Page 63 of The Midnight Princess
I’m right. I know I’m right.Chol nia, Alma.My heart hammers in my chest. I can’t be right. She wouldn’t throw herself away like that. She wouldn’t try to make me understand and agree. As different as we are on the surface, underneath we’re the same. Same loyalty to our family, same seriousness when we approach our jobs, same way we have to be with each other.
I scrub my face, praying I’m wrong.
She shakes the hair away and exhales. “That’s it. Pietor was top of the list.”
18
At Last
ALMA
It’s a false spring. The weather warms, and I run the woodland trails. There’s no danger of seeing Jacob. When he looks at me now, I feel the disappointment he’s too well-mannered to express.
Well-mannered. My old nanny used to say that manners were just a way to show people you cared about them, and instead of instilling this essential truth, I drilled him in the pale shadow of protocol.
I do press events with Pietor. We attend concerts and plays when I have no official duties, and Ella pins his photo to a dart board in the games room.
One morning, as my family comes and goes from breakfast, I leaf through the papers. In one, my sister’s new husband frowns at the paparazzi jostling Freja as they approach their flat, his arm protectively outflung. Media training would have helped him. We’re supposed to walk steadily forward, expressionimpassive, no hunching over or blocking the flash photography. Bore them to death. That’s the way to survive the spotlight.
Oskar wouldn’t know that, and even if he did, the picture is innocuous. It’s the headline we have to fear. Royal Pressure: Pavi Lashes Out Amid Succession Row.
The palace response will be temperate. There will be no pointing out that Oskar didn’t “lash out” and that talks of Freja’s place in the line of succession are premature. The best Mama can do is congratulate the couple and ask for privacy.
I pick upThe Daily Missive. Old acquaintances have emerged to tell the ‘real story’ of Oskar’s life, like rats scurrying off a ship to spread disease. Stories about how he didn’t talk much in primary school. How he lives in a Pavian ‘enclave.’ How Pavians are tightly connected, helping each other into positions of influence. The text of the article posits that Père, a Pavian when all is said and done, had a hand in their match.
More than thirty years of walking faithfully two steps behind Mama, and the press still can’t grasp Père’s intense loyalty.
On an opposite page, Pietor and I provide the perfect counterpoint. My face has been airbrushed beyond all recognition, my smile brilliant and gleaming. The graphic designer cropped the distance between our bodies so that it looks like Pietor stands protectively in front of me, absorbing the attention and taking the snapping cameras all in stride. A masterclass in media management by HRH Pietor, Hereditary Grand Duke of Himmelstein.
Ella flops into a chair across the table, craning her neck to read the headlines.
“NeerVelasquez and Freja are coming for tea,” she says, pouring out a cup of coffee.
“I didn’t see it on my agenda,” I say, pulling my phone out and checking the calendar.
“Just with Mama. She invited the traitor as soon as they got back from the honeymoon.”
Traitor? I sigh. “Ella, stop it. Freja has her own life to live.”
Ella balls one of the newspapers into a wad and shoots it into the wastebasket. “That philosophy is a little New Age for you, isn’t it? Right along with finger cymbals, deep meditation, and hemp pants.” She strikes a sloppy half lotus and rolls her eyes. “Living our own life. There’s only so much of that we get to do, is what I thought.”
Ella is having a proper tantrum, but I can’t blame her for being upset. If anyone paved the way for veering off the proscribed royal path and running into an oncoming elopement, it was her.
Pietor would never have tempted me to do such a thing.
Memories spark up my mind. Jacob waiting up for me. Jacob in the tiny kitchen, getting tea. Jacob glancing over.Can I be honest?
Warmth floods my chest, and I run from it. “Freja’s marriage wasn’t a personal slight to you,” I remind Ella. “None of us were invited.”
The look Ella sends me is enough to ignite a riverbed. “It was the most important day of her life, and she couldn’t be bothered to ring her twin.”
When I make my way to the Chevres drawing room, I think of what Freja did, of what I would have done in her place, of the lessons I should take. The one that would upset my life the least is that I can’t let anything matter to me as much as she let Oskar matter to her.
I’m leafing through the daily schedule when the door opens. Jacob delivers his correct greeting and I hardly glance up, it’s so expected.
“Today we’ll cover titles,” I say, reaching for a notebook.
“That’s it?” he asks.
