It begins and ends with you chasing after a boy.
There's a story somewhere in between but you've grown tired of telling it.
.
You arrive in France on a hot summer morning, and your dress is too tight, and the smell of the sea reminds you of home and makes you want to cry. And yet, you have to stand up straight and smile as the King and his son come greet you, no smile on their faces.
You arrive in France on a hot summer morning. Your dress is too tight, the smell of the sea reminds you of home and makes you want to cry, and yet, you have to stand up straight and smile as the King and his son come greet you, no smile on their faces.
The King is tall and dark, has a satisfied curl to his lips, and he looks nothing like what you imagine your dead father to have looked like.
His son looks like him, taller than you so you have to look up and the sun hurts your eyes, dark hair he hastily brushes back from his forehead and odd eyes, a pale blue or green maybe, the color of a lake.
He steps forward and your governess gives you a little tap on the shoulder to remind you to offer your hand . Once you do, the prince takes it and says something courtly, practiced-but you're not listening, because something else catches your eye.
A smaller boy sneaks his head out of the carriage, and the sun makes his blond hair look so bright he catches your attention right away.
He look at you oddly, like you were some sort of bug, and then disappears into the carriage again . You find yourself taking a step forward in his direction, almost stepping on your future husband's toes.
He lets go of your hand.
When the King says it's time to get on the carriage, you run.
.
Your future husband's name is Sebastian . H e's a bit older than you, just three years but old enough to not want to play with you during the party, so you spend your engagement party playing with your betrothed's half-brother.
Francis, a boy just a tad smaller than you and so bright it's blinding. Bright blond hair and bright blue eyes, almost like the sky, but deeper. You've only known him for a few hours but he already infuriates you, because he's fast, faster than even you, and knows it.
He runs away just as you're about to touch him , but that second where you're so close is all it takes for you to realize what his eyes look like . It's the sea, and it reminds you of home and makes you want to cry, but then he sticks his tongue out at you and you're chasing after him again. He doesn't give you time to be sad.
You don't notice Sebastian looking at you while you chase after Francis. It will always be like this, that's how the story goes.
.
"I didn't like you at first," Francis tells you one day, when you ask him why he looked at you that way the first time you saw him. "I thought Bash was going to spend all his time with you and forget about me."
"And?"
"Now he tells me that I've stolen you !" Francis says, shaking his head but something catches in your throat, a realization you're too young for but will hit you like the tide of an angry ocean when you're older.
Bash tries to play with you, he does; he just doesn't have a taste for fighting you on anything. Whatever you want them to play, you play; wherever you want them to go, you go. It gets quite boring after a while. Where Bash, even older than you, follows you; Francis looks straight at you and raises his eyebrows like he has a better idea. But since he's gone with his mother to Paris, you are stuck here, bored.
"I know you'd rather be playing with Francis," he tells you, "but we're going to be wed when we're older, are we not? Shouldn't we be friends too?"
"We are friends," you correct him, then stand up, trying to escape the odd feeling blooming in your chest.
"Race you to the castle!" You take off running, Bash a long ways behind you. You don't need to turn around and check, only Francis is fast enough to catch you.
But he's not who you're going to wed when you're older . You will marry Sebastian, the future King. For the first time in your nine years you feel stifling panic at the idea. Run faster, like you could escape your fate.
.
You're sent away in the middle of the night, after your guards have pinned down a strange man just outside the door to your chambers. He screams about England and the rightful Queen, and the faint idea of hate you had in your mind cements into the body of a venomous stranger with bloodshot eyes being dragged away by your guards.
You're cold in just your nightgown and a cape, being hurried and hushed through corridors you haven't seen before. Your eyes sting, everything feels like sand running through your fingers and then you hear it.
"Mary!"
You turn around to see Francis at the end of the long hallway, his hair so absolutely everywhere it makes you want to laugh even when you feel so scared.
"Who is it?!" one of your guards ask.
"It's no one, just the King's bastard," your maid replies.
"Francis!" you keep turning your head, trying to see him, but your governess has you firmly by the shoulders and pushes you forward. "No! Let me go!"
"Your Grace, you're in danger," the woman whispers hurriedly, and makes you keep moving . You look behind you and you don't see Francis anywhere this time.
That's when you start to cry.
" Is the carriage ready?" someone asks over you, and you're even colder than before outside , the gardens of the castle around you and the night sky so immense above it feels like it's swallowing you up.
"Mary."
You hear a gasping voice right behind you, and when you turn around Francis is there, pink faced from running and dusty , you're sure, from taking a shortcut through the passageways . But he's there. You're still crying
"Don't cry," he begs, "please don't cry. No one is going to hurt you."
