None of them spoke as they headed down the elevator and out to greet the waiting crowds.
It was a sunny afternoon, the sky overhead a byzantine blue that felt distinctly at odds with what was happening in the hospital room upstairs. The golden light streamed down on them, making Beatrice wish she could shade her eyes, or wear sunglasses. She forced herself to blink until her vision adjusted.
The air felt cold and sharp. She drew in a great lungful of it, as if by breathing double she might somehow breathe on her father’s behalf. Then she turned toward the expectant crowds.
Beatrice couldn’t remember the last time she’d been part of a walkabout this subdued. Usually they were festive, because usually they were part of parades or parties: children cheering and waving flags, asking her to pose for selfies or sign her autograph.
Today she simply shook hands, accepted a few hugs. Many people handed her flowers, with notes or cards for her dad. She murmured her thanks and passed them all to Connor. As she handed things to him, she occasionally let her fingers brush his, in a silent, selfish touch. Even after she stepped away, she felt the weight of his grave gray eyes resting on her.
She had no idea how she would find the strength to give him up. Not after everything they had already been through.
Beatrice forced herself not to think about that. She focused on nodding and shaking hands, on making her lips recite a string of sentences over and over: Thank you for being here. We appreciate your prayers. Your presence means so much to my father. For once she was relieved to do this—to fall back on her training and become the marionette version of herself, let ritual take over.
She was vaguely aware of Teddy doing the same thing a few paces away from her. Sam, on the other hand, had retreated as far from Beatrice as possible. Beatrice could still feel her sister’s gaze, boring like daggers into her back. She knew Sam was angry with her for appearing with Teddy in public, when she’d said that she was calling off the engagement.
A few times Beatrice reached for a water bottle and took a sip, hoping it would settle her stomach, which suddenly felt so empty. Or maybe she was empty. Maybe she was as cold as her sister had always thought, driven only by duty. She felt as hollow and heartless as this plastic bottle, utterly empty of everything.
It wasn’t until her father’s surgeon came running down onto the main steps of St. Stephen’s that she knew.
The doctor stumbled forward like a white-robed ghost, Queen Adelaide behind him. Lord Robert Standish froze, his arms full of dozens of bouquets. He let them all fall to the ground in his shock, roses and tulips and soft white freesias blanketing the steps like a carpet of tears.
Connor turned to Beatrice, sorrow—and his love for her—etched on his features, right there for all the world to see.
“I’m so sorry, Bee,” he whispered, shocked into forgetting protocol. “I’m so, so sorry.”
The entire world seemed to be spinning, and gravity was shifting, and Beatrice felt like she’d collided with something impossibly hard. Maybe this was all just a nightmare. That would explain why everything felt tinged with a slight glow of unreality—why the world had gone fuzzy and shimmering at the edges.
She dug her nails into her palm so sharply that tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn’t wake up.
“No,” someone kept whispering. “No, no, no.” It took a moment for Beatrice to realize that it was her. She felt fragmented by anguish, as if she’d reached some edge within herself she didn’t know was there, some boundary of grief and fatigue and pain that no one should ever venture to.
Connor was the first to come to his senses and bow—a deep, ceremonial military bow, lacking only a flourish with a sword to make it complete. Teddy quickly followed. Jeff gulped, then did the same.
Beatrice’s face was stinging. She wondered if it was tears, freezing on her very skin.
For a single drawn-out moment, she let herself be a young woman who cried.
She was crying for her father—her king, but also her dad. She missed him with a fierceness that clawed at her from within.
She cried for Teddy and Connor, for Samantha, and for herself, for this last moment of girlhood that she was about to leave behind. For all the kings who had come before her, who had faced this same precipitous moment when their entire world ground to a halt.
Samantha crossed one ankle behind the other and swept into a curtsy. Her face was tear-streaked, her eyes hollow with shock.
Queen Adelaide followed suit. She curtsied slowly, her back as unbendingly severe, as unflinchingly straight as a poker. “Your Majesty,” she whispered.
And then they were all bowing. Row by row, everyone gathered here—the silent crowds that had come out in support of her father—sank into bows or curtsies before Beatrice, causing a ripple of obeisance to domino silently back toward the street.
There was a creaking sound overhead. Everyone glanced up sharply as the American flag sank to half-mast, its fabric whipping and fluttering in the wind. The Royal Standard stayed where it was. It was the only flag that was never lowered, not even after the death of a sovereign—because the moment that one monarch died, another was automatically invested. The king is dead; long live the queen.
The Royal Standard represented Beatrice now.
Hundreds of eyes rested on her, camera lenses ready and filming.
Beatrice knew what was expected of her in this moment—what an heir to the throne was supposed to do in their first appearance as king or queen. She and her etiquette master had discussed it once, many years ago, but it had felt so distant and abstract back then. She felt suddenly grateful for that conversation, that this moment was planned out for her. That she had a script to fall back on, since her mind felt so utterly numb.