The Ring of the Queen (The Lost Tsar Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Part II

  …some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.

  -Drew Barrymore

  I’ll never forget the day my grandma died. I was supposed to spend the weekend with her, but my mom was having one of her episodes. She’s started having them after my dad and brother had died. I never understood them and thought that she was just manipulating me, until grandma passed as well. Then I understood.

  I got the call at around 10 pm. I couldn’t believe it. I realized that she lived on a State Highway, but the idea that someone ran into the house floored me. I woke mom up from one of her depression sleeps, where she took a couple too many of her anti-anxiety meds. She really didn’t know what was going on, but I piled her into the car and drove to the emergency room anyway. When we arrived, the doctor on call was waiting. I’d never met the man, but I could tell by the look on his face that it wasn’t good news.

  “What happened?” I asked the doctor.

  “I don’t know the details of the accident. You’ll have to ask the police about that,” he said. “I do know that all I can do for her is make her comfortable. I wish I had better news.”

  My mind ceased to work at that very moment. Still, every time I thought about that moment, I had a hard time breathing. “What do you mean?”

  “She has too many injuries for us to operate on her right now. I can only hope that we can stabilize her so that we can try and repair some of the damage.”

  “Are you saying that my grandma is going to die?” I asked. I heard the words coming out of my mouth, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around them.

  “We just don’t know,” the doctor said.

  I remember him leading me down a hall into the intensive care unit. Mom didn’t want to come. She was so out of it that she didn’t realize what was really happening. Since my dad and Alex had died, I felt as though I had become the parent, but there was nothing that I could do about that at that moment.

  When I walked into her room, she looked terrible. She had several machines hooked up to her. I didn’t know what they were. She was awake, and she smiled at me. I didn’t know what to think. Deep down inside I knew that no matter how horrible she felt, she would try not to let on to me. There was no one else on Earth that I knew better, and I knew that she would try and put on a brave face no matter what.

  “You look worried,” she said to me, struggling to get the words out.

  I had to smile. “I don’t know how to answer that, grandma. I love you, and I do worry about you. How do you feel? And don’t tell me that you’re fine.”

  She smiled at me again. “I won’t tell you that.”

  She caught me by surprise. “Good,” I stammered, not knowing how to reply to that.

  “My little princess, I don’t want to lie to you,” Grandma started. “I’m in rough shape, and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die.”

  I fell into a nearby chair. “Don’t say that,” I replied flatly.

  “I have to honey. I don’t think that I have much time left, and I need to tell you some things before I go.”

  “Like what?”

  “Put your hand out,” she ordered me.

  I did as I was told. She put a ring in my hand. I’d never seen it before, so I didn’t know what it was about. It was gold and the top had a setting that was different than anything I’d ever seen before. It had a picture on it that looked as though it was made out of inlaid gems. I knew that the scene on the ring was Russian, which was no surprise since my grandma was the biggest Russia fanatic that ever walked the face of the Earth.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “I don’t have time to explain it, but it’s a very important piece of jewelry to me, and I want you to have it.” She folded my hand around the ring. “I don’t have much time, so just trust what I tell you and don’t question it like you do everything else in the world.”

  My grandma had never talked to me like that. I wasn’t sure how to react. “Okay.”

  “I don’t know what will become of the house and all of the things in it, but I want you to have this.” She was having trouble breathing, and the words were not coming out of her mouth easily. “This is special. I can’t tell you why. It would take too long. If nothing else, I want you to hang onto it, and never let it out of your sight. Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  She coughed. She was having a hard time breathing. I tried to stand to go and get help, but she grabbed my arm with a force that I wouldn’t have thought possible, considering she could barely breathe.

  “Don’t go,” she said.

  “You need help. You can barely breathe.”

  “I realize that. I’m going to die.”

  “Let me get help,” I said.

  She let go of my arm, but I realized it was because she had passed. It was over. Just like that, my grandma was gone. She was my best friend. She was the one who taught me everything. She was the most important person in the world to me, and she was gone.

  Nurses and the doctor came running in as the machines informed them that grandma had passed. The staff came with equipment to try and revive her, but the doctor stopped them. I realized that I was still holding her hand. I didn’t want to let go.

  “I’m so sorry,” the doctor said.

  He shooed the staff out of the room. He followed them and left me to have a minute. I wasn’t sure what to do with my minute. She was gone. It would take forever to get used to that. I looked at the ring that she had placed in the palm of my hand. I picked it up and put it on my ring finger. It fit perfectly. Irony wasn’t what I needed at that moment. Unfortunately, irony was all I had to go on. From that moment on, that ring had been the single most important item in my world. I had no idea why it was so important to her, but it was. That was why it was so extremely important to me.

  Of all the things that my grandma held dear, I was surprised that the thing that she wanted me to have was a ring that I had never seen before. She had a whole house full of Russian collectibles that she was extremely proud of and protective over. But, no, she wanted me to have a ring.

  Every time I wake up from a nightmare about the night that my grandma died, the last thing that I remember is when she insisted that I take that ring. Of all the things that I could remember, that’s the one that sticks in my head. The senseless death doesn’t stick in my head. The part where I found out that the driver of the car also died didn’t stick in my head. The part where my mom was hysterical didn’t stick in my head or the part where the doctor had to sedate my mom. Of all the parts of that horrible night that could make their way into my dreams and make them frightening, I only remember the ring. I figured it was because she died immediately after giving it to me.

  The Ring of the Queen