Page 24 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part Two

I’m not certain if he’s checking the time or expecting a message. But either way, I’m obviously truly interrupting him. And truly unwanted. Though I’ve stumbled into this situation, and I really should have no expectations of my reception, I feel just a little … dejected … rejected?

Sully has led me to believe that —

Elias shifts slightly, clearly waiting on me to continue the stilted conversation. That’s protocol.

Because I haven’t properly responded to his lunch request. Another flash of pure disappointment runs through me, visceral and sharp. I thought we had dispensed with all the stupid protocol and …

The urn is heavy on my back. The backpack straps dig into my shoulders. I need to just get through this awkwardness. I need to set aside whatever expectations I had and keep moving forward.

Hands still clasped before me, I paste on a perfect-princess smile, imbuing my voice with a lightness I don’t feel.

“We used to come here, Armin and I.” My tone is once again liltingly pleasant.

“Mostly on school breaks, around visits with our father. I think it must have been something Anne tried to enforce for a few years. Bonding time. He’d get called away …

and we’d be …” I shrug and tilt my head, perfectly prettily.

Elias is just staring at me now, his expression on the cool edge of refined. His light-blue eyes are sharp. And slightly darkened with some emotion. It looks a little like anger, but could also just be a product of the windows being at his back, not perfectly illuminating his face.

“Your father likely regretted showing us something this intriguing …” I continue with my little story, stepping to the side as I speak until I can rest my hand on one of the bare dark-wood bookshelves. “Because every time we visited the council offices afterward, we always pestered him to …”

I press a touch of my essence to the switch hidden underneath the shelf nearest my shoulder. I’d been too short to reach it the first time the former Lord Hereford had shown us the secret door and the staircase beyond it, hidden behind his bookshelves.

The latch clicks under my fingers. Released from the essence holding it in place, the entire bookshelf slides a few centimeters forward, hinged on one side. I glance at Elias.

His shoulders have slumped, expression fallen. Or maybe it’s opened up? Either way, and somewhat oddly, it doesn’t soften the carved lines of his face in the least. No, his sadness or … grief makes him seem older. Possibly exhausted.

Perhaps my unannounced presence is just another burden.

The piles of paperwork already tell me he’s one of the few world councilors holding hereditary seats who don’t simply see their position as nominal. Even ceremonial.

I can feel it now. Feel him now. His grief, combined with everything I’m already holding, slices through my chest. Harshly enough that I can’t stop myself from quietly gasping under the onslaught.

Elias’s expression completely shutters. He offers me a stiff smile as his essence shifts around him. All the light in the office, including the daylight slashed through the wooden shades, dims ever so slightly.

Then I can’t feel him, or his grief, anymore.

After almost staggering under the weight of our combined sorrow, I’m momentarily rudderless at its withdrawal, swaying on my feet. I grip the half-open bookshelf for support.

Elias’s eyes widen.

I turn away, pushing the section of bookshelf open wider. My voice is shaky as I murmur, “I won’t be a moment.”

Then I’m moving again, opening the fire door that was likely installed when the seventeenth-century building was retrofitted for more modern offices. It was easier to hide the staircase than to tear it out, I suppose. Plus, it provides an emergency exit.

Though the stairs lead up, not down.

Leaving Elias without another word, I resist a childish impulse to slam the bookshelf closed behind me. I’m certain he can get it open if he wants it open.

I quickly ascend the twist of heavily worn hardwood stairs. A modern metal railing has been installed, making the passage tighter than it felt when I was a child. I don’t think I’ve traversed these stairs since I was … thirteen or fourteen …

I’ve also never walked them alone.

Some firsts should never be. And for me, climbing these stairs without Armin is a first that I never, ever wanted to experience. I know that’s a tiny change, a minuscule moment, in the grand scheme of things, but …

I pause at the top landing to press a hand to the center of my chest, still gripping the railing with my other hand. My heart beats against my rib cage — rapid but somehow heavy at the same time. And not because I’ve practically just run up dozens of steep stairs, though that’s obviously a factor.

