Lottie burst through her bedroom door, her heart racing so fast she thought it might beat out of her chest. ‘We need to book a trip back to Maradova. You, me and Jamie. I must speak to your parents.’
‘What?’ Ellie nearly spilled the packet of biscuits she was opening, pulling the packet’s edges with too much force. ‘What about?’
‘I …’ Despite having rehearsed this over and over in her head, now that she was here, talking to Ellie, she felt Claude’s hand on her shoulder again, his and Jamie’s faces staring back at her through Ellie, and she rubbed her eyes to try to get him out. ‘I just need to speak to them,’ she managed at last. ‘Please trust me.’
‘What could you possibly need to speak to them about that you can’t speak to me about?’
It was dark outside from a brewing rainstorm. Lottie looked into Ellie’s confused face and realized this was the first time they’d properly spoken in longer than she could remember. When had they become so distant? How did she let this happen?
‘It’s not like that, Ellie,’ Lottie spluttered. ‘I do want to speak to you about it, but I have to speak to them first.’ Lottie searched in Ellie’s dark eyes, feeling the storm brewing there, the way it fizzed and charged. ‘You’re always my number-one priority,’ she continued, hoping to calm it. ‘You have to believe me that I’d only do this if I truly believed it was for the best. Please, I …’ She knew immediately it was the wrong thing to have said and the words got lost on her tongue as Ellie recoiled.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something too.’ It was Ellie speaking, but her voice came out harsh. ‘About our situation.’
It was Lottie’s turn to be confused. ‘Excuse me?’
Ellie looked up at her and there was nothing there at all, not even a spark, and then she spoke, and it was the most horrible sound in the world. ‘I want to know what you plan to do when you’re not my Portman any more.’
The words screamed in Lottie’s skull like a banshee. She tried to make sense of what she was feeling, scrabbling for her voice. Everything she’d done, everything she was doing, was so she could stay with Ellie; she had nothing else.
‘I’ll be with you,’ she mumbled, and Ellie cocked her head to the side, like a curious animal seeing how far they could push their prey.
‘Not when I’m queen.’
Lottie felt herself swaying, her head fuzzy and confused. ‘I don’t. I can’t.’ It was all she could get out; it felt like her lips had been sewn shut.
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Everything Lottie had done was so they could put this right, so they could be happy together at last. This was the last hurdle; she just had to persuade Ellie that returning to Maradova was the best thing to do, and they would take it from there, get the truth from the king and queen and finally bring this whole thing to light. So why was speaking to Ellie suddenly the hardest part?
‘You need to think about this, Lottie,’ Ellie said, but it wasn’t Ellie; this was something cruel, her black hair clumped together like bug’s legs, casting shadows that warped her face. ‘You need to think about the future, about what you’ll do without me.’
Lottie felt the room get smaller, the same feeling she’d had when she spoke to Binah in the library, like the world was crumbling around her, sucking the air out of her chest as it got tighter and tighter. This was the future, wide and unknowable and so large that it crushed everything under its weight. And it was so lonely she felt like she could die.
‘I need some air,’ she declared, staggering over to the balcony. She flung the door open, launching herself into the grey, and Ellie followed behind, a shadow at her back.
The soft drizzle began collecting on their skin and hair.
‘Lottie?’
When she turned, she was face to face with her princess, the small of Lottie’s back against the stone balcony wall with nowhere else to go.
‘What do you mean?’ Lottie asked, fingers tightening over the cold slab of mossy rock, surprised by the grit in her tone.
‘You know …’ Ellie replied, glancing at the cloud mass in the distance. With her face exposed to the broken light, she looked harsh, skin sunken, as if she didn’t fit in her own body any more. ‘Like, what universities will you apply to; where will you go?’ She let out an exhausted sigh, staring at Lottie with what almost looked like disappointment. ‘You’re the ancestor of Liliana Mayfutt, the only known relative of both a missing princess and the founder of Rosewood Hall, don’t you ever wonder what that means? What else you could be?’
‘I don’t care about any of that,’ Lottie said, her stomach twisting, like she’d just committed a terrible blasphemy. But it was true. She didn’t want to be alone again. ‘I just want to stay with you. I thought we both wanted that.’ It felt like a stupid sentiment, plain and simplistic.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Stop it, Ellie.’
Lottie tried to meet her princess head on. Both of them were almost completely soaked through, their white cotton blouses clinging to their skin, hanging off them uncomfortably, and she could smell the roses and the spice, dampened and moulding.
