Six: Lucy Lark
1519 Words
Six:
Lucy Lark
The first thing that I noticed after I finished my classes was the guard with the earpiece standing outside of my classroom. I would have known him anywhere. Finneas Reid was tall, with brown hair, and eyes that were almost black. He’d become Aiden’s guard when he went to college so that he could have someone younger that would blend in with the other students, so it wasn’t so off putting. Never mind that he was almost six foot, or that he had a scar on his forehead from his days in the military.
“Hello, m’lady.”
I frowned. “Reid, go home.”
“Not until I take you home, Lady Lark.”
“I’m not a Lady,” I huffed, “and my home is my dorm room.”
Finneas scratched his ear. “My Lady, I was given specific instructions. By the Queen. By the Prince. Also, I was told that you had accepted Anem Cara so to take you there by force if necessary.”
I took a deep breath. “If I pay you fifty bucks, will you go away?”
“I make more than that a year, Lady Lark,” said Finneas.
“Reid, I’m Lucy Lark. I once threw up on your shoes sneaking back into the palace on St. Patrick’s Day during my Spring break. I knitted you a scarf for Christmas every year. Please, please don’t read into this. Let me go back to my dorm.”
“There are paps outside, m’lady,” he said.
I scowled. “I’m going to kill Aiden. I’m going to slit his throat while he sleeps, and I’m going to---”
“M’lady, that’s treason,” he reminded me.
I sighed. “How bad are the paps?”
“Britney beating them off with an umbrella bad,” he supplied.
“Nice reference, Finneas.”
“I try,” he said, “I’ll walk in front of you.”
“What about my stuff?” I asked.
“Already taken care of,” explained Finneas, “the Queen sent some movers earlier.”
“Of course, she did.”
I followed Finneas out of the building, and I found a huge crowd around the building. The shouting started but there was so much that I didn’t understand. All I could focus on was the bright lights that were blinding me. Finneas pushed through the crowd, shouting back at them, until we were at a black SUV.
He helped me get into the car, and then drove me away from the university. I watched the college campus get smaller and smaller. For one, small moment I’d been an ordinary college girl enjoying her time abroad. Now, I was Prince Aiden’s Anam Cara. There would be no rest until I his completely.
Castle Rigoa was in the center of Dublin, not far from the Royal University. It would be close to go back and forth between the two. But I wouldn’t be able to come and go as I pleased. I would, no doubt, have Finneas shadowing me the entire time.
We pulled up to the castle. Queen Nora was standing there, waiting for me. She wore a light blue skirt and blouse, with an emerald green shamrock pin. “Lucy my dear!” she said as I got out of the car. She wrapped me in a hug. “I’m so happy that you’re here. I’ve gotten your room all made up for you.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I said.
“And your grandparents are all moved into your floor.”
“Our floor?”
Queen Nora nodded. “Aiden will be here soon. He finished up with class, but he’s with his father. They’re meeting with members of the housing initiative to try and help make housing more affordable. You know that’s a cause dear to Aiden’s heart. Making certain that every person or place has a home.”
She smiled down at me, like the two of us were in on some secret. “Your majesty, you don’t have to sell me on your son,” I said, “I know all of Aiden’s good qualities. I’m just not convinced that he is serious about me being his Anam Cara for one second. I’m going through with this for the sake of my grandparents, and Mallory’s memory but I know Aiden. He’ll be bored with me before Christmas and there will be some other girl.”
The Queen narrowed her eyes. “Now Lucy, I’m no stranger to my sons Casanovalike existence. I know that he’s had his fair share of girlfriends and that he’s never dated anyone seriously. Well, except for that Peters girl but that was mostly so that he could get back at Cadoc over their childish feud.”
“I remember,” I said, “I also remember watching him take every single girl up to his room that wasn’t me. I remember walking in hearing him and Tommy talking about how he had his first…” I paused, remembering exactly who I was talking to.
Queen Nora exhaled, processing everything that I’ve said. “Lucy, that was Aiden as a boy. He’s twenty-one now. He’s going to graduate soon, and he’s at a different point of his life. He wants to get serious. If he didn’t want that, he wouldn’t have declared Anam Cara for you.”
“I think he declared Anam Cara because he’s a spoilt child who’s trying to make my life difficult,” I said glumly.
Queen Nora smiled at me. “Lucy, he loves you. He’ll do whatever it takes to prove it to you.”
“If he really loved me, he’d let me go. Let me decide for myself if I wanted to fall in love with him. Because his college experience might be ending, mine hadn’t even finished up yet. Now, I’m never really going to get to have one.”
The Queen placed a hand on my back. “No, but you’ll have so much more.” She smiled at me and led me inside. For most girls, a palace would have been a dream come true. But for me, walking back into this palace was a nightmare.
I’d been eleven years-old the summer that Mallory was killed. Aiden had been thirteen. What no one ever said was that I was the one that found her. When I spent my summers with my grandparents, sometimes I would have sleepovers with the Princess. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to hear the members of The Guillotine crawling through our window. I had stayed completely still, not certain what to do. There was a shriek from Mallory that was muffled by a man’s hands.
A man with a black beret came over to my bed. “There’s someone else over here. Another girl. Do they have another daughter we didn’t know about?”
The other man with him peered at me. He had red hair and a scar on his face. “Leave her. She’s a servant’s granddaughter. No one important.”
“She’s seen us,” said the stranger.
“You won’t say anything, will you girl?” the man with the scar said. He had a knife in his hand that he was flipping back and forth. “Because if you do, I will come back for you. Then you can join your Princess. Along with anyone else that you knew and loved.”
I couldn’t say anything. All I could do was stay there, frozen in fear. He crossed over, bent down, and stroked my cheek with the knife.
“Don’t scream,” he whispered.
Every time I went into my palace, I remembered that feeling of complete and utter hopelessness as the members of The Guillotine dragged Mallory away to kill her. The man with the scar had stayed with me the entire time, pressing a knife to me to make sure I didn’t run away.
They had chloroformed Mallory, and she was completely knocked out. I had to lay there as they took her out and strung her up a tree. I heard her scream. Worse than that, there was nothing. Only silence.
That was the horrible day everything changed. I went from being a friend of the royal family. To being someone that Aiden couldn’t look at without thinking of the memory of his head sister.
Usually, when I was in Ireland, I lived with my grandparents in their house on the palace grounds. But now, I would be inside of castle Rioga. And worse, I’d have to return to castle Hillsborough. With Mallory’s memory haunting me.
I was taken to one of the many floors on the palace, to a room that I realized had formally been Mallory’s. “Your majesty, I can’t sleep here. I should sleep somewhere else.”
The Queen waved her hand. “Nonsense. I can’t think of anything more fitting for Mallory’s room. I had it made over special, just for you, and your grandparents are in the room across the way. Your Gran is in the kitchen, actually, if you’d like to go see her.”
“Thank you, your majesty. I think I will.”
I put down my things, and made my way through the familiar, long winding halls of castle Rioga until I was in the kitchen. Dreading each step of the way. Because I would have to face my grandmother’s wrath for not listening to her one rule.
Don’t interfere with the royals. I had gone way, way past that now.
- Writer
