*Isla*
“We need to talk,” I say to Poppy, and she stops fluffing the pillows on my bed long enough to look over at me.
“Oh? Now you would like to talk?” She sits down on the edge of my bed and crosses one leg over the other one so that her foot is dangling. She kicks it around in a circle, her hands folded over her knee. “All right. What would you like to discuss? What do you think about the rain we got last night? Oh, did you hear that Barbie in the kitchen found her true mate? Do you think Beta Seth plucks his eyebrows?”
Letting out a sigh, I walk over and sit next to her. “Stop it, Poppy. I understand that you’re upset. You feel like I should’ve told you what was going on, and you’re not wrong. I just… I didn’t know anything until last night. And after I talked to Maddox about it, I was so exhausted, I just wanted to go to sleep.”
“I understand.” She pops up off of the bed and crosses to where she left her duster earlier. Picking it up, she begins her aggressive dusting motion again. “You didn’t want to talk to me about it. I get it. After all, you’re a princess, apparently, and I’m just… a stupid maid.”
“Poppy!” I exclaim, going over to her and taking hold of the duster so she either has to stop or jerk it away from me. I can see her contemplating the latter but she doesn’t. “I would’ve told you this morning, but my brother got here first, and I thought he should know. He’s family.”
“And what am I?” she barks at me. “Just a servant? Some stupid girl who that the king assigned to you?”
“Of course not!” I wrap my arms around her. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had!”
She is stiff in my grasp for a moment before she begins to relax. “I am?”
“You are!” I tell her. “You are more of a sister to me than any of my actual sisters. But Ben and I grew up together. We used to be the only confidant the other had, and when he was so sick, he used to tell me how afraid he was, and I used to tell him about the struggles of helping mom and dad keep the family afloat.”
I release her now and see that she’s relaxed a bit in understanding. She really has been acting like a jealous brat, but I guess it’s a bit flattering to see that she cares so much about me that she’s upset that I didn’t tell her my secret first.
“Well, next time you have a major secret, you’d better tell me first!” she says dusting me with the duster. I almost laugh, but the dust tickles my nose, and I sneeze instead. She hands me a tissue, but she’s not done berating me yet. “Seriously! You’re pregnant, and you are a princess, for sure, even the king admits it, and you don’t tell me?”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I say again.
She laughs and shakes her head. “Really, Princess Isla!” She sounds mad, but she’s not anymore. She’s just giving me a hard time. “I don’t know what I'm going to do with you!”
Before I can respond at all, the door comes flying open. “I can tell you what you’re going to do, Poppy!” Maddox’s voice shakes the room, he’s so mad. “You can pack up your fucking stuff and move yourself right back to the servants’ quarters, you ungrateful little bitch!”
“Maddox!” I say, stepping between them. He’s so mad, his face is red, and maybe for the first time since I’ve met her, Poppy actually looks frightened. “Calm down!” I tell him, but he jerks away from me, stepping closer to her, his hand in her face, and for a second I have visions of Seth knocking the living shit out of Mrs. W.
“Let me handle this, Isla! You’re too soft on the servants!”
I leap between them, putting myself in front of Poppy. I don’t think Maddox would really strike her, but I don’t know. “Listen!” I scream at him. “We’re fine!” Poppy is trembling behind me. I can actually feel her body shaking. “You have got to get a grip on yourself, Your Majesty!”
His eyes meet mine then, and he lowers his hand. “You were arguing!” he insists. “I heard you through the door!”
“While I’m not sure what I think about you admitting you were eavesdropping just now,” I begin, “I can assure you that I have it under control. The last thing I need is for you to come storming in here to save me from Poppy of all people! Have you already forgotten the lengths she went to to help you save my life when I was missing?” Fury shoots through me as well, and I can’t help but wonder when this is all going to end. When is he going to stop trying to control every little fucking aspect of my life?
But I don’t have an answer for that as he stands there staring at me, and I suppose that there is no answer. Maddox has never been one to listen to reason before he goes flying off the hook, not when it comes to me anyway.
