Royally Remembered by Emma Chase

 

 

(Ten years before Royally Screwed)

Lenora

I SIT IN A CHAIRbeside the table where my husband lies. His chest is bare, save for the white sheet that ends below the ridge of his collarbone. And the sheet does not move.

I’m just not able to wrap my mind around it. I sit here, waiting. Expecting him to sit up and smile, to pull me into his warm, wonderful arms and tell me it was all wrong.

Some terrible misunderstanding.

He’s right here . . . and yet he’s not. This unmoving man on a steel slab looks like Edward, but he’s cold. So very still.

My Edward is never cold—he’s sunlight and summertime.

I should understand these things by now. Life and loss. I have been taught those lessons well. But tragedy always comes as a shock—a devastation that rents the soul.

“I saw him, the boy you saved. He wanted to come to me, to tell me how sorry he was for his foolishness. He knelt before me. And the moment I laid my eyes on him I knew . . . I knew what you were thinking.”

I stare at him hard, willing him to get up. Please, please, please get up. Because a life without him is unfathomable—to be without his love, his presence, the safety of his arms, the knowledge that even when he is away from me, he is still with me.

“You stood on the bow and saw that dark head and skinny limbs, and you thought of your brother . . . and our son. You saw him going down under the water, and you thought—I can save him. This time . . . I can save him.”

Edward always blamed himself for the loss of our children, and for his brother’s death. No words or logic could ever truly take that guilt from him. It’s the price men pay, I guess—men like him. Men who are protectors and champions. When tragedy knocks, even if there was nothing that could have been done, they carry the weight of it around their necks for the rest of their lives.

“And you did. You dove into that icy water, you crazy man, and pulled him up, pushed him onto the deck . . . and you saved him. You just didn’t realize you couldn’t save yourself. That your heart . . . couldn’t keep up.”

The pain of this truth rises around me, wraps around me—tightening and squeezing my throat until I can barely breathe.

And I want it. I want it to take me, strangle me, do me in.

She died of a broken heart, they’d say. And they would be right.

And it would be so much easier. To let go, to be free of this anguish, to fade away into the nothingness.

Why do I have to stay? Why do I have to endure and grieve when everyone else gets to go? Death is easier . . . it’s the living that’s so very hard.

My eyes burn, blur, distorting my vision as I stare at him.

“I want to be angry with you. I want to shout at you and beat on your chest for being so careless with yourself when you . . .” my voice breaks, “. . . when you are everything to me.”

I shake my head, breathing deep, a scraping, wheezing sound coming from my strangled throat.

“But I can’t. I can’t be angry because this is who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. And I love . . . I love every bit of who you are.”

A sob tears out of me. And then I’m strewn across him. Grasping at him, pressing my cheek to his cold chest as scalding grief pours from my eyes. And my heart pleads for him to hold me, the way he always has. Because I need him. I need him now more than ever.

“Oh, Edward. I don’t think I can do this. It’s so hard—it’s too hard. I can’t do this without you.”

I don’t know how long I stay there, weeping and shuddering on him. Maybe an hour, maybe a day. I let go, let it out, let myself give in to the awful despair.

But the one universal truth of life is that after a time, all tears run dry. And there are none left to shed.

From very far away, I hear the soft words in my head, a promise Edward made a lifetime ago. I rise and touch his perfect face, stroking his angles and lines.

And then I say the words aloud, promising them back to him.

“I will never be lost. You will be with me always. The vows were wrong—death can have your body, but your soul will stay with me, I swear it.”

I lean down and press my lips to his—to his chin, his jaw and cheeks, and both closed eyelids. And I return to his mouth, for one long, lingering kiss.

Our final kiss.

Until we are reunited. In some other place—a better place—a place where this pain and anguish can’t ever touch us again.

He will be waiting there for me.

I straighten up, shoulders back, head high, letting the mask descend—covering me, hiding me, protecting me like armor. I wipe my cheeks and pat my hair.

And I walk to the door.

For a moment, I stand there, staring at the knob. It’s hard to open it. To leave Edward here, knowing I will never see his face again. Not as he is now—the face of the man I have lived beside and loved every day of the last fifty years. Nearly my whole life—certainly the most cherished parts of it.

I long to turn back to him, but I know if I do even just once more, I won’t have the strength to turn away again.

So I force my hand to reach out, grasp the knob, and pull.

Storm-cloud gray eyes meet me on the other side. Winston—the head of palace security and my guard since I was a girl. He is my only connection to the life before, to the person I was, but will never be again.

Winston bows. And when he lifts his head, his gaze drags into the room toward my husband. For one flash of a moment I see his pain. His face twists with grief and guilt, so much like Edward’s, for not preventing the unpreventable.

“He was a good man,” Winston says, barely above a whisper.

And it almost breaks me all over again.

“Yes, he was, wasn’t he?”

I close my eyes and draw in a breath, deep and steady.

“I have to go upstairs now,” I tell him.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He nods, shifting to the side so I may precede him.

And then I move forward, one slow, agonizing step at a time.

To do what must be done.