Had I ever woken up with a minor headache? Sure. That was nothing water and ibuprofen couldn't cure. But the morning after my night with Braaten had my head feeling worse than it had when Kasper hit me with the rifle butt.

When Braaten cracked eggs in a frying pan at 5 AM, the mere smell had me rushing for the bathroom. My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my stomach ached- he left for work and abandoned me to an awful morning on his bathroom floor. I don't think I left his apartment until after nine,  which made me feel twice as awkward as I awaited Einar, standing in the lobby in yesterday's clothes beside men and women in suit coats and blazers and modest dresses.

Dad was a quick visit; he'd been approved for discharge and wanted to spend the day with Mom before having dinner with me back at the palace. I stayed with him at her bedside until noon, when my stomach mellowed and knew I had to get back to the palace. Sometime during my wretched morning Braaten had banged on the bathroom door and asked if I'd be willing to make a statement about the situation later in the day. Said it'd be good for the public to hear from me after my absence, and I mostly agreed. 

I couldn't do anything for Mom in the hospital besides brush the hair from her face and try not to think about how still and odd her body lay. Neither could Dad, but he was content filling in a crossword book from the hospital giftshop. He insisted he was alright, urging me to leave, promising to check in before dinner. He'd even wear a suit, since according to Einar, diplomats would be there.

With his glasses hiding the concern in his eyes, he focused on clues and let them occupy his mind.

I needed something physical. I needed release. I needed to punch something.

The palace gym was a brightly-lit  start. As soon as my shoulder had been approved for physical activity, I'd made it my mission to better defend myself. Joronn and Kasper had kicked me while I was down, and I wasn't going to be weak like that ever again.

At one in the afternoon there was little activity on the rubberized floor, and once its paltry guests had seen me stomping through with my hair in a high pony and athletic tape around my knuckles, they made a quick exit.

Einar may have had a hand in that, though I was too busy debating the weights or treadmill to notice much beyond their exit. My bodyguard saluted me and stepped outside the hall. He wasn't needed this afternoon, now that I'd arrived safe and relatively sound from Braaten's apartment.

That made me feel better about boxing, kicking, and otherwise loudly exhausting myself.

One of the hanging bags, grey and anonymous like the man who'd shot Mom, became the target of my fury. I screamed. Screamed and punched and punched until all the muscles in my arm shook and I collapsed in a panting, undignified heap.

And then someone cleared their throat. I glanced into the mirrored walls.

Marcus lifted and re-placed a weight on a rack across the room, likely to get my attention when his voice hadn't made me turn. Our eyes met in the glass and I jumped up. My frustrations returned immediately. I punched the bag hard, hopping and shaking my hand until the sting disappeared and I could hit it again.

"Einar told me you were here," he said, poking around the equipment intently. He had on  appropriate gym clothes, black shorts and a sweatshirt presumably hiding a tee, which killed my solitary vibe. When I turned back to the bag, I stuffed the curses back in my throat and tried not to sound too much like an animal.

A minute later he came over with a pair of boxing mitts strapped to his hands, settled himself into a balanced stance, and nodded at me to have at 'em. "How was your night?"

"Fan-" Thump. "-tastic."

He frowned at my hits, lowering one palm to ditch its mitt. "You are going to break these hands. Let me show you how."

I punched the other hard as I could, hard enough he actually took a step back. "So? I am broken."

He grabbed my elbow. My tired muscles couldn't rip themselves away. "You are bruised."

"Let go. Put your hands back up." He did. "I'm going to destroy them. Rip." Thump. "Them." Thumpthump. "To shreds."

"Allison, stop."

"They wanted a bear queen, they've got her."

Whatever Marc had been expecting when he'd come here, his stern look suggested it wasn't this. "The bear does not attack unless provoked."

"I think this qualifies as provoked," I huffed, resting a wrapped, sore hand on my waist. "Why are you here?"

"To see you."

I dug my heels into my annoyance and mustered up a snappy "Why? The only thing I want to hear is that we've caught the person who masterminded this."

He shook his head. "It has been a hard few days for you. I was wanting to let you know that if you need to talk, I am happy to listen."

"I don't," I told him. My hands were too hot, too swollen, to endure many more hits. I had to move onto something else before I really did break something. Tightening my pony, I shrugged at him and made for the nearest treadmill. "Fine, but I can't sit still, so if you're gonna stay, you'll have to keep up."

"These muscles are nice because I work on them." Mitts discarded, he pulled off his sweatshirt. The scars along his back slunk into view before he could fix the t-shirt underneath. I gave his back a long stare as he stepped onto the treadmill beside me.

"Hey, what's the deal with those scars, anyway?"

"If I can tell you about them, I am not working hard enough," he teased, though he reached back to make sure his shirt was tugged down completely. "I'll see you in five miles."

"Ten."

"Seven."

"Seven," I agreed. At some point I actually did have to write my speech for tonight.

*

"So," he began, seven miles later as we walked around the gym's corner in search of a vending machine. "You are leaving us."

I was still sopping my sweat with a white hand towel as he got us a pair of bottled waters. "Before this mess started, I was so close to having a life. So close. I didn't realize how great my life was then. I was finishing college, I was going to get into a grad program somewhere. I was gonna have an apartment and a husband and freedom. Now..." I pushed sticky bangs back into place. "I'm tired of waking up alone in someone else's house. Everywhere I go I'm a guest."

