Page 34 of The Midnight Princess
When he finishes, the Sondish priest sends us away with words which even I understand. Peace be with you.
It’s a fragile peace, but I hold onto it until Monday morning when I enter the Chevres drawing room. Alma’s hair is tied back in a thin, black bow, exposing her neck and ears—all the places my hands have already been—and when she stands, I shutter my eyes. She asked me to greet her formally from now on, using her title but bowing as though she were a queen.
I advance. “Good morning, Your Royal Highness.” I take her hand and bow. It’s like using a router jig, I’ve decided. I’m following a course already laid out, limited in my choices but protected from my own stupidity by that fact. Follow the guide, and I won’t screw up.
She clears her throat and glances down.
“You held my hand too long,” she says, tugging out of my clasp. “The press will have their stopwatches out.”
My brow furrows. “I’m not the king.”
My precious spring blossom,her expression seems to say,and she begins to leaf through the day’s materials. “You’ll be an unknown element, so everything you do, especially at the beginning, will be taken as a clue about your character. To theSondish press, you’re a foreigner, and they’ll want to see if you are about to cause an international incident. They’re rooting for that outcome, actually.” She places a finger against a page and begins to trace her progress through a paragraph. “They’ll sell more papers if you do. A young, good-looking bachelor is a goldmine.”
Her words banish any hope of peace.
Alma continues to leaf through a stack of notes and extracts a magazine, tossing it on the table. The sound restarts my brain, and I focus on the image of Crown Prince Noah staring from the cover of Businessman’s Quarterly.
Shoving my hands into my pockets, I hunch over it like it’s a table full of volatile bomb-making materials. Noah has a slick, dark suit, a square jawline, and tanned skin, under a headline that reads, “The Prince: Sondmark’s Visionary Answer to Economic Progress, Politics, and the Past”.Chol. The man looks serious and impatient—like he has too much on his hands to be dealing with the petty trivialities of a photoshoot, but also like he can’t help the way he looks in a suit.
I plow a hand through my hair. Noah is everything I’m not—educated, polished, at ease—and the idea that we have the same title is a joke. He doesn’t have to work to be a crown prince. He just is.
Alma leans close, and my attention scatters. “His position,” she says, “allows him to shine a light on some of the meatiest topics facing the country, but it also means that questions about the succession are fair game. His dating life is a matter of national interest. Yours is too, until you’re safely married. The spotlight will be intense.”
It’s not what I expected when I agreed to the job. Even knowing that King Otto was my father, I never had much interest in the royalty thing. I was hard at work building my business.The role of the monarchy in Vorburg—lumbering coaches and military reviews, a few times a year—seemed peripheral.
I thumb through the magazine article, which features Noah in a variety of settings. The prince in his office. The prince in a hardhat, touring a recycling plant. The prince in his garden with a dog of some indeterminate breed. There are quotes about “the long-term fiscal outlook” and how “reuse makes as much economic sense as it does environmental.” He doesn’t sound useless and peripheral.
I slap the magazine on the table. “That’s what a thousand years of strategic breeding gets you.”
Alma flips through the pages, landing on Noah in the stables wearing a moth-eaten sweater and muddy boots. He carries himself in the careless way only people with serious money can.
“What do you mean?” she asks, sliding her gaze all over me.
“I wasn’t strategic. I was a failure of birth control,” I grumble, feeling like the bear emblazoned on the flag of Vorburg. “It’s ridiculous to make leadership decisions based on biology.”
“More silly than holding an election and having less than half the country insist that the results were impacted by the weather in key constituencies?” Alma takes a seat and picks up a photo of the queen on a side table. “The prime minister and parliamentarians grapple for votes, but the queen is beyond partisanship. She represents her people in a way no mere politician could hope to.”
Alma sounds like those online lecturers, holding a clicker and telling warm anecdotes set to a slide show. I include the wrap-up she hasn’t. “...so thank you for coming to my BIL Talk.”
Her smile includes a wince. “Did I get carried away talking about constitutional monarchy?”
I love it when she’s carried away. “You’ve almost convinced me to disregard my deep affection for representative democracy,” I tell her.
“Almost?” She rubs the backs of her fingertips lightly against her blouse and examines her nails. She blows gently on them, casting me a look of innocent triumph. “I’m losing my touch.”
Alma would be so proud if she guessed how many feelings I’m covering up right now. I grip the table. “You can’t beat the Blackberry Fourth of July parade, musicals about our Founding Fathers, and the ease of mail-in voting.”
Her smile disappears. “You vote?”
“Always.”
Alma’s teeth fret her lip, and I crouch in front of her. “Why are you making that face? I thought that would finally be something I’m doing right. You know, ‘Flosses regularly, sings along to the hymns, does his civic duty.’”
“Voting is good.” She shakes her head like it isn’t. “Your father’s ministers will have an official position on your citizenship and how you exercise it.”
I drop my head and swear fluently in a language she can’t understand.
My grandma tells a story about a frog being boiled slowly in a pot. I got into these royal waters when it was cool, but the longer I’m here, the more it smells like frog soup.
