I stopped.
He considered. Then, “If you speak of this to anyone, I will deny it and then see that the rest of your life is made miserable. Are we clear?”
“Are we telling each other secrets?” I asked, wide-eyed. “Because that would be incredible. I’ll go first so you know you can trust me! Do you remember when we had that state dinner and Ryan and I disappeared for a good twenty minutes and you were really mad at me when we got back for leaving you with that old coot who liked to bad-touch your biceps? You’ll never guess where we were.”
“You were having sex in a hall closet.”
“We were having sex in a hall—oh. Dammit. How did you know?”
“It was the first thing you told me when you came back in. Loudly.”
“Riiiiiight,” I said. “I remember that now. Your turn. I’ll think of another.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Tell me! Tell me tell me—”
“Fine!”
I grinned at him.
He stoked the fire again, the embers burning bright. “My father is popular. Almost universally beloved. I will never be like him. I don’t know if I have it in me. And that worries me, sometimes, that I won’t measure up. That I cannot be the king Verania needs me to be. My father leaves large footsteps that I don’t know that I could fill.
“And for a long time, I was convinced I never would. I was… angry. Angry that I had no choice on the set path of my life. Sit up straighter, Prince. You have dance lessons today, Prince. No, no, you cannot play like a normal child, Prince; you must learn today how to act like a King-in-Waiting. You must marry, Prince, whether it be a match of convenience or love, it matters not. A king needs a queen or a consort.” His laugh was a hollow thing. “That one was hard. I felt cornered and mean. I very calmly pointed out to my father that he didn’t have a queen by his side because she saw fit to leave him behind.”
I winced at that.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Not my best move. But words spoken in anger are the hardest to take back. And even though I wanted to, I didn’t. I got it in my head that my father cared more for his people than he did for me. And then you came.”
“Hurray,” I said weakly. “I’m in this story too. Neat.”
“You came,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “And everyone loved you. This little kid with wide eyes that said please and thank you and seemed to find wonder in everything. I hated you. I hated you because my father adored you. It wasn’t fair, to see him dote upon you when he’d never done the same to me.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I wouldn’t have—”
He held up his hand, cutting me off. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault that people tend to find you… fascinating. Which is something I will never u
nderstand.”
I snorted. “Dude, don’t front. You love me.”
“And then I found Ryan and he was ambitious and… I thought it would be enough. It wasn’t, of course, and looking back, I don’t know why I thought it was. But back then, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because I knew. The moment he laid eyes upon you, I knew.”
“Aw,” I said. “I was only fifteen. He would have been twenty. Ryan’s gross.”
“Not that,” Justin said, rolling his eyes. “There was this… awareness. Of you. He was always aware of you. Whenever you walked into a room. Whenever your voice echoed across the halls. I told myself it was nothing.”
“Maybe it was, back then.”
“You really believe that?”
“Nah. He wanted up on my nuts. Sorry.”
“Eloquent as always.”
“I try.”
“The point is that it was simple for you, Sam. It always has been.”