How to Make a Princess Ch 7

"Well, that worked spendidly," Queen Ann said, sitting primly on my hospital bed.

"Excuse me?" I asked, feeling a little groggy from the pain meds.

She smiled at me, "You couldn't have reacted any better if I had told you what to say."

"I was shot," I said as clearly as I could.

"You were!"
I looked at her suspiciously, "You seem awfully happy that someone was shot in your home."

She waved her hand, "Please. You were never in any real danger."

"Again. A bullet pierced my skin. I bled all over your nice ballroom floor."

"Yes, precisely where I told him to shoot you."

I paused for a long time, staring at her and her bright smile, "You set it all up. There's no way he could have gotten through security with a gun, unless someone helped him. You helped him do it? Why would you bring a gunman into your home?"

Queen Ann folded her hands in front of her, "You needed something else. Something endearing and fierce to cement your reputation. Something that would still have influence over the general population after four years of you being at college. So, I gave it to them.

"Now, everyone knows that you're willing to lay your life down for others and my son, that you are able to and gracious enough to emphasize with people, even if they are holding a gun at your head, and now, the last part of my plan, you are able to spring back after a failure."

"That man could be killed for what he did."

"Which is why you are going to go to the judge presiding over the case to ask her to go easy on him. That's your first stop when you're cleared by the doctors."

"You're absolutely insane."

Ann rolled her eyes, "I just gave you your freedom for four years! Otherwise we would have had to pull you out of school every other month to make sure people remembered you were alive. You would have been thrust onto every newsstand in the country, possibly the world, but now you're unforgettable! You can live in peace for those years!"

"You risked my life for four years? Without telling me?" I was so angry that I felt perfectly calm, as if I had broken my scale of frustration and had been left feeling empty.

"Again: you were never in any real danger."

"Do you realize how inaccurate guns are? There's a reason they just tell police to aim for torso and that's it."

"We have very good doctors here."

"You played with my life. Did you forget that you need me, Ann?"

"No, honey. You need me. And I needed this."

"There's more to the story. Isn't there, Ann?"

Ann looked out the window where crowds of people had gathered outside, "My son. He deserves to be happy. His job will be stressful and his reputation always under a microscope. People do not need to be questioning whether his wife is loyal to him. And neither does he."

I shook my head, "I don't understand."

Ann leaned closer to me, "You jumped right between him and a gun. I know you well enough to know that you did it because you secretly have a death wish. Thomas? He doesn't know that. Now he thinks you're willing to lay down your life for him."

"I know a lot of mental hospitals that will take good care of you."

She rolled her eyes, "Please."

She checked the clock on the wall before smiling at me, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I secretly paid a photographer to sneak into the hospital about now and snap a picture of me pacing outside your room." She smiled, "Got to keep up appearances."

And she left me, wondering yet again wondering if she was a genius or…just like me.