Thirty-One: Penelope Peters
2433 Words
Chapter Thirty-One
Penelope Peters
Blue Friday changed everything. It was a picture of a girl in the blue dress walking across a country road moments before it got bombed. If you talked with the news. But the reason it was called Blue Friday had nothing to do with blue dresses. No, instead it had to do with perfume, and a launch party, and a girl who wasn’t me.
I woke to Blue Friday with a loud knocking on my door. I got up, expecting to find a hung-over Audrey who had forgotten her key. Instead, there was no one, but I saw girls laughing as they ran down the hall with guilty expressions on their faces.
They’d done something.
I looked at the door, expecting to see graffiti or something worse plastered on there. It had only taken it this long for them to do something. They couldn’t do anything while they thought that I was under Cadoc’s protection. Without him, it was free reign.
So now pictures of Cadoc kissing a girl I recognized as Bexley Adams were plastere on my door. I stared, shocked, horrified, and that was when I heard my phone ringing.
“Penelope?” Rose James’s frantic voice called.
“Rose?” I said. “Is everything okay? The baby---”
“The baby’s fine,” she said, “Pen, have you turned on the news?”
“I’ve been working on school stuff all night,” I said, “what’s happened?”
There was a pause.
“Rose,” I said, “Rose, please tell me what’s happened.”
I heard Rose murmuring to Apollo, who took the phone after a moment. “Penelope, your Mum. There was an attack at her work. A bomb.”
Mum worked at the local school as a kindergarten teacher. A school that had refugee students from Coleum there.
“No,” I said, “no….”
“She’s dead,” said Apollo.
My ears were ringing. I didn’t know what to say. My Mum was dead. Dead. Dead. Apollo was still talking, rattling things off but I couldn’t focus on a single thing that he was saying.
I held onto my phone, and then I felt someone grabbing onto me.
“Pen?” I barely recognized the voice. I barely had any idea what was going on. One minute, I was there, and the next, I couldn’t remember a thing.
What I did know is that when I finally came to, I was in the hospital wing. The school nurse was a woman with her hair pulled back tightly who appeared to have never smiled a day in her life. Nearby was the Headmaster, talking with someone that I barely recognized.
A man with a scar on his face.
“…. we don’t even know anything about the girl’s father.”
“You don’t need to,” he said, “he hasn’t claimed her in nearly fifteen years. What’s there to claim?”
“You never know,” said the Headmaster, “besides, the girls just been through a trauma. Give her a chance to breathe.”
“She needs a guardian,” said Lord Crowe, “someone to help her navigate the world. Especially considering----”
“You don’t know that she’s going to be Queen,” said the Headmaster.
“They were caught, half naked, in the astronomy tower.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. He’s still friends with Audrey Andrews---”
“An actress,” said Lord Crowe, “who’s in love with that popstar. And Gwyneth Godford has bigger ambitions then being Queen. This girl is the one. The King knew who she was. The King can count the things he knows about his son on one hand.”
“So you want to what, to seclude her, like she’s a prize show horse?” the Headmaster asked.
“No, I want to see that the young lady is taken care of,” Lord Crowe said. “If this girl winds up in the wrong hands, it could be the ruining of us.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” said the Headmaster, “she’s a teenage girl.”
“Who made our Prince waiting outside a hospital wing for twenty-four hours.”
“He’s a teenage boy, his tastes are as fickle as the wind.”
I faded in and out. Half-listening to their rumblings. Not able to concentrate through the fog that had overwhelmed me earlier. “Pen….” I heard a voice whispering. “Pen, please wake up. I’m sorry. I never should have been with that girl, but you can’t leave me. Not before I get the chance to f**k you again. Properly.”
It was impossible to not stir at the sound of the Cadoc’s voice. I woke, and my gaze focused on him.
“Pen!” he bolted upright.
“Cadoc?” I whispered. “Cadoc, please tell me that I’m…. that I dreamed it. Tell me that it was all a nightmare.”
His face fell. “Christ Pen, I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry….”
I hugged myself, sobbing. He crawled onto the bed with me, and he wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I gripped him tightly, breathing him in. “I don’t have anyone.”
“You have me,” he said, “you’ll always have me.”
“It was my Mum, Cadoc,” I said, “she was the only family that I have left.”
“What about your Dad?” he asked.
“My Dad hasn’t been around from the time that I was born,” I told him, “I don’t even know his name. Just that he was a soldier who deserted. She won’t tell me anything about him…she’ll never tell me anything about him.”
“I’m sorry Pen,” said Cadoc.
“How did it happen?” I asked. “Why did it happen?”
“They think it might have been The Guillotine,” Cadoc answered.
“The Guillotine?” I said. “But they’re the revolutionaries from Coleum. What do they have to do anything?”
“Word says that they’re regrouping. They have a new leader, and he has a different goal in mind then independence,” said Cadoc.