But that's not what you're crying about.
"I don't want to go!" You throw your arms around his neck, escaping yo ur governess' hold. He got so much taller than you during the summer, and you don't expect him to put his arms around you and hug you even tighter, but he does.
And all too soon there's the sound of hooves and your governess is pulling at your shoulders and you have to go.
"It's going to be all right, Mary," he tells you, his hands on your shoulders, and he looks as though he might cry himself.
Suddenly he leans closer and his lips touch your face, a kiss just on the corner of your mouth.
"Good lord!" your governess screams, bewildered, "get out of here child!"
You are hurried onto the carriage, the door slamming shut after you're inside. Your governess crosses herself and mumbles something about dirty bastards as the carriages bumps along at the road, but you just touch the corner of your mouth. You stop crying.
You don't understand the absolute impossibility and underlying danger of what just happened, but you will later.
.
You come back to the castle a few years later, and you're genuinely happy to see Sebastian receive you, a man grown now. But when you see a familiar mop of blond curls a ways off behind the receiving party, you have to restrain yourself from running to him in front of everybody else.
When you put your arms around him for the first time after all those years it feels like coming home.
You try to ignore the reputation Francis has at the castle . Turn a blind eye to the girls you know have been there , you try not to care about his lips kissing another's . You can't care . You still do. A nd come to know that the worst sort of jealousy is the one that can't be spoken outloud, that shouldn't even be felt . It burns you from the inside out.
.
Francis is nothing, and you have always heard it whispered amongst corridors and under the breath of nobles . Francis is a bastard, he will never be King, and he is nothing, nothing -it has been repeated time and time again , to you, to every body .
But his eyes crinkle when he smiles at you, and you think he is the entire world.
He's just a boy, he will always be just a boy, but you've never wished for more than being just a girl with him. (You don't get that ease, that sort of carefree happiness and delight that love brings-that's not part of the story.)
.
You're all having dinner, and the wine makes Francis loose in his speech and mannerisms. He's gesticulating wildly about a story, you're not sure what about, that has you laughing like a mad person by the end of it, has your eyes trailing over his body, following his every move. You don't notice Sebastian. He notices you both, has gotten used to the way you've always been with each other.
But you three, you're all friends, and there's love there, there's a good story, if only someone could change the roles.
You're all having dinner when the castle is taken over . The count responsible barges into the room, vociferating about his son's death and satisfaction, revenge singing in his eyes. His men grab Francis all of the sudden, and your breath catches in your throat, but of course, because he looks the part, even if it isn't his to play.
Of course , because as soon as you heard the rumbling footsteps you reached for his hand, and he was holding it when they came in.
"You have the future King of France in your power, isn't that enough?" Francis asks, looking down at the count like he wasn't a bastard but the King of the world, "we could leave tonight, you could have your revenge."
He stands tall , proud and brave, and she wants to hate him for it, because his life, it's not just his to give away, it feel so intricately tangled with her own that if something happened to him surely she'd feel it too.
He's smart. By the time the count figures out he doesn't have the true heir to the throne but merely a bastard in his power, you and Sebastian have managed to free your guards and take control of the castle again. Sebastian looks at you, such a special twinkle in his eyes it makes your chest hurt, your palms sweat.
"We work well together," he tells you, and he looks as if he's going to say something else, something more, but he must notice how you're light on your feet and waiting to be elsewhere because he doesn't.
"Go see my brother," he says. "Knock some sense into him for me."
.
You storm into his rooms with a fire in your eyes, pushing at his chest and demanding who gave him the right to put himself in danger.
"I don't matter, Mary. My brother will be King, But I…I'm nothing."
But you're everything to me , you don't say. You just kiss him, returning that kiss he gave you when you were children, so much sweeter, so much more painful now.
.
Sebastian loves you. He has always loved you, and it would be so much easier to betray him, time and time again, if he didn't. You slink back to your room in the early morning every day, just as the first rays of sun enter the castle, still warm from Francis' bed.
.
You cry your eyes out in Francis' arms the night before your wedding. Sebastian finds you both like this, fat tears streaming down your cheeks, your head in his brother's lap, both of you looking like the world is about to end, and it is. Sebastian loves you, and you love him just a bit more for sitting in the floor in front of you and holding your hand.
"I know about you," he says, and he doesn't sound angry, just infinitely sad. "I'm sorry."
You're sorry too.
These are your boys, and one could be your brother and one is your love, but come morning, the right one will not be your King.