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to do, whether you’re trying to push me away because of some stupid guilt you’ve burdened yourself with, but you can’t lie to me.’ Lottie took a step forward, pushing herself out of the claustrophobic cave-in that made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. ‘We both know there’s more to us than this arrangement. We were meant to find each other.’ As the words left her mouth, it sent a tingle through her, the memory of a kiss doused in sugar, the sweetest moment she’d ever tasted, but it was ripped away, the sugar turning bitter on her tongue when Ellie looked down at her.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, her voice like a cane on wet skin, and she stared at Lottie through hooded eyes, her wet lashes casting long lines down her face like tears. ‘We’re completely different people, from completely different worlds.’
It hit Lottie in slow motion, a gasping pain that took her head a while to keep up with what her body was feeling. Then she pinned it down; it was the distinct feeling of betrayal and abandonment.
‘My whole life …’ she whispered, but the sound wasn’t weak; it was simmering. ‘My whole life has been a mess of never knowing where I belonged, searching for it, working endlessly to get to it.’ Taking another step forward, Lottie felt heat from Ellie’s body, proof there was still some warmth inside her. ‘And by some miracle,’ she continued, ‘I got into Rosewood, and I found you, and we found each other, and for the first time I knew what it was like to have a home.’ Her voice was shaking now, their bodies so close she could feel Ellie shivering, and she looked her dead in the eye, past this cruel mask she’d donned and into her very core. ‘That has to mean something.’
There was a shudder in the air, a coffee-breathed sigh escaping from Ellie’s mouth, an animal flicker in her eye that lingered over the place where Lottie’s heartbeat pulsed visibly under damp skin, her lips moistening as if she was going to kiss or bite her. It was only a second, but it made Lottie’s body ache, and she leaned in, repeating into her princess’s chest softly like a prayer, ‘It has to mean something.’
Ellie’s fingers found their way into Lottie’s curls, toying with the ends that dripped, the rainwater building until it ran down her wrists, the two of them intertwining. ‘Lottie.’ She breathed her name and it was as if no one had ever truly spoken it before, the sound beautiful and filled with meaning, until she broke the spell. ‘The only reason we’re even friends is because you’re my Portman.’
The words were like a cut, trying to sever them, but Lottie had seen it; she knew it was real whether Ellie admitted it or not. She didn’t gasp or recoil this time; instead she squeezed her fists, gritting her teeth, and she shouted, ‘You’re lying!’
Tears pooled in her eyes, the salt stinging her rain-dampened cheeks, and it wasn’t just Ellie; it was Claude and this awful secret, and Jamie, and everything they’d been through.
‘You’re lying,’ she said again, and this time her fists came down softly on Ellie’s chest, trying to force the feeling back into her. Her voice barely above a breath, she demanded it once more, willing it to life. ‘You’re lying.’
‘Lottie –’
Before Ellie could speak another word, Lottie grabbed her face, fingers hungrily feeding on the warmth of her body, and rising up on her tiptoes, she placed her lips over hers, forcing the lie and all her cruel words back down into her throat.
For a wonderful moment everything was right, their bodies melting into each other as Ellie stepped forward, the two of them pressed into the stone balcony like they might become one with the building, forging their feelings into the stone for eternity. Everything faded away with the taste of coffee and spice. There were no more secrets, no more awful truths or burdens; they were the only two people in the world, and she was safe.
Ellie made a noise halfway between a growl and a whine, and then she pushed Lottie back. As she pulled herself together, Ellie seemed to shrug off the kiss, licking it from her lips with a contemptuous look. ‘No,’ she said, and it dripped with the same unaffected bite as it had before. ‘I wasn’t lying.’
Lottie felt her body turn to ice and all the warmth ripped away from her, leaving her shivering and feverish. ‘But that kiss?’
‘It’s all just a bit of fun, isn’t it?’ Ellie pushed a hand through her hair casually, the rain slicking it back in a sticky clump, and when she looked down her bee-stung lips twitched from the kiss like a horse kicking off its rider. ‘Not my fault you took more from it than there ever was.’
Lottie pushed past Ellie, her body convulsing, warning that she might be sick, and each step felt like a hundred knives were tearing into her feet. ‘I have to … I have to go.’
She gagged as she said it, feeling like her heart might fall out of her chest if she didn’t cradle her stomach. She didn’t want Ellie to see her like this. She needed to find someone who would hold her and not ask any questions, someone who understood without her having to say a single word. Running down the stairs, her feet clumsy, she knew exactly who she was looking for.
She was looking for Jamie.
