Page 19 of Royal Reluctance

“I told her—and she died,” I confess, my voice raw and rough.

I see the timeline flash across her mind, remembering the date of the wedding, the day when we came back to Battle Harbour full of nervous excitement. I had headed straight to the castle and promised to call for her as soon as I’d told them.

I had wanted her with me, but she refused, said it was something I needed to do alone.

Maybe if she had been with me…

I see the moment she puts the timeline together with my mother’s accident. “Bo.” Hettie shakes her head, hazel eyes wide with sympathy. “No.”

I turn away. “I went to the castle and told her that I married you. And then she left to pick up Lyra and got in the accident. I told her, and then she died. She died because of me.”

There’s a ticking in the cockpit as Hettie processes my words. I see her eyes as she realizes I basically killed the queen of Laandia. My mother. What everyone would believe if I told them.

“You can’t know that—” Even her protest is weak because she knows it’s the truth.

“But I do,” I cut in. “I do know that. I’m the reason my mother died.”

7

Hettie

Bo’s admission sucks thebreath out of me in a whoosh. He thinks—he told her—the queen died…

It’s as if the clouds suddenly part and the sun shines straight into my eyes, blinding me.

It all makes sense now.

The flight back to Battle Harbour had been painful, and not only because the cockpit is small, and Bo, with his broad shoulders spilling out of the seat, the harness barely containing him, takes up so much space. The memories of other flights with him haunt me; of Bo darting in and out of the clouds, of pointing out a pod of whales when we were over the Atlantic, of putting my hands on the controls and letting me fly for a few, glorious moments.

It’s hard being trapped with him for more reasons than that: we’re going back for him to meet Tema.

I never really planned for that, because I was never sure it would happen.

I wasn’t thinking of our time together; I left those memories back at the cabin because it was too much, but now, to find out that he told his mother, and just before she died…

It explainsso much.

The day when he met me behind the high school, I thought he was going to bring me to the castle. I had a bag packed. I told Mabel I wasn’t coming home.

I didn’t bother saying anything to my father or my brothers.

Bo had been happy; we had been in love, planning our future. Before the wedding, he had practiced with me how he would tell his parents and there had been a nervous giddiness when he left me the day we came back from Wabush. He would tell his parents by himself, and then he would come and get me and introduce us.

“They’ll love you,” he had promised.

“They won’t love my family,” I argued. It had been my biggest fear—my dysfunctional family would rob me of this chance to be happy.

“You are not your family.”

But he never came to get me. The accident happened, and I thought he didn’t have the chance to talk to them.

I never imagined that for years, Bo had been blaming himself for Queen Selene’s death.

“Let’s go,” Bo says gruffly now, leaning over to pop the handle on my door. “Careful when you climb down.”

“We have to talk about this,” I protest as the door swings open. Cold air rushes into the cockpit.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Bo’s tone is as icy as the wind but I won’t let that deter me. It’s not right that—

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