He takes a step back and lowers his hand for a moment before raising it again to drag down his chin. “I thought that the two of you were having a disagreement,” he says.
“Even if we were, that doesn’t give you the right to storm in here and scare the shit out of us!” I tell him. My hand instinctively goes to cradle my abdomen, “Do you honestly think I’m so weak and fragile that I can’t even stand up for myself against Poppy?”
“Hey,” Poppy says behind me, clearly calmer now. “I can be tough.”
I turn and look at her, shaking my head. “I know you can, but you’re also my friend, not an axe murderer.” Back to Maddox, I say, “You have got to stop coming into the room like that!”
He hasn’t actually said he was sorry yet, and I’m beginning to wonder if he is even capable of it at the moment. I know he’s under a lot of stress lately, and that’s probably why he is out of control. I don’t think it’s a very good excuse for losing his shit every five minutes, but I can only imagine that it takes a toll on a person.
I get it now–the reputation he’s always had for being unhinged. I can see that now, and the longer I stare at him without him even moving to apologize to me or to Poppy, I can understand why everyone uses words like cruel, unyielding, heartless, and savage to describe him.
“Beg your pardon,” is the best I’m going to get. He takes a step toward the door. “We need to be outside in about an hour.”
I want to tell him he can go without me, that I don’t want to go anywhere with him, but I understand he needs me there. “Fine.” That’s the best he’s going to get from me.
He moves to open the door, to step out, and I see that he has that haunted look in his eyes, like he does when he’s thinking of Rebecca.
I can only imagine what a wreck he must’ve been back then, when she died. He must’ve been shouting at everyone all the time.
I turn back to Poppy. “Are you all right?” I ask her.
She sighs loudly and says, “Yep. I will be. As soon as I change my underwear.”
It’s too much for me, and we both begin to laugh uncontrollably, grabbing onto one another as we shake with hiccups and the kind of laughter that starts low in our bellies and rocks our entire bodies.
When we finally recover the ability to breathe, she says, “I’m so sorry, Princess Isla. I didn’t mean to behave that way. I was just afraid that you didn’t need me anymore.”
I pull her close to me and hug her tightly, and she hugs me back. “I will always need you, Poppy,” I assure her. “But please, don’t ever yell at me again. I can’t handle King Maddox’s storming the castle antics.”
“I won’t,” she says, but I believe it about as much as I believe that he won’t ever lose his cool again.
Letting her go, I begin to get ready for the execution, an event I don’t want to attend to begin with, but I know I must be there. I need to show my support to Maddox. It means a lot to him. As I shower, my mind goes back over the way he’s been acting lately. I wish I could do something to help him, but it seems like all I do is make it worse.
We can’t agree on anything. He doesn’t like any of my ideas, and he doesn’t want to let me do any of the things I feel I need to do to help our child. It seems like every day he grows more and more out of control, and I have to wonder how long this will go on.
I hope that this execution will ease things a bit and he’ll start to relax a bit, but when I run my hand over my abdomen, knowing that there’s life there, I have to think that the next several months, while I carry his child, King Maddox is only going to grow more and more unsettled. He’ll be angry more frequently, and he’ll yell at everyone more often.
I don’t know what to do about any of this. He’s not the man I fell in love with when he acts like this, but abandoning him now isn’t an option. Not only am I carrying his child, but I also love him.
I get dressed in a purple gown that matches the royal colors of the land, and Poppy does my hair and makeup. All the while, I am praying to the Moon Goddess that nothing unfortunate happens at the execution. If something does, it just might be the last straw for Maddox.
Something tells me we will not be that lucky, though….
“You look beautiful,” Poppy tells me as she slips some earrings in my ears. “Are you nervous?”
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, so I nod at her.
“It’ll be all right,” she assures me, but she looks a bit apprehensive herself. “It’ll all be over soon, and then, you won’t have to worry about that wicked Zabrina ever again.
“I know,” I tell her, but I’m not so sure. I have a feeling Zabrina is one of those people who can haunt someone long after she’s gone.