Page 15 of The Midnight Princess
His gaze holds mine too long to be innocent.You know why.But he places a hand on his chest. “Vorburg. I’m the enemy.”
“Nonsense.” I clear my throat and pivot, trying to avoid the temptation to be fidgety or apologetic. “If you have any questions, you only have to dial Housekeeping.”
“Will they speak Vorburgian?”
I want to laugh. No one in Sondmark speaks Vorburgian on purpose. “Anyone in the palace who deals with foreign guests will have an excellent grasp of English.”
He pauses to examine the door frame into his suite. Original Ostphalian era workmanship, the door is slightly rounded at the upper corners and comes to a gentle point at the top. He opens and shuts it several times to the accompanying sound of wood rubbing against wood.
“Does your room match mine?” he asks.
A rookie question. “In a 500-year-old palace, nothing matches. The walls aren’t plumb, the corners aren’t square. The best strategy is to adapt to it rather than expect it to adapt to us.”
This is the reality of monarchy, Crown Prince Jacob. Let the lessons commence.
He leans up against the door jamb, legs crossed at the ankles.
“You didn’t know who I was, did you?” he says. “Last night.”
There it is. I look around the room—my own small kingdom. A deep sofa faces two wing chairs, and a fire crackles in the hearth. An old dollhouse sits on a raised platform next to a long bench stacked with mismatched feather pillows. In the tall casement windows, the aged glass hangs heavily in each diamond pane, distorting the light and images without.
The parkland beyond is snow-covered and peaceful, and I wish I were running the springy trails woven through the woods. You can run from almost anything.
Not this. The kiss can’t be ignored, so it must be dealt with.
I square my shoulders. “I didn’t know. I was not in my right mind, but even so, I was wrong to kiss you, no matter who you turned out to be. I’d like to apologize.” There.
He frowns, looking as fierce as his Vor ancestors—minus the face tattoos and battle nudity—but he probably doesn’t know how thorough my apologies can be. I’ve had training.
“I regret that you were caught up—” No, Alma. No passive voice. No euphemisms. “I regret kissing you. It was—”
Jacob bumps away from the door and plucks a bright pink sticky note off a wastepaper basket. “Svet,” he says, holding it up. It’s my own penmanship.
“Oh,” I say, derailed, “that’s ‘garbage’ in the Himmelstein dialect.”
“Your fiancé is from Himmelstein.”
I persevere. “I had no intention of kissing anyone—”
“Because you’re engaged.”
My mother does this, too—strips things down to their most essential essence, getting to the heart of the matter even when flunkies and courtiers want to wrap their monarch in a veil of fog.
I have to fall back on one of my mother’s favorite sayings,Never dwell, never tell,but I hate it. He’ll think Princess Alma is unfaithful. Disloyal. Reckless. My eyes close for a second but, when I open them, I am resolved.
“It was inexcusable,” I say. “I wasn’t careful of the amount of champagne I consumed—”
“Where’s your ring?” His gaze slips to my finger.
I clasp my right hand over my left, and my stomach feels soft and sick. “Opals aren’t meant to be worn everyday. They damage too easily.”
“Svet,” he repeats, leaning over the wastebasket, and pushes his thumb across the sticky strip. When he turns to me, the noteslips off again, falling to the floor. “Is there more to your little speech?”
“Only that I sincerely ask for your forgiveness and want to assure you it will never happen again.” I’m trying to sound sincere and self-contained, but I can’t seem to relax.
He swallows. “Nothing to forgive. What about…what’s his name? Pietor? Should I send him a text? Explain about the fireworks and the bad luck? He wouldn’t have wanted you to have bad luck.”
Thinking of Pietor makes me want to throw something. “He’s fine.” I strangle the impulse with well-modulated breathing. “You must be feeling tired from your journey, and I don’t want to keep you from getting settled.”
