“Me too. I would’ve paid money to see those great gray-haired farts all worked up.” She laughs, then quickly sobers. Her eyes are intent as they hold mine. “You may not have been bred for this life, Emilia Lancaster… but you were born to do it. You were destined to be queen.”
I suck in a sharp breath. Chloe’s words tumble around inside my head, brushing up against all my self-doubts and feelings of inferiority. I think about what my mother used to say on the rare occasions the royal family came up in conversation during my childhood.
Those who actively seek out power are those who least deserve to wield it.
Of course, at the time, I had no idea of my own connection to the Lancasters. I never could’ve predicted those words would one day apply so aptly to my own life.
I wonder what advice she’d give me if she were here now. These days, I miss her so much, it hurts like a physical wound — one that never healed properly. One that never will. Her loss echoes endlessly inside me, a perpetual ache between my ribs. But I’m glad for the pain. Because that ache is all I have left of her. I’d rather cope with that wound than walk around as though she never existed.
The deepest scars of our hearts are traces of the people who left them behind. The stronger the love, the crueler the mark it carves out inside you.
After all the things I’ve lost, the organ inside my chest must be a mangled mess of scar tissue and trauma. Still, it beats.
I’m still here.
I’m not done yet.
My eyes are suddenly smarting with tears, but my voice is the farthest thing from weak when I whisper something I’ve never said aloud before. Something that, quite frankly, scares the shit out of me.
“I want to make my mother proud. I want to fulfill the legacy my father left behind. I want to make sure all the things I’ve sacrificed to get here weren’t for nothing. I…I want to be queen.I want it more than I ever thought possible.”
Chloe’s eyes look a little red, but she smiles as she reaches out and grabs my hand in hers. “About damn time, Your Majesty.”
I’m too emotional to say much of anything, so I just squeeze her fingers tightly in return. We sit there for a moment in silence, both trying our best not to cry. It’s a struggle.
Finally, Chloe clears her throat roughly and changes the subject. “Did I mention, you are absolutelyblowing upon social media right now? I’m talking atomic — no,nuclearlevel.”
I sigh. “I was afraid that might happen.”
“Christ, E, I thought Twitter went crazy after you ditched the royal dress code. Now that you’re rocking purple hair and calling for a referendum of Parliament… it’s straight-up bananas. Honest to god, people are losing it.”
“They’ll simmer down in a few days.”
“I’m not so sure about that. You’re the number one trending topic onevery website and news outletI’ve looked at today. And that’s saying something, since Taylor Swift dropped a new album yesterday.”
My eyes snap open. “I’m out-trending Taylor Swift?”
“Yep.”
“No freaking way.”
“Swear to god.”
She pulls out her phone and shows me the screen to prove she isn’t lying. My eyes go even wider when, sure enough, at the top of trending search topics, I see my own name, along with several familiar hashtags.
#RoyalRebel
#QueenE
#RebelQueen
There’s a new hashtag, one I’ve never seen before, trending alongside them. I suck in a breath when I read the words after the pound sign — the same defiant words I spoke to a room of men yesterday, setting off an unintended political and social avalanche.
#IDoNotAssent
“Cool, right?” Chloe grins.
“I guess so,” I say weakly, a bit overwhelmed as I watch new results populating on the screen every few seconds. They tally in the tens of millions. The thought of that many people discussing me is frankly hard to wrap my mind around.