Chapter 2 - Took you long enough

(Alicia)

For a moment I contemplate closing that door regardless, but from experience I know it won’t work. I could take them, all three of them, but he’ll only send more and where would I hide the bodies? This was a respectable apartment building, and I tried to keep a low profile. The humans didn’t know what I am, and I’d like to keep it that way.

I stare longingly at the bowl of cereal.

“I’m going to finish my breakfast first,” I tell mister dour-face. “You can wait here.”

“Our orders are to bring you immediately…” he starts, but I hold a finger up and slowly move my hand towards his mouth. Then I use my thumb and forefinger to pinch his lips shut. The shock of my action reverberates through his body and I see his eyes slowly turn murderous. I smirk inwardly.

Without a word, I turn towards the kitchen and pick up my bowl again. I take a seat at the counter and start eating while old dour-face is slowly popping an artery in his brain. To his credit, and the heavies surrounding him, he doesn’t move or squeak. Good boy. I did notice that at least one of the heavies was trying very hard to keep a straight face. I better not catch his eye or we’ll both be in big trouble.

When I’ve finished eating, I make a point of rinsing my bowl and spoon, then drying them and meticulously putting it away. A small domestic rebellion. On any other day they’ll be left in the sink until I’ve built up enough dirty dishes to warrant a proper wash. But nope, not today. Today, I’m deliberately stalling.

After I place the spoon in its spot in the drawer, I open the pantry and grab a muesli bar, slipping it into my hoodie pocket. Who knows when I’ll get to eat again today. In my mind I’m already saying goodbye to that pizza.

I turn towards the three men and grab my keys.

“Right, now where were we?” I say as I walk towards them. Dour-face doesn’t say a word, he just turns and starts walking, clearly expecting me to follow the trail of steam coming out of his ears. I do so obediently, patting myself on the back mentally for playing nice. One of the heavies fall in next to me, the other one takes the rear. Right.

I don’t have to ask who sent them or where we were off to. I know. I also know not to even try asking them what this is all about. They either wouldn’t know or wouldn’t tell me. The car ride to the palace happens in a tense four-hour silence, during which I play candy crush on my phone and occasionally stare out of the window.

We drive through several villages on the way there. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t been here in nearly two years that I notice how tired everything looks. Echoes of the kingdom’s former prosperity are still there in the distinctly tall yet quaintly elegant buildings, but there’s a stench of lingering neglect clinging to the landscape.

Here and there I spot weeds growing through a crack in the pavement. Public buildings and private houses all show the signs of time’s gentle erosion. Peeling paint here, a rusty, skewed fence there, some sagging roofs and dusty shopfronts.

The lawn of a once pristinely manicured playpark near the library of one of the bigger villages is now overgrown, the grass stretching tall in defiance of the absent mower. It’s not that the place has fallen into ruin. It’s more as if it’s grown tired, no longer cared for with the same fervor that once infused every brick and stone with pride.

It has taken him 12 years to get his people to no longer care.

We drive through the gilded palace gates, and I cannot help but make the glaringly obvious comparison. The place is immaculate. Is that a new fountain? Holy hell, the 15-foot-high monstrosity is oddly elegant despite looking like it is made from solid gold…. Not a sag or a speck of rust or a wayward weed anywhere in sight.

I encounter very few people as I’m escorted through the pristinely kept palace. Those who I do come across are all servants who readily stop what they’re doing and bow politely. Although I don’t miss the eyerolls directly preceding the act. Nothing new there.

Dour-face and the heavies deliver me to the gilded doors of my dear father’s office, after a quick rap on the door. At the call to come in, dour-face pushes the heavy doors open and steps inside.

“Princess Alicia, your Highness,” he says like a funeral director as he bows towards the figure sitting behind the massive desk.

“Thank you, Miles. You may leave us,” my father says in his deep baritone, and the lackey promptly leaves the room, adding a bombastic side-eye as he walks past me. I’m tempted to giggle, but my loathing for being in this room stops me from acting on the temptation.

“Took you long enough,” my father addresses me as soon as the doors closes. His voice, as usual, drips of sarcasm.