"A home is only a home when you make it one." He passed me an uncapped water, which I touched  against his as we sank onto a bench in the deserted hall.

"Are you mad at me?" I asked. "For leaving?"

"Do you want me to be?"

Yes. But all I did was take a long sip. He did the same.  We sat quietly, catching our breath, staring at a blank white wall, until I made myself meet his eyes. "You're not going to ask if we can figure out how to make it work?"

He played with the bottle in his hands.

 "If I asked him, Nik would move to America, back to Boston, back to me. But not you."

"My life is here. I have obligations." He screwed the cap back on his water. "Sort of an insurmountable difference."

He was right. I let out a long, deep sigh, and set my water between my feet.  After untangling wolf from bear, I pulled off the bear claw  necklace and wiped it dry in the towel. "That being the case, I need you to take this back."

He held his hand up to block me. "It was a gift."

"It's mine now, isn't it? So I get to decide what to do with it, and I want you to have it back. It suits you." I touched the remaining necklace, the wolf tooth; the scars on my neck ached in memory. "This one is meant for me." Very carefully I lowered the necklace over his head. The cord dropped around his neck but I remained glued against his arm.

He rolled his shoulder, probably to make me move, which I did do, reluctantly. "I will arrange for Gull to be shipped to Boston. Just tell me a stable."

"I wonder," I mused, picking at the tape covering my hands, thinking back on what Braaten whispered last night,  thinking back on how close I'd come to another kind of workout. "I can't be your lover, but  I wonder." My cheeks were too red to make it any worse as my fingers bravely tiptoed up his arm. Queens took what they wanted. I was a queen, at least for a few weeks more. "I've been wondering what together would be like with you."

His hand came firmly down on my shoulder and spun me towards a short, old woman in a long dress hurrying towards us like a bat out of hell. Hurrying may not have been the right word, as Marcus had time to  move his water out of the way, stand, and sweep into a low bow before she'd even come near our bench. "Grand Duchess Freburg."

I gave his arm a friendly squeeze and stepped in front to greet the incoming duchess. "I haven't seen you since the... Since Joronn passed," I finished, lifting the edges of an invisible dress.

"Oh, Your Majesty!" She bobbed into a hasty courtesy that gave her short, grey curls extra bounce. Given her age, I was ready to lunge forward and catch her arm should she fall. "I am so sorry for this intrusion. If it pleases you, I need to borrow Marcus."

"Be my guest." I flung the towel over my shoulder. "I need to shower before my speech today. Have a good afternoon."

She grabbed my arm, her white eyebrows pinched together. "Perhaps you might stay? I was looking for Kettil's son out of trust, but a ah, a woman, might be better suited to the task at hand."

"Oh?" I glanced at Marc, who shrugged.

She wrung her wrinkled hands and looked away. "It's possible I may have lost ah, a delicate item in a room that's not my own."

My hand found its way to my hip, interest piqued. "So you thought you'd ask Marcus?"

"Of course, my dear." Undeterred by the fact that we were both drenched in sweat, she slapped his back merrily and drew me to her side. "Our families have taken care of each other for centuries. Haven't you heard about the Engens and the Freburgs?"

"No?" I began, watching Marc carefully for his reaction. He seemed completely at ease with the idea of retrieving an item for the woman. It did make sense; for being so far north, his family garnered a lot of respect in capital circles; I'd assumed it was for the horses, but maybe there was more to them than that.

"Our names have shared quite a bit through history. This is a comparatively small favor in the grand scheme. I'm certainly not asking we go to war or anything. Just a tiny request to retrieve a wayward personal item."

"We are not wanting to bother the queen with this," Marc began. "She has a shower to get to."

I shushed him with an airy smile. "Count me in. I can't leave a guest in distress in my own palace."

"Thank you, Your Majesty." She fiddled around in a voluminous dress pocket and passed a small brass key into my hand. A tiny number '303' was engraved at the top. "They're taking dinner in the city tonight- five o'clock. Any time before nine will do. Leave this on the mantle. I told him I'd set it there. "

"What exactly are we looking for?" I asked.

Her eyebrows rose. "You'll know." She beamed at Marc. "By the way, I'm pleased to see your beau has moved up in rank since last we met. Such a sweet face on this one."

"It is not like that."

"We're not-"

"Don't worry, your highness. My gossiping days are long past." She turned in a floral-perfumed breeze and winked. "And I wouldn't dream of spreading rumors about my allies now, would I?"

"What do you think it is?" I whispered, watching the Duchess disappear around the hall's first corner. I was curious and disgusted and then more curious. "She's gotta be like what, seventy? I thought old people just hobbled around talking about who died and playing bingo, like my Grandma Ruth."

Marc took the key with a grumbled "I would prefer not to imagine."

"So I'm gonna go take a freezing cold shower now to purge my mind, give my speech at four, and I'll see you ten after five. Sound good?" He nodded. I was about to trot back into the gym when I stopped, one hand on the door frame. "Oh, and my dad's coming for dinner. There'll be Nik and some diplomats and a pair of girls who worked on the Rembrandt's restoration. Einar gave me their names on a list; but it's nothing too fancy. You're more than welcome. Please come. Dinner's the least I can do since you stayed with my Dad yesterday."

"Ten after five," he agreed. "I will be seeing you then."