Page 74 of The Princess Tied

It was still an enormous relief to hear the man’s deep voice. “Yes. I almost lost you.” The truth in that made him pause. “Now I’m wondering if we will lose our princess. I’m sure she has healed by now.”

“You know…” He tapped the paper. “Having read this, I appreciate her situation. This country fell apart without her. The stock market crashed. The ministers and advisors were absolutely nuts, for days. I’ve looked through heaps and heaps of the old ones printed after she went missing.” He waved a hand at a soggy pile of papers on the floor beside the bathmat.

“And so? What are you saying?” He frowned. “I’m not going to leave her just because… that happened.”

“No. Nor me. But we aren’t just fighting whatever she has going on, it’s an entire country full of ancient bureaucracy—a bureaucracy that we lost our place in when our parents lost their honor and their money. I will likely marry her anyway. But you are a problem.”

John grunted, glared. “She’s forgotten you too.”

“She has, likely, a list of crap to do six miles long. As well as a line of spies, ministers, agents, and advisors all playing interference.”

“Then we need to climb the wall. I did it once.”

“We wait. And when she summons us, we listen to her. It’s what I owe her. I will not lie to her, nor try to force a decision, though that was my inclination, once. And you also owe her, I think?” He peered at John. “Yes?”

He sighed. “Yes.” And ran his hands into his hair.

Love had sunk its nasty red throbby claws into him.

“I never did figure out what the Storyteller did to me. I thought I’d gone to Hell and fought my way out? That was a lie?”

“Yes. An illusion. Whatever you remember it wasn’t real. I still don’t understand how you shattered the illusion?”

“I remember breaking through the dirt of a hole going down to Hell.” The pavement stones sliding off his shoulders. He shuddered, stretching back in his chair. That had been some day. “How did I get out? I killed my way up. I can kill anything, even demons.”

“That would do it—an unshakeable belief in yourself.” Xander studied him. “How are you holding up now that you’re not great at killing?”

“Hmmm.” He thought awhile. “That I am a far better man than I was. It is a huge relief to not have to think hard when I meet people I dislike or might just want to…” He waved his hand. “… kill for some weird reason. I like being this man. I feel worthy of being your brother now. After all that happened, after Mom and Dad were killed, it has been a long hard road.”

“Yes.” Xander merely sat in silence, and it was this the ability to share without saying anything that John appreciated.

He smiled wanly. “Thanks for putting up with me. I did such bad things.”

“No. You didn’t. You kept yourself back, held that streak of evil in tight. And…” He sat forward in the tub, making the water slosh. “I know you killed our parents’ assassins. Went off and did it the next day.”

What? His mouth fell open a little.

“I never said anything because you didn’t want to discuss it, but I knew. You were fifteen, bro.”

The guilt from killing those nine men had chewed at him. The frenzy of that day had run a hole through him that had never left him until now, until he changed. A fifteen-year-old with guts and blood on him, washing it off, then walking home. Knowing he’d done what he’d done, visions in his head for days and weeks, months and years.

Xander had known and not condemned him. “I should have said something to you.”

“I regret not saying anything too. We were both young and troubled.”

The lump in John’s throat was too big for him to just sit in the chair. He stood and went to Xander, leaned over him and hugged him, no matter how the water soaked into his shirt.

A day later, Po summoned them. They made it to her chambers of audience past several haughty palace servants, having signed a waiver of something or other.

Princess Pollianna, the smartest princess ever, was seated on her throne, dressed to kill unworthy peasants in a blue chiffon-and-satin gown, and as soon as she saw them, she leaped up and beckoned to them.

“Follow me.”

A servant who cleared his throat was sent a glare of the highest royal quality.

He and Xander went through a door behind the throne, along a corridor, then another one, then a hallway of portraits, and ahead were a set of double doors that John vaguely recognized…

They found themselves in her private chambers.