Almost Lovers (14 page)

"Well, Thank goodness," said Victoria, "You
spent too much time in it. I always thought that car was a death
trap,"

I hadn't expected that. I looked at Victoria
and my face must have only expressed surprise because she put her
hands up as if I had accused her of something.

"It's true!" said Victoria, laughing some,
"He would go off gallivanting in that car and I just knew he would
end up killing someone with all of that recklessness or worse,
getting himself killed,"

I looked at Sebastian then and he seemed as
surprised by Victoria's statements.

"Grand-mama, I really don't think that it
was that dangerous-" Sebastian started, but Victoria hushed
him.

"Now, now, it's getting late," said
Victoria, giving Sebastian and I a slight push toward the door, "No
more talk about recklessness and death. Go do what young people
dating do but you make sure to get this young lady home at a
reasonable hour," she waved a very grandmotherly finger of warning
at Sebastian.

When Victoria opened the front door she must
have realized it had been raining but her reaction was one of
complete surprise.

"Oh, dear," she said, turning to look at
Sebastian, "Be a doll and go get an umbrella for Lady Prussia," And
Sebastian looked to me and then gave his grandmother a kiss on the
cheek before he ran to find an umbrella.

I gave a quiet giggle to the unearned and
undeserved title but still enjoyed it.

"Lady?" questioned Lydia with very little
hidden disgust in the question.

Victoria's gaze snapped to Lydia and Lydia
instantly bit her lip. It looked like regret if I ever saw it.

"Go wait in the Chancellor’s office." said
Victoria coldly, "I will get to your business when I’m finished
seeing off Sebastian and Prussia,"

Victoria and I both stared at Lydia as she
huffed a bit and then walked out of the entry down the long hall
towards where I assumed the Chancellor's office was, whoever that
had been.

"Makes you wonder what he ever saw in her,"
whispered Victoria near my ear.

I jumped, startled, as I hadn't realized
that she had moved so close to me. We were both watching her
saunter unashamed to some office in the quiet but large house.

"Who?" I whispered back, no sure why we were
whispering to begin with.

"Certainly you know that they dated for many
years," said Victoria, pulling her face away from mine as I turned
to face her and she looked at me curiously, "No?"

"Who?" I asked again, less of a whisper this
time because I wanted to be perfectly clear on who exactly had been
dating Lydia for many years.

"Sebastian," said Victoria, realization
setting in now that she had let a cat out of the bag, a nasty cat
with claws and lots of unruly hair and boyfriend stealing
attitude.

She might as well have dumped a cold bucket
of water on top of me.

"Yes?" asked Sebastian, standing in the
entry way with an umbrella. He must not have been standing there
very long if he was wondering why his name was being said.

"Just wondering if you had gotten lost, is
all," said Victoria, that familiar smile returning to her face.

Sebastian looked at me with a puzzled look
and I didn't have time to process it all. Victoria had just told me
that Lydia and Sebastian had dated for years. Not a summer fling or
a weekend romance, they had been a couple for years and no hint as
to when it had ended.

Sebastian and I stepped out of the mansion
and he held the umbrella for me like a gentleman. All the while, I
was wondering how he could guilt me into anything when his
boyfriend stealing ex-girlfriend was the entire reason I had tried
to date him to begin with to get my own boyfriend back. Who the
hell did he think he was? And did he have a motive of his own?
Sebastian dropped me off and walked me in. I went straight into my
apartment and shut the door right in his face. I didn’t want to
talk to him. I didn’t know what to say. I just felt angry and hurt.
The feeling plagued me until I curled up and fell asleep, alone as
usual.

Prussia, for whatever reason, had been
distant and cold this evening. I thought dinner had gone well. I
wanted to stay and continue tapping on her door and saying her
name, trying to talk to her about what I had done, but I had a
meeting with the Queen still. I couldn’t be in both places at once.
I made sure a guard stayed, hidden, but I had to go. Whatever her
problem was, I would have to deal with it later.

I found the Queen in the Chancellor’s
office. It seemed to be her favorite place to be lately. It looked
as though she were clearing it out of important documents.

"Let me get this straight," said Victoria,
looking over a stack of legal texts and documents to see me, "You
used her lie against her to blackmail her into dating you and then
managed to get her to work here even though now she probably hates
you?"

I hated that Victoria found this all so
amusing. It made me feel as if I were in a reality television
drama. I sat in that dusty chair across from Victoria and tried to
think of the best way I could describe the entire drama unfolding
around the simple yet somewhat adorable Prussia.

I swiped at the dirt that had settled on me
and the chair I sat in. I tried to see it from that perspective for
a moment, the perspective of Prussia surrounded by blackmail and
dating drama. I had an eerie feeling that Victoria would think I
wasn’t taking this job seriously if I agreed with her. But the day
had been long and I was tired.

"Yes, I think that sums it up," I said.

I nodded to myself and rubbed my index
finger and thumb together, feeling the texture and thickness of
years of dirt from the chair crumble under my touch. I waited for
Victoria to tell me I needed to take things more seriously,
something I had heard her repeat numerous times over the
decades.

"Well done!" said Victoria, "I have to say
that was a masterful handle on the situation! So long as you don't
lose Prussia, of course. Groveling may be in order,"

I was surprised that of all things she would
choose to praise me over, it would be over petty drama and
manipulation of her pet.