I bow my head and just weather the moment. Thick curls of my hair, which I allowed Sully to play with this morning before we climbed aboard the helicopter, fall forward all around my face. I just need a breath, another breath, before I once again rally.

I should have known I might run into Elias. And therefore I really should have called ahead and made certain I was welcome. But I … I thought, so stupidly, that some level of friendship had been growing between us. And on top of my grief and the reason I’m here, that has thrown me.

Ultimately, despite all my best intentions, I am that selfish.

Selfish, completely self-centered, not to have called ahead. And now selfish to be shocked that I’m really not welcome. That I’m actually … intrusive.

The scuff of a shoe on the stairs just below me tells me I’m not alone. Though I’m not certain how Elias has followed me so closely without my knowing.

He can shield himself from me somehow. Here in his offices, at least. He hadn’t been doing so at Lake Thun.

I lift my head, get the door to the balcony open, and step out into the cool of the late morning before I’m actually ready to be moving. It’s an acquired skill — doing things I don’t want to do, fueled only by pure, willful determination.

A stone parapet and balustrade sweeps around the curve of the upper tower, though the offices below have been carved out in straight lines.

If I walked to the far left and peered back, I’d see the modern glass edifice that the World Council built behind the traditional council seat about twenty years ago.

I do walk to the left, but I don’t bother peering up at the ridiculous monument. Not that I think the World Council, led by my father, is ridiculous. I just disagree with the need for so much … flash.

Maybe it’s just me.

Still, plenty of the council’s members choose to retain their offices in the original building, so perhaps I’m not the only one who doesn’t feel a need to throw away all tradition in order to be perceived as relevant in the modern world.

I shrug my backpack off, retrieving Armin’s urn from its depths.

I set the urn on the low balustrade, cupping it in both hands as I look out over the city.

Zurich spreads out in three directions from this vantage point, though I’m not situated quite high enough to see across all the rooftops.

There’s a green space at the base of the World Council buildings.

Set up for security purposes, mostly, but it’s also pretty.

Even with the trees barely in bud and the display of spring flowers still to come.

Elias hesitates in the open doorway behind and to my right. His gaze is on me, not the view.

And yes, I can feel that intent from him again.

A chill breeze plays with my hair, and my hands grow colder and colder against the marble of Armin’s urn.

But now that I’ve achieved my primary goal, I’m stuck in the moment.

My thoughts are disorganized. I haven’t forgotten why I’m here, of course, but my plan suddenly seems … so trite. So indulgent.

Wandering around to places of some significance to my childhood with Armin, to spread his ashes?

My brother would have accused me of hiding behind that self-imposed ritual. Of wasting precious time. And he’d have been bored out of his mind.

The school. The pond. And now the balcony where we played and pretended to hide from our parental figures, even though they always knew exactly where we were at all times.

Elias clears his throat gently.

I flinch. The urn, despite its size and weight, wobbles in my hands.

I’m gripping it too tightly, even as it feels as though I don’t have a good enough hold on it at all.

It feels like it could tumble over the edge, falling many meters to smash on the stone pathway that meanders through the park below.

Elias lunges forward, but a literal rope of his essence gets to me first, twining around my hands and the urn. Gently cinching my hands in place while steadying the urn. Then the earl is next to me, close enough to brush his chest against my shoulder as he closes his hand over the top of the urn.

“The parapet is lower than I remember,” I say, like an utter idiot.

“It does seem terribly unsafe up here,” Elias murmurs.

I don’t look up at him. I keep my gaze on the urn. On his hand pressed to the lid. We aren’t touching at all now, but we’re close enough to be breathing in each other’s essence.

I take a deep, utterly greedy breath. Then another.

“I’d forgotten this place existed,” Elias says quietly. “I haven’t been up here, not once since …”

“… your father died?”

I catch his nod in my peripheral vision, neither of us looking at the other.

“He’d come up here with a cigar,” Elias says. “Even though he wasn’t supposed to smoke them.” He hesitates. “He died of an essence-wasting sickness.”

“I know,” I say. “He weathered it for years. I could feel it.”

