Queen Vittoria had shredded the Daily Report earlier that day, so that the carpet of the Women's Room was littered with little pieces of newspaper, only a few stark black words or a handful of letters still visible legible. As her valet entered the room, he had to step carefully over ILLEA and move around USURP, knowing that the queen would not take kindly to him disturbing what was either some sort of modern art project or a display of uncharacteristically jejune rage. She had a little newspaper fragment (MAFIA) caught in her thick dark hair, and it swayed back and forth like a clinging moth as she looked up at her valet.

"My lady, his Majesty requests an audience."

"Can't it wait?" Twenty four years after leaving Italy, Vittoria's accent was still as strong as it had been the first day she had stepped into the palace as the youngest member of King Saevus' Selection. Many in the realm found it difficult to believe that she was approaching forty years old; just as her accent seemed to be trapped in time, so had she rather stubbornly refused to age by the combined effect of genetics and generous helpings of surgery.

"He said it was urgent."

"Very well." Vittoria stood, and smoothed out her skirts. It mattered not whether she was expected to host diplomatic banquets that evening or had planned a night of lounging in the Women's Room with chess and a bottle of port, the queen always dressed like she was angling for a front page cover of Vogue, and this evening was no different: a form-fitting, moss-green dress with a delicate keyhole neckline and a bias ribbon curved hem. She could almost move faster in her heels than her valet, but didn't seem inclined to hurry as she moved from the Women's Room to her husband's study, where she knew that despite the late hour he would still be addressing his papers and handling state matters in anticipation of tomorrow's televised Report.

He barely looked up as she entered, but indicated with a wave of his hand that the valet should leave and close the door behind him. Vittoria reclined against one of the bookshelves, her eyes narrowing. He knew she didn't like to be summoned for meetings, like some sort of dog.

"It's as bad as we feared," King Saevus said shortly, and stamped his seal onto the paper he was looking at.

"And how bad did we fear?"

"The doctors have given me six months at best." His voice was utterly steady, devoid of any deep emotion; they might have been discussing their plans for dinner. He carefully returned the stopper to his bottle of wax and laced his fingers on the desk to look up at his wife for the first time. She could see no fear or sadness in his eyes. She remembered how hard he had been to read during the Selection. "But it could be less. Much less."

Vittoria set her jaw. "I see."

"I have given the palace permission to put the Selection into motion. I thought you ought to know. I would very much like to see our boy married and happy before I go."

"Six months," Vittoria repeated.

"Well, maybe not married," the king conceded, though they both knew their courtship had taken only six weeks and that any Selection that dragged on so long would look horrifically indecisive. "Even so. A king should have a queen, so I'll do my best to hold on until that happens."

Vittoria shook her head. "Oscar will never be a true king. They won't accept him."

Saevus' brow furrowed. "What do you mean, Vita?"

"Haven't you read the trades?" Vittoria's voice was crisp. "Have you read what they are saying about our family?"

"About your family."

"They became yours when we married. Well, I've read it all. The king's Rasputin is a Pinnochio. Once Upon A Time In Illea. Queen Vittoria: a modern Gruouch. Maybe you won't defend my brothers but I thought you would be man enough to defend your wife."

"After a quarter of a decade, I thought you would have learned to ignore the papers..."

"Illea should be ruled by Illeans," Vittoria continued. "The people don't think of Oscar as... as their countryman."

"Then they are fools, and we need not concern ourselves with their opinions." Saevus moved around his desk and reached forward to delicately pluck the scrap of newspaper from his wife's hair. He turned it over in his hand and crushed it so that only a few letters were visible: MFA.

"It doesn't matter if they're fools," Vittoria said acidly. "A king that lacks the support of his people is just a giullare with a nice crown."

"Then the Selection will help." It should have sounded soothing, but Saevus had never been very good at comforting his wife. "A nice Illean girl, from one of the provinces, as our new queen, will do much to turn the tide. As will the chance to show off our Oscar as a true Illean patriot through the television coverage. Make a good impression."

Oscar and good impression, Vittoria thought. The boy was a lazy hedonist, more interested in ivory powders and neon-coloured liquor than he was in the crown. If anything, showing him on television as the future ruler of Illea might just produce even more fervent sentiments against the Crown. "Very well," she conceded. "But I want Giovanni involved in the process."

Saevus recoiled. "Your brother? Weren't you just telling me the country thinks him my puppet-master?"

"He's a smart man," Vittoria retaliated. "And if you're ill, you'll need a lieutenant to help out with the logistics."

"I have a palace full of staff, Vita."

"Staff that don't know or understand our son. Not like Gio does." It had been the first indication that Queen Vittoria wasn't interested in playing the wallflower in this particular royal marriage, when she had put her foot down about Oscar's summers as a child. Traditionally, royal scions summered in Dominica, but at Vittoria's insistence, the little prince had been packed off to Sicily to stay with his grandfather and his uncle. "And Berenice can help with the Selected girls."

