Although Cas had all day to prepare for the funeral, time seemed to fly by as he and Jacob worked on his speech. The guard stayed with him for the entire morning and afternoon, playing the role of tactful critic whenever the prince asked him for his opinion on the wording of certain sentences and rapt listener when he finished the script and spent an hour rehearsing it in the privacy of his bedroom. His presence was reassuring to Cas, and it reminded him that he wasn’t quite so alone now that he’d returned to the palace (it was hard to think of his home as anything else now that he was about to take on the title of king). Jacob couldn’t do much to share his responsibilities, but he was still glad to have the head of security by his side. Over the years, the older man had become something of a mentor and friend to him, and he had a lot of respect for his opinions.

Once the speech was done, Caspian spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready to make his public appearance before the rest of Aspiria. He showered and planned to take care of the rest on his own, but his father’s PR specialist—or [i]his[/i] PR specialist now—had other ideas. She arranged for a beautician to cut his hair and shave his face, insisting that he should just sit back and relax while a professional took care of the work for him. It wasn’t the first time he’d been subjected to that kind of treatment, so he acquiesced and allowed the stylist and his partners to make him camera-ready. They handled his unruly locks and selected a suit from his closet that they’d deemed appropriate for the occasion: a black, modern fit outfit with a notched lapel. To go with it, there was a tie in the same color and a burgundy long-sleeved button-down.

Cas let them choose his clothes for him, but he’d never been fond of letting other people dress him up like a Ken doll, so he asked the beauty posse to leave his room while he put on the suit by himself. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, he was struck again that he was getting dressed up for his own father’s funeral. The knowledge brought about a strange sense of déjà vu, reminding him of the day he’d attended his mother’s funeral not so many years ago, and his throat suddenly felt tight. Both of his parents were gone now. He was only twenty-four, yet he was already on his own with neither a dad nor a mom to give him advice or help him when times got tough. Even what was left of his family were all estranged because of Atlas’s paranoid actions.

He could feel the raw emotions threatening to bubble up again, and he took a slow breath to calm himself. Even though it hurt, he had to keep in mind what Jacob had told him: Don’t shut down. Use the pain to push forward. He still had a funeral to get through, so he couldn’t lose control of himself now. Once it was over, there would be plenty of time to grieve and to forget it all in the numbing balm of alcoholic stupor.

Well, maybe not quite that much. If Iris called, he needed to be coherent enough to answer his phone, so he compromised with himself and decided that he would just get moderately drunk after the night was over. Until then, he had a speech to give and a father to bury so, making one last adjustment to his tie, he headed out of his room and joined Jacob at the private hangar, where the royal family’s hover cars were kept. In theme with the event, they took a black model, and the security guard piloted it to the square at exactly five o’ clock, shuttling the prince and two more guards who had been assigned to keep him safe until they returned to the palace.

They arrived two hours before the scheduled start of the funeral, so with plenty of time to spare, Caspian and his guards hung out behind the screen that made up the backdrop of the stage. The prince mumble practiced his speech a few more times to himself, occasionally peeking around the side of the screen to watch as people started trickling into the square and took up seats in wait for the funeral to begin. Reporters were already standing around the edges too, speaking into cameras about what was going on.

For the most part, the prelude was mundane. Black-clad high borns joined the audience, reporters narrated every detail, security guards circled the premises, and Cas prepared to speak about his recently deceased father.

Then the pallbearers arrived, carrying a white casket.

Cas happened to glance around the screen just as they brought it up the stairs to the center of the stage, and for a moment, time seemed to stop. The reality that his Atlas was inside that box struck him like a freight train, and he stared dazedly, suddenly feeling lightheaded. His father, the king, was gone, and he was about to send him off and take over the most important job in the country. There was no more buffer between himself and the crown. The weight of it all was suffocating, and his dizziness escalated to panic.

“Your Highness, you’re on in five,” Jacob announced, striding over to place a hand on the prince’s shoulder.

[color=#b97703]“I can’t,”[/color] Cas gasped, realizing belatedly that he’d been holding his breath. With a shake of his head, he pulled away from the guard and stepped back from the screen, trembling slightly as the anxiety gripped him in its full might. [color=#b97703]“I can’t do it. It’s too much… I-I need to get out of here. Take me back to the palace. Right now.”[/color] Winded, his sentences were clipped and breathy, and he paced back and forth, unable to stand still.

Jacob blinked, taken aback by the future king’s abrupt downward plunge, but after a moment, he sighed and walked over to stand nearby him. “Prince Caspian, you [i]can[/i] do it,” he told the younger man with as much gentleness as he could manage while he glanced at the time on his watch. At this rate, the panicked prince was going to delay the funeral. “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take you back. Not until you give that speech you wrote about His Majesty and let the people know that you’re going to be a leader they can trust.” Even as he spoke, the other guards behind the screen gawked at him in thinly veiled horror. To disobey the orders of a royal was scandalous, and they all knew that he could be rightfully imprisoned for his insubordination. Jacob remained unfazed though. His first duty was to Aspiria, and he wasn’t going to sacrifice the nation’s wellbeing just to humor the emotional outburst of their next monarch.

[color=#b97703]“But I’m [i]not[/i] a leader they can trust,”[/color] Cas snapped. [color=#b97703]“I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I’m not my dad!”[/color] Flustered, he ran a hand over his face, averting his gaze to avoid Jacob’s. [color=#b97703]“He was the one who knew how to lead Aspiria, not me, and he’s dead. I’m not ready for this. I need more time…”[/color] He trailed off with a grimace.

“I think you already know you don’t have more time,” Jacob said somberly. “This isn’t something you get to plan and control, Your Highness. Whether you like it or not, it’s already upon you, and the whole of the nation is counting on you to do the duty you’ve been preparing for your entire life.” He placed a hand on the prince’s shoulder again. “Remember what I told you earlier? Use the pressure to push through. You’re almost done for today. Once the funeral is over, you can return to the palace and do whatever you need to do to cope with it all.”

[color=#b97703]“That doesn’t change the fact that I’m being crowned king tomorrow,”[/color] Cas mumbled.

“Nothing will,” Jacob told him matter-of-factly. “But for what it’s worth, I believe you’re underestimating yourself. Your father was a powerful king, but he had his faults. You know that just as well as I do. If you put your mind to it, I truly think you could become one of the best kings Aspiria has ever known. You just have to start taking your first steps to get there, and that means walking out on that stage and speaking to your people.”

Cas turned back to him, surprised by the conviction in Jacob’s words. Had anyone else said that to him, he would have thought they were patronizing him, but it sounded genuine coming from the stoic guard. Jacob actually thought he would make a great ruler. He still didn’t know exactly why the older man felt that way, but the support was just enough to quell some of his panic. [color=#b97703]“Thanks,”[/color] he managed a smile and took a deep breath. [color=#b97703]“I guess it’s now or never… How late am I?”[/color]

“Only five minutes,” Jacob said after checking his watch one more time. “If you’re ready now, I’ll let the moderator know.”

[color=#b97703]“I am,”[/color] Caspian took one more breath for good measure. [color=#b97703]“Or at least, as much as I can be.”[/color]

Jacob nodded and said something into his radio, paused for a moment, then gestured to the edge of the screen. “Go ahead. Your people are waiting for you.”

Cas nodded back to him. Holding his folded speech cues in his hand, he turned toward the opening and stepped forward, striding out onto the stage before he could lose his nerves again.