Page 66 of Prince of the Palisades

My eyes cut to my left. I’m never going home. Because I’m going to murder Samuel.

“—you need assistance getting Réverie to adore you again,” Léon continues. “What better way to accomplish that than being seen together. Proving their former power couple doesn’t hate each other. There’s no bad blood between you and my pa, because we’re friends.”

He holds his arms out wide, like he’s thoroughly impressed by his own speech.

I’m not.

“Now?” My voice breaks. Not out of hurt. Or disbelief. Out of pure, face-heating anger. “You want to be friends now?”

I can barely look at him. It’s as if he doesn’t remember that day. A week after we broke up. After we agreed things changed and he wasn’t happy, and I didn’t know how to fix it. That moment when I wanted to talk to him about what I heard his papa say, when I said I needed a friend, and he walked away.

I can’t be your friend. The last thing he said to me before the DMs started.

Léon shrugs. “For the media. For your sake, too.”

“Your Highness,” Samuel tries, “to be fair—”

“What about inviting my ex to America and divulging confidential royal information concerning my life is fair?” I bite out.

He bows. “My apologies. But time is short. You heard the king.”

I grimace. When Léon unceremoniously showed up, Irushed off the video call with my parents. Promised an explanation later. But Papa didn’t let me end our discussion without one final warning about my time clock. About proving I’m adeserving prince.

“We need to try something different,” Samuel advises.

“This”—I wave a wild hand at Léon, ignoring the disdain in his expression—“isn’t something different.”

It’s what Barnard wants. Things to stay the same. For the power in Réverie to remain in the hands of its own. No outsiders. No one who dares to defy what we’ve always done, how we’ve always existed.

“Jadon.” Léon drops a hand on my shoulder. He’s unbothered when I flinch away. “A few photos. A dinner or two. Some smiles for the cameras. Just like the good old days.”

But I don’t want that. Our past is just that—history.

Problem is, I don’t have another solution. Another way to win back my country’s trust. I’m stuck, again.

“He can’t stay here,” I say to Samuel, exhausted.

Léon scoffs. “I didn’t plan to.”

I give him one final glare. “Don’t make me regret this.”

The last thing I hear as I walk back into the house is “What in the fresh hell is this?” from a wide-eyed Annika, frozen in the doorway, finally home from a gallery opening.

It’s barely a second before Reiss appears on my phone screen, bleary-eyed and yawning out, “Did you mean to call me?”

“Um, yes?”

I don’t mean for it to come out as a question. Truthfully, I didn’t think this through. FaceTiming him at midnight. Waking him up. I needed someone to talk to, but Annika’s currently ripping Samuel a new one, and Kofi’s out of the picture, and my fingers moved quicker than my brain.

When I see his face, half-illuminated in ivory from his own screen, the other half smooshed into his pillow, I realize heisthe one I want to talk to. About this. About…everything.

“Hey,” he says, raspy. “What’s wrong?”

I stare at my own video square. Wrecked curls, tense shoulders, a pixelated resting prince face. Today has been far too long, and all it takes is one question from Reiss to unleash the flood.

I tell him about Léon being in LA. About how weird and annoying and frustrating it is because—because I’ve moved on. From him. From the Jadon I was then.

Then, I backtrack to talk about the call with my parents. How no one back home believes I’m different. How Samuel proposed Léon’s presence will change that. How pretending to be friends will suddenly reinstate Réverie’s trust in me. That I agreed to go along with it not just for myself, but to keep the press off Reiss and his family too.

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