Saevus took a deep breath, and shook his head. "Very well. But he will have no title, no official responsibility, understand me? Here only to advise, not to decide."

"But of course." Vittoria smiled. "After all, it should be Oscar that makes the final decision."

there was always one thing that occupied his mind
when his mind was gone
one thing that he was always sure to feel
when all other feeling had drained away
and that was that he was transparent
not invisible, he was not invisible
but transparent like glass or air

hollow, maybe, was the word

and somehow unimportant like he was
pinned to the bottom of an ocean trench
trapped under tons of salt and waves
without need to see or breathe or think
he couldn't have moved if he wanted to
he couldn't have resisted the tide if he wanted to
but it never stirred him too much, it just
lifted him this way and that
like a lover adjusting his collar

giovanni accused him of looking
for something that was not there
that could never be there
but, jesus, don't you see?
he wanted there to be nothing
nothing to hide, and no place to put it
no things, no place, no people
do you see what he was saying?
can you understand that?

jesus, how could you?

so instead he stayed here
all cold and transparent
and he paid his tithe
in the currency of sweat and shiver,
oh maybe it was some
petty future squandered
the course of years reconfigured,

and he wondered if this was
what falling in love felt like.

berenice had always said
he liked the needle
a little more than it liked him.

It took three hours of enquiries but eventually the crown prince was turned up in a motel on the border between Waverly and Allens. He had checked in under a false name, and good thing that he had, because he was a wreck when she found him and it would have done little good if anyone could have pinned the royal Rebur name on such a disastrous tableau. Lucky as well, that he didn't look like a Rebur, and never had; he favoured his mother's side too strongly, all olive skin and curly dark hair and eyes the colour of scorpion grass, not that you could see them right now, slumped as he was on the bare mattress they had stripped from the bed, band tight around his upper arm. There were bottles cluttering the coffee table, a half-eaten sandwich turning green under the radiator, clothes strewn about the place as though ripped from him in a frenzy. She doubted it had been done by any hands but his own.

They had sent Berenice to go and get him, once they had figured out where he was. She wasn't sure if that was because they thought she would be more discreet, or because they thought he might listen to her. They had been close once. They had not been as close in a long time, though for the sake of similar ages they were often pressed together at events. She had been mistaken for his girlfriend twice in the tabloids, before the palace had come forward to clarify their relationship. The prince's younger cousin on his mother's side, she shared all of the aforementioned family features but had also inherited the Zampieri savagery, and applied it judiciously now as she turned to her cousin's bodyguard and said, acidly, "you were meant to protect him, weren't you?"

Kyokutei Kyoshin replied, "he's alive, isn't he?" The bodyguard wasn't sober either, Berenice realised, though he was probably responsible for the bottles of whiskey scattered about - no glasses, she noted - rather than the needles that she had to step carefully over as she considered the just-about-breathing silhouette of her cousin.

"Barely," she muttered.

Through his half-open eyes, Oscar was looking at his arm as though the veins straining against the skin were words that he could read if only he could make his eyes focus for long enough. "There's something moving," he said, his voice strained. "There's something in there..."

"Jesus Christ," Berenice murmured from the doorway, "all hail the king, indeed. You know, other countries have princes that party. Sleep around. Have a good time." She cast her eyes around the squalor of the room, and thought, not for the first time, how sad it all was, how sad Oscar's life had become, almost without anyone noticing. She had rather thought herself the rebellious one, before, when she was sixteen and frequently woke up in a friend's marble bathtub or with someone she did not know in the bed next to her, but there had always been an element of hedonism to her antics, some small piece that said I do this because I can. When she had first realised how bad Oscar was getting, she had realised that his actions very much screamed I do this because I must. "I don't suppose you've thought about trying that instead?"

"I sleep around," Oscar said through his teeth.

"Sleeping on the sidewalk doesn't count," Kyokutei cut in.

"Well," Oscar said, and Berenice could tell that he was barely clinging onto his consciousness, more concerned with forcing some syllables out from between his lips than whether those syllables had formed correctly on his tongue. The sound came out all strangled and awful, like he had tried to shape it into a word as an afterthought. "Wellll..."

And Kyokutei saved him, as he always did. "Why are you here, anyway?" he asked Berenice.

Berenice's throat tightened. She couldn't tell him now. She couldn't tell him, not like this, not with poison still in his veins, still sitting in this squalid little junkie's harbour, still watching his veins like he expected spiders to hatch from them.

She wondered when he had got so bad.

She wondered whether he knew how bad he had got.

She wondered if it was anything to do with that girl.

Instead she said, her voice quite strangled, "You know how zia Vittoria gets when this fuckhead goes missing."

She would tell him later, she reasoned, sometime it was quiet and his eyes were able to focus. She would tell him that his fate was determined, and that he was to be king, and that he was to have his Selection.

But that could wait, she thought, until later.

Thank you so much for reading! If you'd like to submit a girl, see my profile for a form and details on submitting a character. I look forward to seeing all of your girls!