If You Leave, I Leave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Face of the Crown
The Crown names Verity Ravensdale the face of its new house, Tilda slams down a photo of Piers with her, and the two best friends file to leave. The registrar shows Aveline that Corwin signed her release three weeks ago.
At nine on Monday morning, the Crown announced its new face on every screen in the palace dining hall.
It was Verity Ravensdale.
She stood in a white gown on the Crown's front steps, and the caption said she would front Aldenmoor House, the royal family's new luxury label.
The whole long table stopped eating to watch.
Verity smiled into the cameras and thanked two men.
"The elder prince believed in me when nobody else did," she said. "And the younger prince has been my dearest friend since before he was famous."
The elder prince was my husband.
The younger prince was married to my best friend.
She sat down across from me with her coat still on and slapped a photograph onto the tablecloth.
It showed the younger prince at a candlelit table in the city, leaning toward a woman with her hand on his sleeve.
The woman was Verity.
"Thursday night," my best friend said. "He told me he was at a script reading."
Her voice stayed steady, but the corner of the photo shook where she held it down.
The courtiers on both sides of us had gone very busy with their toast.
My phone buzzed against my plate.
It was Corwin.
"Don't read the papers today. It means nothing. Wait for me tonight and I'll explain."
I read it twice.
In four years of marriage, it was the longest message he had ever sent me.
"Is that him?" Tilda asked.
"He says it means nothing."
"Piers said that too. He said it before I even asked."
She pulled her gloves off one finger at a time.
"I'm going to the Moon Registry this morning, Aveline. I'm filing for the Unbinding."
"Today?"
"Today. Come with me, or I'll tell the registrar my best friend is a coward."
I laughed, and it came out wrong.
"Say you're filing too," she said. "Once we're out, we'll hire two male models each and see every country on the map."
"Two each is a lot of models."
"We're royalty. We can afford the logistics."
On the screen, the Crown's spokesman announced that the Crown owned every share of Aldenmoor House.
My husband's family had put a woman I had never met on every screen in the kingdom.
Nobody had asked me, and nobody had told me.
On my way down to breakfast, I had passed the housekeeper on her knees outside Corwin's study, sanding fresh gouges out of the door frame.
She did it every Monday.
Corwin had slept on a cot in that study for three years.
I had stopped asking why after the third time he told me it was none of my business.
Tilda held out her hand across the table.
"If you leave, I leave," she said. "If I leave, you leave. Deal?"
I looked at the photo, and at the white gown on the screen, and at the text that said it meant nothing.
I took her hand.
"Deal," I said.
So I stood up and left my breakfast on the table.
We crossed the Crown hall together, past the press line and the guards at the doors.
Halfway across, someone called my name.
Verity was coming toward us with two paper cups, her gold hair loose and her face open.
"Aveline, I was hoping I'd catch you," she said. "You look like you haven't eaten."
She put a cup in my hand before I could refuse.
"Oat milk, no sugar."
It was exactly how I took it, and I had never once told her.
She turned to Tilda and her eyes filled up.
"Tilda, I'm so sorry about that photo. Piers was only helping me rehearse. Please don't think anything else."
Tilda said nothing at all.
"Whatever happens, you're both my family," Verity said. "I mean that."
She squeezed my arm and went back up the steps to the cameras.
I did not drink the coffee, and I did not think about why.
The Moon Registry was a grey stone building at the bottom of the hill, with a single desk inside and a registrar in a grey shawl.
She took Tilda's petition first.
She turned the pages, then shook her head.
"The Prince has not signed the release. The thirty nights cannot begin until he does."
"Of course he hasn't," Tilda said. "He's very busy being innocent."
The registrar took mine.
She paused at the second page.
She lifted a sheet already clipped inside the file and held it out to me.
"This was lodged with us in advance," she said. "Prince Corwin signed the release himself."
His signature sat at the bottom in black ink, firm and unhurried.
"When?" I asked.
She turned it toward the light.
"Three weeks ago."
Tilda read it over my shoulder and said my name quietly.
Three weeks ago there had been no photograph, no press release and no Verity Ravensdale on the Crown's steps.
Three weeks ago, my husband had already decided to let me go.
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