Page 49 of The Dandelion Princess
“Ella.”NeerheidKaas, Auden to his friends, throws a careless arm over my shoulders. He’s been flirty since the night of the costume party. Dark glasses shade a hangover and his white-blond hair sticks up in boyish tufts. “I know I’m on your mother’s list. When are we going to start testing our compatibility?”
My mother’s spreadsheet of eligible bachelors is a comedy bit to everyone who doesn’t live under the crushing weight of it but I play along. “I thought you’d never ask.”
He dips me over his arm and plants a sloppy kiss on my neck. I suppress a shudder until suddenly, Auden’s support disappears. My stomach clenches in a panic, but Marc, appearing out of nowhere, catches me.
He releases me with a stern look and marches Auden into the pub, past the huge, bottle cap portrait of my mother, and into the common room where he plants him in the midst of a group of men. I settle onto a long window seat with the other girls, and when Jang Mi returns from the washroom, I squeeze another space for her next to me.
We trade smiles over lunch. I spread cheese on a savory cracker while she nibbles on a pickle until she finally leans forward, silky hair falling off her shoulder.
“Pardon. May I ask for a translation?” I nod. “What did he mean?” She points at Auden “He is on a list?”
For the last eight years, BLUSH has consumed me like a case of the hives. I’ve watched scores of interviews, dance practices, and game show clips. The other members are fluent in English, having been scouted abroad, but Jang Mi learned English from a private school and tutors. She speaks slowly, her words hesitant.
“My mother is the queen,” I say, flicking a glance at the impressive portrait. Never mind the humble materials. The artist caught her unconquerable spirit. “I must make a good match.”
Her brows barely gather. “Match?”
“A good marriage. She wants my husband to be suitable.”
“Suitable?”
Each new word is a rabbit hole into the dark underbelly of royal priorities. “Rich, educated, titled…”
“Oh.Neerheidvan Heyden.Neerheidis the title?”
I choke on a swallow of coffee. “Yes. In English, they say ‘Lord’.”
Jang Mi tears off a strip of pastry, carefully avoiding the wells of butter and sugar, and when she catches me watching, an apologetic dimple peeps out. “Too sweet.”
It would be nice to hate her but she’s perfect.
“Is Marcus-shi,” she shakes her head, “Marcus on your marriage list?” She asks this during one of those odd silences every large group will sometimes have, and the question lands like a splash.
A hot flush climbs up my cheek. “He’s on everyone’s list,” I say, laughing off the implications. “You’ve seen his house.”
“Youmustmarry from this list?”
My throat feels tight, but Alix leans across. “Ella would never get herself trapped like that.” She places her flattened palmunder my chin. “Behold the pride of Sondmark. The Rebel Princess of the House of Wolffe.”
The table erupts into laughter, and before I can head them off, tales of my youth are shared with a shocked Jang Mi. Idol training is rigorous. It begins young, eats up an inhuman amount of time, and leaves little leeway for misbehavior. Jang Mi and I should have that in common, but I also have a bent—some might call it a genius—for criminal mischief.
Alix raps her knuckles against the table. “Do you remember the time you climbed in through the headmistress’s window—halfway up a turret tower—to wipe Bodil’s cell phone before her parents could see it?”
I lower my voice, inviting Jang Mi to understand. “Bodil chartered a helicopter on her parents’ credit card to meet her boyfriend in Vaado.”
Alix breaks in. “Ella was so determined to keep Bodil from being kicked out of Saint Sissela’s that she performed this death-defying climb twice—once up and once down.” She giggles. “When she was caught, she had to clean the washrooms for a month.”
I grin into my coffee. “Yes, but Bodil got to stay, and I know how to scrub toilets.”
Eventually, the conversation drifts into other topics and Jang Mi leans close. “Does this mean youhaveto be with Marc or you cannot be with Marc?”
Marc’s voice echoes in my head—the tone and intensity.Joaen. She’s only trying to find out if she has a clear path, but I feel a flash of resentment. If I were Jang Mi—if I’d heard my crush say that word in that tone of voice right to my face—I would know he was mine.
I inhale a sharp breath. Marc has never felt a speck of romance about me. Things have gotten a little playful in the last couple of months, but I can’t allow him to pass Jang Mi up just becausehe got carried away by boredom or proximity or the soft night sky, his protective instincts activated by the need to make me understand that he didn’t call me a troll.
I would never ruin this for him.
My smile feels like tearing a piece of paper from a notebook, following the perforations until a fiber catches and the line swerves across the page. I press my shaking lips together.
