‘Take a seat,’ Andreas instructed. ‘Wait here, we’ll be back shortly.’ He left the room, with Carissa at his side, and closed the door.
Helia was left alone in the unwelcoming office. She could hear agitated voices beyond the door, but couldn’t make out what was being said. She tried to block them out, attempting, instead, to make sense of what had happened. To unravel her feelings. But that thread seemed to be well and truly tangled.
So she waited. A glance at the polished antique clock on the desk revealed that she had been waiting ten minutes. Which turned into an hour. Which turned into two. Every so often she would hear hurried steps and hushed, frantic voices. Whatever was going on out there it was certainly chaotic.
Helia’s patience was growing thin. She knew she couldn’t defy an order from Andreas, but waiting alone had her shoulders growing stiffer by the moment. Surely if they were going to tell her that it had all been mistake they would not have been gone this long—which made excitement once again flare in her belly. She tamped down hard on it.
Just when she had decided that it wouldn’t matter if she waited here or in the library, where she could be alone, and where she would have a distraction, the door opened and in walked an irate Andreas. Carissa followed closely with a scowl, closing the door. He rounded the table to his throne-like seat, while she elegantly perched on the chair beside Helia’s.
Andreas was a starchy character, but it had never concerned Helia before. Yet now she was filled with a sense of foreboding that warred with her earlier excitement and state of shock.
‘I’m sure you have gathered as much, but I should officially tell you that King Leander is dead.’
That was obvious, but Helia would not interrupt until she could fully understand the situation she found herself in.
‘Which means that Prince Vasili is now His Majesty, the King of Thalonia. As such, he is required by law to marry and bear heirs.’
Heirs!
Silence pierced the air.
The hope, confusion, excitement all died. Helia could no longer feel that frantic heartbeat. Her jaw dropped as she pieced together what he meant. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘I’m afraid I am.’
‘Andreas, you cannot expect me to marry someone I don’t even know.’
Marry and have children with them? That was completely unreasonable! She hadn’t even thought about having family yet.
‘This makes no sense. His Majesty cannot possibly want to marry someone he has never seen before,’ she said, attempting to reason with them.
Yes, Helia had admired Prince Vasili for years. She had allowed herself fantasies of what it might be like if he one day took notice of her and it had felt good. Incredible. But never had those fantasies been like this.
‘You can’t take my choice away from me!’
‘Look,’ Andreas said in a severe tone, his fingers steepled under his chin, ‘we are even less happy about this than you are, but whether we like it or not, Prince Vasili is now King and he has spoken. We have no choice but to obey.’
Irritation flashed through Helia. But Carissa nodded along with Andreas, as if agreeing to this absurdity.
‘Whether you like it or not?’ Helia asked. ‘Is that because you disapprove of me, a commoner?’ She directed this at Andreas—the person she had to report to in her responsibility over the palace archives, who didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘Or is it that you have a problem with King Vasili himself?’
‘How long before we can get her and the country ready for the wedding?’ Andreas asked Carissa, completely ignoring Helia’s questions.
She felt a sharp pang of sympathy for Vasili. It was no secret what nobles thought of people like her, but to hold Vasili in such disregard was disrespectful, and she could only imagine hurtful to him. She remembered his reaction in the library, thinking that she would have been far less pleasant if the roles had been reversed. But his words had been reckless, and had very real consequences for her now.
She couldn’t help the ember of anger burning in her from that. However, it was the two people with her in this room now who truly irked her. Their blatant disrespect for her and the King was entirely unacceptable. The way they looked at her, as if she was some kind of irritation they had to deal with, had her grinding her teeth. She wasn’t the one who had put them in this situation. Vasili was. He was the one who had said the words, but even he wasn’t entirely to blame.
‘Don’t ignore me,’ she said.
Andreas cut a glare her way which she chose to disregard.
‘No one has agreed to a wedding. What would this mean for me? My career?’
It was all too much. She needed them to spell out exactly what would happen to her—because right now she was completely overwhelmed.
‘You would be Queen, of course,’ Carissa said impatiently.
‘And you would not return to your job,’ Andreas added.