“Why did they go after me?” I said. “After my mother?”
He sighed. “There’s been some concern….”
“Concern about what?” I said.
“The Royalists, and a few others, consider you a threat,” admitted Cadoc.
“Me?” I shook my head. “I’m not a threat. I’m no one. I’m a scholarship girl….”
“Who holds the heart of the future King,” he said, locking eyes with me, “you can talk about time and boundaries all you want. But you can’t deny that simple fact, Penelope. I know it sounds insane. I know we’re too young. But I love you. The world knows, and the world has not taken too kindly to us. In fact, they think you might have had something to do with the bombing.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, there’s the fact that you live on Hay-on-Wye,” he said, “that your neighbors with Rose James and Apollo. That your father had some Spires blood in him, and was related to Apollo’s half-brother, Orion.”
“Mother never confirmed that,” I said, “he was a soldier from Wales. That was all she knew or would tell me.”
“Regardless, there’s also the article.”
“The article?” I said. Then, I remembered the article that I’d written about the refugees. The one that I’d encouraged Fletcher to print. About how parliament was using their power to take power from them. “Oh god, oh god….it printed. But I don’t understand. What does any of this mean?”
“Some people think you should be arrested and investigated,” he said. “The only way you can avoid that is if you are a member of the royal family.” He was looking very seriously at me.
“Cadoc,” I said, “Cadoc, no….”
“Everyone thinks we’re inventible anyway.”
“We’re too young, and that’s not a good enough reason.”
“Then, the alternative is that Lord Crowe adopts you. He’s been very keen on that from the moment the accident happened, actually.”
“Lord Crowe doesn't know me,” I said.
“But he is a member of the royal family, my cousin twice removed or something. Being his heir would make it so that you wouldn’t have to be arrested or investigated.”
“I shouldn’t have to do either,” I said, “I should get a fair trial.”
“That’s not Wales, especially when it comes to treason,” he said.
“I don’t feel comfortable putting my future in the hands of someone that I don’t even know.”
“You might not have a choice in the matter,” Cadoc said, “he’s petitioned my father, and you know the King---”
“Is the final word in the land,” I said solemnly. I lifted my head. “Can’t they at least let me bury my mother first?”
He sighed. “The Royalists are calling for blood. They want to use this as an excuse to go to war against Coleum.”
I started at that, sitting up in bed. “There’s nothing to go to war against!”
“They believe it was Apollo and Rose,” said Cadoc. “That they’re trying to recruit Hay-on-wye so they can take it and Wales for themselves.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I exclaimed. “Rose gave up the throne for Apollo. He did the same thing for her. All they care about is each other. Cadoc, you can’t let anything happen to them.”
“Well, they want someone to take the blame.”
“Not them!” I insisted. “All they want is to be in love. That’s it. I’ve seen those two together. The rest of the world can go to hell as far as they concerned when the other one is around.”
“I’m afraid there’s nothing that can be done.”
“There’s always something that can be done,” I told him.
He smiled halfheartedly at me. “There’s my little idealist. Always trying to save the world.”
“I’m not trying to save the world I’m just trying not to damn people that don’t deserve it. Apollo and Rose aren’t trying to rule anything. They’re just trying to be happy.”
“That’s not what the royalists believe,” Cadoc explained. “And it’s far easier for people to believe the worst in each other.”
I looked him in the eyes, and wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing my forehead against his. “Please,” I said, “don’t let a bunch of old men decide our future. If we’re going to be in love, I want it to be for us, and not because everyone else wants it.”
He stared at me. “Don’t make me do that, Pen. Don’t make me be the bad guy. Because if it comes between agreeing with a few old men, and keeping you alive, I’m going to do what I can to keep you alive.”
“I hate you,” I murmured.
“You love me, and you know it,” he said.
I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that he was right. The minute I gave in a little, he would know that I was a goner. That all he had to do was to kiss me, or say that he loved me, and I would be his.
But I had lost my family.
My Mother.
I had to cling onto whatever little bit I had of myself. The people that had attacked the school were trying to make the lives of the refugees miserable. As long as there was someone out there trying to stir trouble, I would be there. Shouting about it to the universe over the injustice of it all.
My Mother had died because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no more injustice then that. These people, they thought that we were above everyone. But Lord Crowe was right. We were all dust in the end. All that mattered was if we managed to make a good impression.
I didn’t want mine to be the Prince’s love interest. I wanted mine to be someone who when she saw something wrong, she spoke up about it. There wasn’t a single thing about any of this that was right.
My mother was dead.
The government had decided to go after innocent people who were trying to survive. To make a home for themselves when their own home had gotten taken from them. I wouldn’t let my beliefs get stripped for my heart.
We stayed, wrapped in each other’s arms on the bed. I wanted it to be like that forever. Just the two of us, blocking the world out. But the world was all around us, never stopping. All we could do was hold onto each other with our hands tied.
- Writer
