Page 97 of The Queens and the Kings
The interrogation wasn’t, perhaps, fair. He couldn’t stop himself. Selma shook her head. The tears spilling down her cheeks prevented further response. Henrik swallowed as the silence swelled. He didn’t know what to say.
All these years . . .
. . . she existed.
Not only did she exist, but because of Britt, theyfoundher. She stood before him, flesh and blood. Not a figment of his imagination. Not a person that gave him to the soldats to die. The question that burned so hot at the back of his mind—that spurred him to such depths of hope—wouldn’t come. No matter how hard he tried to coax the words free, they stopped in his throat.
Did you want me?
With the numb wave came a rush of pain. Fury unlike any he’d ever known washed through him.
You should have fought harder,he wanted to roar.You should have held tighter. Your arms never should have released me.
The emotions filled him too quickly, like air from without. Seeing Selma opened his secret box of horrors. He plunged, face first, into the dark bottoms. He could barely control his breath, his heart. Everything swelled too big, occluding thoughts. His mind turned to a marsh.
He turned away with a grimace.
Shite, but he’d mucked this up. He met the woman he’d longed to see all those years ago, but he couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eyes. The conversation fizzled into fear, and he wouldn’t give her what he sought.
Her tentative voice jerked him from the loops of hissing rage, unboxed.
“Henrik?”
He forced himself to look at her splotchy cheeks and tear-filled eyes. Her shaking hand hovered over her sternum, pressing flat to her heart as she asked, “Is it you? Are you my Erik?”
There shouldn’t be a question, he wanted to snap.You should know without having to ask. You should know me.
The vice around his chest closed in. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The only thing he understood was escape.
Go to her,whispered that quiet voice.This isher. You know it is, or you wouldn’t be so frightened. Go to her.
No, he snapped.
He had to get out of there.
Without a word, he spun, headed for the doorway, and shoved through. His heart pounded too loud in his ears to hear around it.
He didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty Seven
BRITT
A warm breezewhispered off the ocean, trailing Britt’s hair behind her shoulders. She leaned her arms on a metal gate that encircled Alma’s garden, thriving with the colorful, bobbing heads of wildflowers. Plump green mattovegetables and a deep blue vine, edible when cooked, wound around trellises jutting out of the soil. Rich soil, too. Gathered by wind and time and the myriad of fields stretching into eternity beyond them.
At her side, Alma said, “Henrik is quite an enigma.”
“Is he?”
“Don’t you agree?”
Britt hesitated. Giving any details about Henrik felt wrong without him present, but she also didn’t know what to do withthisAlma. There was a distance in her eyes. An edge. This wasn’t the maternal figure she visited once or twice a year through most of her adolescence.
“This has to be hard for him,” Britt said, because it felt like the only thing she could.
The sincerity must have revealed her reservations, because Alma quietly said, “Give them time.”
“It’s good to see you again, Alma. I . . . I had no idea you wanted this position.”
