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“So, Ricky, do you live near here?” Simon asked. “Visiting relatives in the palace?”
Ricky shook his head, his chubby cheeks jiggling.
“Momma says this our home! Maybe.”
Simon frowned. No one except the Esconian royal family lived at the palace, and Simon had long since memorized all their faces and titles. The only people who were staying here who weren’t Penelope’s relatives were…
Oh.
“You’re… um, you’re Richard?” he asked, remembering that that was the potential heir’s name.
The boy paused, narrowing his eyes. “Ricky,” he insisted.
“Right. Ricky. And this… is your home. Maybe.” If the DNA test proved positive. If Simon couldn’t find some loophole to keep him from inheriting. He felt dirty for thinking the thought—he couldn’t villainize a toddler, or even the mother who seemed more like an exhausted single parent than an evil mastermind plotting to steal the throne. But no one could rule as well as Penelope could. She was born to be a Queen, and he would prove it if it was the last thing he did.
But in the meantime, showing a kid a treehouse couldn’t hurt anything, right? “So, this is it,” he said, sweeping his hand upward as they stopped under the tree. Ricky gaped up at it in a satisfying way, and Simon swelled a bit with pride at having built it.
Then the kid pointed a stubby finger up at it. “Mine?” he asked.
Simon stared at him, suddenly struck dumb. The fact was, the treehouse could be Ricky’s. If a miracle didn’t occur, everything here would be his—including the prototype he and Penelope had built with their bare hands, a labor of love that Simon had thought would last a lifetime. And including the castle, the place where he’d thought he might finally be able to make a true home.
Ricky ran off, squealing, to inspect the ladder. Which was good, because Simon was helpless to answer his question as the realization suddenly struck him:
He’d done it again. He’d built a home on borrowed ground again. And just like when he was seven, it could all be taken from him by the whim of a royal, by a twist of fate.
And there was nothing he could do to stop it.
16
A week later, Simon was surrounded by stacks of books when the lawyer knocked on the door. “Come in,” he called, his voice muffled by the dusty pages of the tome cracked open in front of him. He had to practically stick his nose in the thing’s spine to be able to read any of the old, tiny print, and he didn’t want to lose his place, so he didn’t look up when the other man entered the room.
The lawyer didn’t waste any time. “Nathaniel has been found.”
Simon sighed. “I know.” He’d learned that the prior king had finally been located on a remote island off the coast of Bali a few hours ago, which was why he was in here extra early today. Or it was one of the reasons, anyway. The other was to avoid the fallout of everyone discovering Pen was still in charge at the toy company.
They’d turned their ire on him this morning. It had only been a matter of time, he’d known it—you didn’t practice politics for a decade without being able to predict when a group of your peers were likely to turn on you—but it still hurt. Social climber, they were calling him. Disloyal for giving up his titles and connections to do it. Even worse, they’d branded his constant moves to serve the Crown as the mark of an unstable political maneuverer.
He’d done his best to be gracious about it. He’d avoided the frivolous arguments, the snide looks, the superior comments, and retreated to the library the way he always did in times of trouble. Pen had been feeling ill the last few days—and who could blame her?—which made it easier to hide out in here until the storm passed.
He hadn’t wanted to distance himself from her. He’d wanted to keep on holding her the way he had that night a week ago in the treehouse, being there for her, showing her how much she meant to him. But the tides they were caught in were so strong he was afraid they wouldn’t withstand it—and the fact that he was in love with her only made it harder to stay so close to her, knowing she and his dream of ruling at her side could be ripped away at any moment. He was already starting to feel like an outsider, already being forced to withdraw. At least maybe it would hurt less this way.
He slammed the book in front of him shut, disgusted with himself. It wouldn’t hurt less. Nothing could make it hurt less. But here he was anyway, hiding out like a coward, grasping at anything that might have the slightest chance of saving him instead of going out there and facing down his fate like a man. Or like his wife, for that matter.
Someone cleared their throat, and Simon realized the lawyer was still there. “Sir,” the man said, and dread stirred within Simon. He hadn’t said Your Majesty.
“Yes?” Simon asked, turning in his seat, forcing himself to keep his spine straight and his chin up even though he suspected the news the man was about to deliver.
“They’ve done the paternity test. The heir is legitimate.” He shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “I tried to tell… ah, Miss Penelope… first, but she wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t seeing visitors.”
“Of course. Thank you for letting me know,” Simon said, his voice sounding distant and dreamlike in his own ears.
Legitimate. It meant Simon was no longer the King. His dream, his home, gone just like that. It was everything he’d feared, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
An hour later, after taking the longest possible route, he found himself outside the door to his and Penelope’s apartments. He reached for the doorknob but hesitated and knocked instead for the first time ever. The wood felt all wrong against his knuckles: hard, abrasive, alien. Soon, this would no longer be their apartments. Had it ever truly been his home?
“Come in,” called Pen’s voice, and he opened the door. She eyed him, surprised but smiling. “What are you doing knocking, silly?”
He shrugged, miserable, unable to put his feelings into words. She would understand soon enough. He closed the door. “Could we talk for a second?”
