Crown of Submission

The first rule of the throne is this: no one touches the king.

My tailor knows this. She measures the air around my shoulders with a silk ribbon, never letting the fabric brush my skin. My chef knows this. He sends up taster after taster, and I watch them chew and swallow and wait, and only then do I lift my own fork. My servants know this. They enter my chambers with eyes down, hands full, mouths shut. They leave the same way.

I am twenty-eight years old. I have ruled for ten years. No one has touched me since I was a boy.

Not my mother, who died when I was twelve. Not my father, who died when I was eighteen and left me this crown and this country and this unbearable, immaculate solitude. Not the women they parade before me at banquets, the daughters of dukes and merchant princes, all of them smiling with their teeth and reaching for my sleeve. I pull away every time. It is not law. It is something worse. It is instinct.

The castle sits on a cliff above the sea. My rooms face the water. At night I stand at the window and watch the waves smash themselves against the rocks, again and again, and I think: that is what I want. Something that does not ask permission. Something that comes and takes.

But I am the king. No one takes from a king.

I have tried. God knows I have tried. There was a captain of the guard once, a woman named Sera with hands like stones and a voice that could stop a riot. I called her to my private study after midnight. I told her to sit. She sat. I told her to pour herself a drink. She poured. I waited for her to do something else, something I could not ask for, something that would crack me open like an egg.

She just sat there, holding her wine, watching me with those flat gray eyes.

“Is there something you need, Your Majesty?”

I told her to leave. She left. I threw a decanter at the door after she was gone.

That was three years ago. I have not tried again.

The kingdom is prosperous. The granaries are full. The treasury overflows. My councilors tell me I am beloved, which is court-speak for: you have given us no reason to replace you. I sign decrees. I receive ambassadors. I sit through ceremonies that last six hours and smile until my jaw aches. And every night I go back to my rooms and stand at the window and watch the water and feel nothing.

Nothing except a pressure behind my ribs, a hunger that has no name.

My steward announces the new tribute delegation from the northern provinces. I nod. I have seen a hundred of these. They will bow. They will present silks and spices and perhaps a trained falcon. They will speak flowery nonsense about my eternal reign. I will thank them. They will leave.

I am not prepared for what walks through the door.

She is not beautiful. That is the first thing I notice. She is something else. Something that makes beautiful look like a child’s drawing. She has dark hair cropped close to her skull and a scar that runs from her left temple to the corner of her mouth. She wears leather and steel, not silk. She carries no gift.

She does not bow.

The guards behind her shift their weight. The courtiers whisper. My councilor on my right makes a sound like a strangled cat.

“Your Majesty,” she says. Her voice is low and rough, like she swallowed gravel and liked it. “I am Voss. I have come to claim you.”

The room goes silent.

I should have her arrested. I should have her throat cut. I should laugh and wave my hand and let the guards drag her away, and tomorrow no one will speak of it, and the world will continue its orderly rotation around my untouchable person.

I do none of those things.

“Claim me,” I say. My voice sounds strange. Thin. Like a boy’s.

She takes a step forward. The guards move to intercept her. I raise one finger. They stop.

“You heard me,” she says. She is close now. Close enough that I can smell her. Sweat and leather and something metallic, like rain on stone. “I am not here to serve you, Your Majesty. I am not here to kneel. I am here to break you open.”

My heart is doing something it has not done in years. It is hammering. It is alive.

“On whose authority?” I ask.

She smiles. It is not a kind smile. It is the smile of someone who knows exactly what she is doing. “My own.”

The court is frozen. I can feel their eyes on me, waiting for the command, the dismissal, the execution. They expect me to be the king. They expect me to be untouchable.

I have never wanted anything less.

“Everyone out,” I say.

My steward sputters. “Your Majesty, this woman is clearly—”

“Out.”

They go. They have no choice. I am the king. They file past me with worried looks and backward glances. The doors close. The great hall empties.

It is just me and Voss and the echo of my own breathing.

She walks a circle around me. I let her. Her boots click on the marble. She stops behind me. I feel her presence like heat from a fire.

“You are afraid,” she says.

“I am the king.”

“That is not what I asked.”

She touches me.

Her hand lands on the back of my neck. Her fingers are calloused and warm. They press into the muscle there, just above my spine. I flinch. I cannot help it. No one has touched me in ten years. No one has touched me since I was a boy who still believed he could be held.

My eyes sting. I do not know why.

“There,” she says. Her thumb traces the line of my jaw. “There it is.”

“There is what?”

“The crack.” She steps around to face me. Her hand stays on my neck. She is my height, maybe taller. Her eyes are dark brown, almost black. “You have been waiting for someone to find it.”

I should push her away. I should call the guards. I should do any of the thousand things a king does when he is threatened.

Instead I lean into her hand.

“What do you want?” I ask. My voice breaks on the last word. I am not ashamed. I am too tired to be ashamed.

“Everything,” she says. “I want everything you have never given anyone. I want the part of you that hides when the servants enter the room. I want the part that flinches when someone reaches for your sleeve. I want the part that stands at the window at night and wishes the sea would swallow you whole.”

I feel cold. I feel burning. I feel like I have been standing in a locked room for ten years and someone has finally opened the door.

“And if I refuse?”

She laughs. It is a real laugh, rough and unguarded. “You won’t.”

She is right.

I do not know what happens next. I do not know if she will hurt me or hold me or something in between. I do not know if this is love or war or some third thing I have no name for. All I know is that her hand is still on my neck and I am still leaning into it and I have not felt this real since I was a child.

“Your rooms,” she says. It is not a question.

“Yes.”

“Lead the way.”

I take her hand. My fingers are shaking. Hers are steady. We walk through the corridors of my castle, past the guards who stare and the servants who scatter, and I do not let go. I do not let go. I do not let go.

I am the king. I am untouchable.

But her grip is firm and her pace is unhurried and I am following her now, not the other way around, and the hunger behind my ribs is finally, finally starting to make sense.