"It had crossed my mind," I said, "I'm not
looking forward to it,"

Or it could just be the thought of me
groveling to someone other than Lydia made her happy. To be honest,
it would be a strange and welcome change. After what Lydia did to
my car, I wasn’t just avoiding her anymore. I was thinking of the
best way to extract revenge myself. Perhaps Prussia would team up
with me if she hadn’t figured out how to best pour salt in Lydia’s
wounds to get her away from Robert. I could always kill him in the
end, if he became that much of a pest. But I would have to start
with groveling to regain Prussia’s attention.

"Ah, but you're used to it," said Victoria,
waving her hand dismissively.

“I can’t believe you told her about my past
with Lydia,” I said, shaking my head, “It complicates things. I’ve
lost my ace up the sleeve and now I have to find another way to
steal her away from Robert, the man that doesn’t love her or even
want her.”

"She still wants this human back, this
Robert?" asked Victoria, her eyes lighting up with the drama that
unfolded.

"Yes," I said, not wanting to actually dwell
on it all and not thrilled that she was so resistant to my charms,
"He's a real piece of work. I have no idea what she sees in
him,"

"How are you going to handle him?" asked
Victoria, "Do you want me to take care of it?"

"No," I said, "I had it contained until you
started meddling. But I think he's still got enough rope to hang
himself with at the moment,"

"A suicide then?" asked Victoria.

In my mind I judged her for a moment. She
cared immensely that we didn’t keep humans as slaves but what was a
little murder framed as suicide?

"That's not what I mean at all," I said,
"He's completely entangled with Lydia,"

"I couldn't ask for a better situation,"
said Victoria, "This is so good I might even overlook all the
body's you've left trailing behind you as you've gone on your
illegal little hunts all through Lydia's banishment and plastered
them all over the Twitter,"

I couldn't think of anything to say. She
knew. She knew about all of it.

"It's just called Twitter," I mumbled, "Not
'the Twitter'...you knew?" I asked, correcting her without
thinking. She waved another dismissive hand at me.

"Did you honestly think I didn't?" she
asked, "But this takes the cake, this makes it all worth it, well
done!"

I hadn't seen her so pleased in almost three
hundred years, almost my entire life.

"Even though she probably won't even talk to
me now?" I asked, "It's hard to make up with a girl when she won't
respond,"

"Just keep up the blackmail," said
Victoria.

"I don't think that will work," I said, "I
think that ship has sailed. Anything I could have gotten her to do
before through that avenue wouldn’t work now,"

"It would piss her off," said Victoria.

"Yes..." not really understanding how that
was a good thing.

"Get her really mad and she'll talk. It
might start with some screaming," said Victoria, shrugging, "But if
you can deal with Lydia...I doubt Prussia will throw that level of
crazy at you. You'll be fine, smooth things over,"

I couldn’t argue with her logic so I just
nodded, mind wandering. I knew she had called this meeting wanting
to talk about Prussia but I had other things on my mind too. I had
been trying to wait for the right time and it didn’t seem like it
was every going to come. The words always stuck in my throat.

“Anything else?” she asked.

She must have sensed my hesitance to leave
now that I didn’t seem to have anything else to say on Prussia. I
decided to just clear the air and get it out there. The worst thing
that could happen is…she could kill me. I tried to shake that
thought out of my head and just spit out what I wanted to ask.

"Victoria, are we going to talk about how
we're human or are you just going to let that bombshell hang over
us?" I asked.

She made some random scratches on a piece of
paper and then looked up at me, smiling. She must have been
prepared for me to ask because she didn’t skip a beat.

"What would you like to know?" asked
Victoria, "Three questions. Go."

I was caught off guard with that. Only three
questions? I had hoped for a lengthy discussion. But at least I’m
getting some answers as opposed to none. I tried to think of three
questions and drew a blank. She wasn’t going to wait forever I
realized as her smile started to fade and her eyes wandered back to
the dusty documents as I tried to blurt out the first questions
that came to mind.

"Why didn't you say anything before and when
were you going to tell us?" I asked first, "What are we?" I asked
with a huff because I knew she would probably give a generic answer
and my final question I struggled with asking. I wanted to ask a
good one.

"What makes you think Prussia is so
special?" I blurted out, realizing I could have phrased it a little
better.

Victoria didn't look up from the documents
she was going over. She made a few scratches on another document
with her pen and then began speaking as she wrote.

"Because all hell would've broken loose,”
she said, looking at me with her smile again, “We are humans
infected with a virus over generations that has been passed down or
infected others as we've fed, and honestly I hadn't ever intended
to tell anyone. I've kept this secret for more than eighty thousand
years. I'm good at keeping secrets."

She looked at me then, looking very much
like someone's grandmother the way she peered over her reading
glasses. I had no way to know if she actually needed those reading
glasses. I wasn't about to waste a question on her spectacles.

"You only answered two questions," I pointed
out.

"You asked four, I answered three. Two
questions were very similar is all," she said, going back to her
document, "In time, I hope to have answers enough myself to fill
you in. I need more time,"

“You can’t tell me anything else?” I asked,
“Anything that might be important? To help me protect her?”

I baited her with the one thing that
mattered to her – Prussia’s safety.

Victoria looked up from her work again,
papers still in hand, and this time she nibbled at the corner of
her lip. She did that when deciding if she could trust someone with
information she thought important. It was her most telling sign and
I had picked it up right away when I first came to court as captain
of the Royal Guard.

She set down the papers and took off her
glasses. She looked at me then and I knew I had her complete
attention. All of her focus was on me and whatever she had decided
she wanted to share with me.