Page 68 of The Midnight Princess
“So stop treating it like one. If it’s meant to be handled, you’re going to break things. It won’t hurt you to have a few misfit toys.”
I run a light finger along the tiny stair railing of the make-believe palace. My toys were indestructible—plastic superheroes, mostly, and a basket of die-cast cars in my grandpa’s shop. It’s another reminder that Alma and I are nothing alike.
These days, I need all the reminders I can get. I push the thought further. I thought that after I’d learned a few things about bowing and dressing, I’d feel more like a prince, but I don’t. All these weeks of training have only taught me how much I fall short.
A more unhelpful thought follows.She can teach me.
Alma, engaged and out of reach, looks up. “Fix things that break. Got it. I appreciate the professional advice from a bespoke furniture maker. Thanks for the consultation.”
“The first one is free.” I retreat, setting the crumpled parcel on the coffee table. “Two,” I announce, taking a second drag of the Sondish death yogurt. “Three,” I mumble around the bite. “Four.” I breathe hard through my mouth. Best not to get my nose involved.
“Take your time,” she laughs, settling down next to me and reaching for a handful of pistachios. “You need to savor the misery.”
“Is this a professional consultation from a royal princess?”
Her eyes dance. “The first one is free.”
20
Let’s Go
ALMA
Pietor has been playing the part of the doting fiancé. The problem is that he’s playing it too well.
Our segment runs onThe Sun Rises on Himmelstein. He charmed the entire grand duchy by holding my hand the entire time and calling me ‘A’, excusing himself to the interviewer. “It’s a little pet name I devised between us. She calls me ‘P.’”
“And when may we expect your happy event?” the host asked, her alarmingly shaped eyebrows rising in expectation.
That’s when my solid grasp of the Himmelstein dialect suddenly failed me. I brushed through the rest of the interview without committing to any date.
We attend an event at the Grousehof, a former royal palace which houses the Sondish parliament, and he tucks me gently into the Mercedes at the end of the night. The pictures will make the newspapers. They’ll be folded next to the morning coffee and fresh rolls brought to the breakfast tables of northern Europe’smost influential bankers who will then, it is supposed, find it in their hearts to extend a more generous line of credit to the grand duchy.
Himmelstein won’t be the only ones to benefit from all this. Sondmark needs the appearance of Pietor and I as a happy couple, too. The trade negotiations with Vorburg have gotten tangled up with an obscure boundary dispute over a tiny island, sparking off a wave of protests. Queen Helena has her work cut out, trying to control the narrative. The last thing she needs is to be sidelined because another Sondish princess is in the press for the wrong reasons.
I inhale slowly. This lie serves me.
Me. I look out on streets slick with rain and release a bitter breath. The lie we’re telling serves Sondmark. Not me. Maybe for the first time in my life, I feel the difference.
Pietor enters from his side of the car and takes my hand. I would once have seen this as a promising gesture, but now I remove it before we travel even a block from the Grousehof.
“You’re being childish,” he says. Hair falls over his forehead, and he herds it back into place with the scoop of a hand.
I train my eyes on the rows of tidy townhouses and brightly lit cafes, at the people meeting for drinks and a leisurely meal. No one else is making romantic decisions based on GDP and access to rare earth metals.
“We were an excellent team back there,” Pietor says, adjusting the length of his cuffs. Checking them. Adjusting some more with a frown. “You backed me up nicely. Himmelstein will be left in the cold if some of those trade provisions go forward.”
Maybe he’s forgotten that I read the financial news as well as anyone. Himmelstein isn’t hurting. “You have a point?”
“We’re a relatively small economy, and when Sondmark sneezes, Himmelstein gets the flu. While these negotiations might erase some tariffs and ease commerce with Vorburg, thegrand duchy will have to tamp down populist anxiety. We don’t have a seaport. Our alliances mean everything, and instead of backing us into a corner, I wish you would join us. Himmelstein could use a princess like you.”
I wonder if Pietor always spoke that way—advancing his own interests, indifferent to mine.
“You’ll turn my head with talk like that.”
“I wish I could. Think of us—Alma and Pietor, Sondmark and Himmelstein. Like Supernuss and wafer cookies, we go together.”
“Supernuss is disgusting,” I say. This opinion puts me out of step with the vast majority of Europeans, but the chocolate spread has never improved a crepe.
