YOU have to come to the ball. You absolutely must.” I knew that I shouldn’t have answered my cellphone as soon as I saw it was FWillum.
I told him, “When we’re in Uglagistan, ‘FWillum,’ you can try telling me what I have to do and what I absolutely must do. Here in Enormia, as he liked to style himself was a very old friend indeed. One of the few true friends I made at the elite boarding school where my father taught. Father’s teaching position was the only reason I was able to attend. And, as he never tired of telling me, my education was the only reason he taught civics, law, and constitutional history there.
FWillum was, in fact, FitzWilliam. Count FitzWilliam Stachs-Goth Rockhard Longstaffe, Grand Duke of the principality of Uglagistan. FWillum was a modern royal who thought the blue-bloods should follow the rap stars and pop icons and cool kids and give themselves more modern names. FWillum was his.
A great and a lifelong friend. In my book everybody is entitled to a couple of stupid ideas so I didn’t hold the FWillum nonsense against him and I tried not to wince when he and the other kids of the ‘New vogue Rich’ generation introduced themselves.
FWillum was my best buddy since we were kids together in that torture center where royal families warehoused their kids, Irongate Point. Probably the world’s most terrible boarding school. Not that my family was remotely royal. We are now, but that’s kind of a twist. That’s because of my doing, nobody else’s.
My feet hammered the floor as I strode and the echoes banged around the paneled room. All six feet seven of me paced and stomped in heavy boots around my palace apartments. In the tall, wide rooms I felt penned in like I was confined in a prison cell as my mood darkened.
I shouted into the phone, “Another endless, boring night with the crowned teenagers of all the countries in Enormia and their buddies the tech billionaire brats? Really, FWillum?” I had to move the phone to my other hand. I was gripping it so tight it had cut off the circulation in my fingers.
“No, FWillum. Not even for you, my closest friend.” FWillum’s company was always good for me. Especially when I was in black moods or one of my red rages, like now. And it was true that we hadn’t seen each other in way too long a time. Still, I told him,
“The Flixen-Starboro Debutante’s Ball is my idea of a migraine, brought to life like Frankenstein’s monster, dressed in expensive designer clothes, draped in rattling jewelry and howling like Royal deer in rutting season.” My voice was getting loud. I didn’t care. “Rich kids and children of celebrities, all outdoing each other for how outrageous and debauched they can be?”
I loved FWillum like a brother. I knew that he really wanted me to go. Almost as much as I didn’t want to.
He pressed on. “You never know, Hugo,” He never called me ‘Crown Prince,’ or ‘your Highness,’ and I wouldn’t allow it if he tried. “You might meet the girl of your dreams tonight. Your princess. Your future queen. The lady to reign beside you. The woman to bear and mother your children.” He chuckled and lowered his voice, “The fox who will take the massive length and girth of that legendary royal sword of yours, night and day. From palatial morning to monarchical dusk and all reigning night long.”
“Nope.” I didn’t say so to FWillum, but I knew that it wasn’t going to happen. I knew it for certain. I wouldn’t meet the perfect woman to be my princess bride tonight, because I already met her. Met her, held her, let her go and lost her.
Since that awful night nothing seemed like it was ever going to be any fun again. And nothing seemed worse than being in huge crowds of people who were having fun while I just became more and more miserable.
“Man, really? It won’t be the same without you. The evening will be a total bust without the regal attendance of Crown Prince Hugo Kingston Stanford Broadsword Cleeve-Swathe.”
“And Crown Prince Hugo Kingston Stanford Broadsword Cleeve-Swathe is telling you he would rather swallow his father’s crown. Or yours. Or a crown of fucking antlers, come to that, FWillum.”
FWillum hadn’t given up. I liked that about him, though right now I was determined that I wouldn’t give in. “Hugo, you don’t even have to leave the palace. It’s not like you have to so much as climb aboard a helicopter or a yacht. It’s in your palace. All you have to do is to swan down the sweep of your ever-so-regal grand staircase. And we’ll all be there. Dimitri and Jas are coming.”
There was a pause. Before I could say anything, though, FWillum started up again. “Dimitri’s forgiven you for socking him in that club. He knows he was being an asshole. Please, man. Don’t tell me you can actually stay up in your apartments playing X-Box or whatever you do up there, while we’re all just half a dozen floors beneath you.”
I had wandered into one of the rear bathrooms and peered at my face in a mirror. I did look gray and my eyes were droopy with black sacks underneath them. A frosted window was swung halfway open and I looked out. This side of my apartments looked out over the grounds and the parkland. But the bathroom was over the stables.
The caterers for the ball were hauling great cases and trolleys out of vans and trucks.
I wouldn’t be playing any games. My plan for the evening centered around re-reading and revising details of the peace treaty between my newly-formed country and our neighbors. Figuring out a way to deal with Draken, the one person standing in the way of the treaty.
I told FWillum, “Father wants me to go, naturally.”
“We all do.” FWillum said, “I’m sad that you won’t give in and come, but if I know anything I know that that when your mind is made up, nothing in the kingdom, or any other come to that, nothing on Earth will induce you to change your mind.”
There was noise from the activity downstairs. I wished they would all go away. Even FWillum at that moment.
As he pleaded with me, I opened the window a little wider and looked down at where the noise was coming from.
“You know the triplet princesses from Snowravia will be there. Everybody wants to know who they’ll be doing their trick with tonight. Could be you, you know.”
What I saw from the window almost made me drop the phone. “Got to go,” was all I said as I hung up. I leaned out further. It was six stories to the ground or I might have scrambled out and down the ancient ivy.
I only saw her from above. I wouldn’t have recognized her from the top of her head.
But I’d know her ass anywhere.