you up here,” he said when he spotted Edward. His gaze swept hurriedly over Mary and Bess like he couldn’t be bothered taking the time to really see them. “Princess Mary. Princess Elizabeth. You’re both looking well.” He turned to Edward. “Your Majesty, I wonder if I might have a word.”
“You may have several,” Edward said.
“In private,” Lord Dudley clarified. “In the council room.”
Edward stood and brushed off his pants. He nodded to his sisters, and they dropped into their courtly curtsies. Then he allowed Lord Dudley to lead him down the stairs and across the palace’s long series of hallways into the king’s council chamber, where the king’s advisors normally spent hours each day filling out the appropriate royal paperwork for the running of the country and making all the decisions. The king himself never spent much time in this room, unless there was a document that required his signature, or some other important matter that required his personal attention. Which wasn’t often.
Dudley closed the door behind them.
Edward, winded from the walk, sank into his royal, extra-cushy red velvet throne at the head of the half circle of chairs (usually occupied by the other thirty members of the Privy Council). Dudley produced a handkerchief for him, which Edward pressed to his lips while he rode out a coughing fit.
When he pulled the handkerchief away, there was a spot of pink on it.
Bollocks.
He stared at the spot, and tried to hand the handkerchief back to Dudley, but the duke quickly said, “You keep it, Your Majesty,” and crossed to the other side of the room, where he began to stroke his bearded chin the way he did when he was deep in thought.
“I think,” Dudley began softly, “we should talk about what you’re going to do.”
“Do? It’s ‘the Affliction.’ It’s incurable. There’s nothing for me to do but die, apparently.”
Dudley manufactured a sympathetic smile that didn’t look natural on his face, as he wasn’t accustomed to smiling. “Yes, Sire, that’s true enough, but death comes to us all.” He resumed the beard stroking. “This news is unfortunate, of course, but we must make the best of it. There are many things that must be done for the kingdom before you die.”
Ah, the kingdom, again. Always the kingdom. Edward nodded. “All right,” he said with more courage in his voice than he felt. “Tell me what I should do.”
“First we must consider the line of succession. An heir to the throne.”
Edward’s eyebrows lifted. “You want me to get married and produce an heir in less than a year?”
That could be fun. That would definitely involve kissing with tongue.
Dudley cleared his throat. “Uh . . . no, Your Majesty. You’re not well enough.”
Edward wanted to argue, but then he remembered the spot of pink on the handkerchief, and how exhausting he’d found it simply walking across the palace. He was in no shape to be wooing a wife.
“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose that means the throne will go to Mary.”
“No, Sire,” Lord Dudley said urgently. “We cannot let the throne of England fall into the wrong hands.”
Edward frowned. “But she’s my sister. She’s the eldest. She—”
“She’s a Verity,” objected Dudley. “Mary’s been raised to believe that the animal magic is evil, something to be feared and destroyed. If she became queen, she’d return this country to the Dark Ages. No E∂ian would be safe.”
Edward sat back, thinking. Everything the duke was saying was true. Mary would not tolerate the E∂ians. (She preferred them extra-crispy, as we mentioned earlier.) Plus Mary had no sense of humor and was completely backward thinking and would be no good at all as ruler.
“So it can’t be Mary,” he agreed. “It can’t be Bess, either.” He twisted the ring with the royal seal around his finger. “Bess would be better than Mary, of course, and both of her parents were E∂ians, if you believe the cat thing, but I don’t know where Bess’s allegiance lies concerning the Verities. She’s a bit shifty. Besides,” he said upon further reflection. “The crown can’t go to a woman.”
You might have noticed that Edward was a bit of a sexist. You can’t blame him, really, since all his young life he’d been greatly exalted for simply having been born a boy.
Still, he liked to think of himself as a forward-thinking king. He hadn’t taken after his father as an E∂ian (at least, he hadn’t so far), but it was part of his family history, obviously, and he’d been raised to