness that made him seem less boyish. “Letting your country get torn apart by revolutionaries—that’s barbaric. This is … this is a civilized solution to an uncivilized problem.” He sounded like Thomas, though I wasn’t so sure Thomas would agree about that.