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“Oh,” Callum grunts, looking uncomfortable.
A second later, Flora throws open the door and grabs my wrist, pulling me inside Sigurd and Stasi’s room, Callum following quickly behind.
My old housemate is tired but radiant, propped up by what may be a thousand pillows in a grand four-poster bed. In her arms is a tiny, wriggling, fresh baby girl.
My heart aches for Jo to be here.
“Jakob! I’m so happy to see you,” Stasi exclaims.
Flora clears her throat and makes a grand bowing gesture. “Sigurd. Meet your brother.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Sigurd bellows, “Brother? What the hell is going on?”
“It seems that palace security has known all along who it was who caught Flora when she fell from the balcony box. But the king hushed it all up,” Callum says.
“Why?” Stasi asks.
I’m having a hard time finding the words, being surrounded by what is most likely my blood family for the first time in my life.
“Because…because my mother was the king’s…mistress.”
The sounds of a squirming newborn baby fill the shocked silence.
“I can’t believe you never told me,” Stasi says.
“There’s never been a paternity test,” I say.
Sigurd comes to his feet, hesitant to leave his wife’s side. He towers over me and slowly offers his hand.
I take his offered handshake. My brother—most likely.
The conversation continues around us.
“You know what this means,” says a voice from the corner. That would be Etienne, prince number two.
“We don’t know that for sure. Not yet.” This comes from the eldest brother, Torben.
“Look at him. I think we know what happens next,” Etienne says.
Stasi’s tired eyes widen in panic. “You don’t have to do this, Jakob. You don’t have to face the queen. If you are the king’s biological son, you don’t have to be king if you don’t want to."
She may know me better than anyone in the room, a fact that scrapes a hole in my chest because Jo isn’t here.
She should be. My wife needs to be a part of this decision.
Something in Sigurd’s grip on my hand empowers me.
I don’t have to do or say anything. But when I look around the room, when I look at the fallout, someone needs to hold the king accountable for his actions.
Torben and Hailey, denied the monarch’s blessing because she’s an American and a commoner. Etienne declared unfit to rule because of his “embarrassing” public recovery from alcohol dependance. Sigurd was driven away, hiding out for months to avoid the pressure and resentment over a responsibility he never wanted.
Finally my eyes land on Flora, who may be my sister, who gives me an encouraging nod. She’s at peace with whatever I decide to do…or she doesn’t want the throne at all.
All eyes are on me. “After what he put my mother through, I’ll do it just to see the look on the old bastard’s face.”
I wait for a backlash that doesn’t come.