Elias closes his eyes and huffs quietly. Like he thought his father’s condition was a big secret and now feels stupid that it wasn’t. “I had a plan …”

“Lunch?” I say, both a little cool and a little peeved.

He shakes his head, then rubs his free hand across his face. “Yes. Lunch.” He clears his throat, pointedly looking at Armin’s urn.

I sigh. Heavily. Not simply internally as a perfect princess should. “I had a plan.”

“Not lunch.”

I snort, completely unbecomingly. “Not lunch.”

Elias carefully peels his fingers and palm off the urn. “You’re spreading Armin’s ashes in all the places that meant something to the two of you.”

“Silly, right?” I say weakly. “Using Armin’s death as an excuse to avoid my responsibilities.”

Elias is silent for long enough that I feel myself getting all twisted up inside. Again. Then he leans into me, still not quite touching, and brushes a kiss across my temple. “I think …” His voice is husky with contained emotion. “My father would be honored that he … could be a part of …”

“He used to make us these …” I sob, just once. And not just from grief. Because there is joy embedded in this memory. “These little animal figurines, but out of light. He’d line them up …”

Elias places his cupped hand on the balustrade next to the urn. My words catch in my throat as he lifts his hand to reveal a tiny cat figure created from pure light. Then he places his hand down again and manifests a puppy, then a horse, then a songbird.

A few tears snake down my cheeks, though I try to blink the bulk of them back. Maybe I’m mourning more than just Armin.

Maybe I’m mourning, so utterly selfishly, the parts of me that I’ve lost … the part of my soul?

Elias gently brushes his finger along one of the bird’s wings. In a flutter of light, the bird takes flight, flitting around our heads and shoulders.

I laugh, though I’m still crying.

“I didn’t know that you knew my father,” Elias says.

“I’ve been obsessing over the proper order of things.

And that’s important, but I …” He looks at me then.

Finally. Tears shining within the blue of his eyes.

“I didn’t know you knew my father. He took his position very seriously, and I suppose any contact with you and the prince would have felt …

sacred to him. Sacred enough to not tell anyone else. ”

I can feel him again. Whatever barrier he placed between us in the office is gone, stripped away.

I turn my head. I raise my chin. I look Elias in the eye; then I wait.

I wait to see what he wants. Because I already know I want him in my life.

It doesn’t have to be sexual. It doesn’t have to be some possibly mystical connection — like what Bolan and Sully believe exists between us. But I want his friendship.

“Someone has to keep us all organized, focused,” I say. It’s a challenge, not a tease.

Elias reaches up and smooths his thumb across my cheek, wiping an errant tear away. “I agree. You’re all terribly prone to disorganization.”

I laugh involuntarily. Then I turn back to the urn, remove the lid, and reach in for a handful of ashes. This time, my fingers brush the bottom of the urn, and I try to settle within that feeling, that looming end. Spreading Armin’s ashes was the point, after all.

Elias steps slightly away, giving me a bit of room but not completely withdrawing.

The chill wind catches the ashes the moment I pull my hand free.

I open my palm, not thinking about anything in particular.

The little songbird of light lands on my open thumb, perched on my knuckle for the entire time it takes for the wind to spread Armin’s ashes over the balustrade and beyond.

Until only a dusting across my skin remains.

I place the lid back on the urn, sealing it.

I turn my head toward Elias and raise my chin. It’s not a challenge this time, though. It’s a request.

The bird takes flight. The essence fueling it and the other light-constructed animals dissipates as Elias moves close enough to hover his lips over mine.

I lift up on my toes to close the kiss, brushing my lips against his, just once. Then again.

We hover in that moment, not otherwise touching. Just lips smoothing over lips, breathing in each other’s essence.

Until Elias sighs, lightly pressing his forehead to mine. “You’re cold, Mirth.”

I open my mouth to protest, but he grabs my backpack and tucks the urn safely within it. Then, with a hand firmly pressed to the small of my back, he coaxes me toward the stairs.

And maybe — just in this moment — I don’t mind his controlling tendencies. I don’t mind giving up the lead. It’s possible it’s a bit of a relief. No matter that I also liked the gentle kisses.