I don’t remember the walk back to my room, but somehow I find myself sitting on my bed, staring blankly at the paintings on the wall. My suitcase is packed and ready by the door. The faintest hint of dawn is turning the night sky from black to a rosy gray. I swear if I strain hard enough I can hear the wings of the garden birds fluttering as the dawn calls them awake.

I’ll be leaving soon with nothing more than a single suitcase and my memories. I brace myself for the pain, but all I feel is a suffocating numbness. It feels strange, but I welcome it, hoping it will get me through tonight and the days to follow. The days without Thom.

The fairy tale is over, and there is no happy ending for me.

I finger the heavy pendant. Solid gold and quite heavy, the necklace will help fund a new life away from Matlavia. I’m glad now that I didn’t get rid of it like I often thought I should.

Suddenly the door crashes open. Thom appears in the opening, chest heaving as though he’s sprinted the entire way to my room. At the sight of him the numbness is ripped away and I gasp at the agonizing emptiness where my heart should be.

Thom spots the suitcase by the door. His eyes take in the nearly deserted room with a single sweep. “Was last night your goodbye fuck?” he demands angrily. “I told you I wasn’t going to marry Callista.”

I can barely swallow the lump in my throat. “It’s not about Callista. It’s about Matlavia. It’s about your country. It’s about three million people who live beyond the royal grounds and rely on the royal house to enact laws and decrees that will enable everyone to feed their families, get a good education, and retire at a reasonable age. If you default on your loans, you will plunge Matlavia into a depression that could have consequences for generations.”

The look on Thom’s face is so outraged I nearly weep. “You don’t trust me, do you? You don’t think that Playboy Thom can solve this problem on his own.”

The anguish in his voice propels me to my feet. I can’t have him doubting himself. Not now. In this moment, he needs to believe in himself and his ability to lead the country forward.

I walk over until I’m so close I could kiss his chest. I want to lift my hand to his face and tilt it down until his eyes meet mine. I want to smile, but my lips can’t form the curve. I want to gently stroke his face and pretend that it’s not the last time. But I do none of those things.

Instead, I tilt my chin up, place a wall of bricks around my heart, and draw down a mask of anger. “I don’t want to be your queen, Thom. It’s a thankless job and all the orgasms in the world wouldn’t make up for the misery that you’d be subjecting me to. Your mom was beyond unhappy. She died to flee this life. Your father died chasing after other women. That’s not the ending I want.”

I lean down and pick up my suitcase, inwardly surprised that my weak and shaking arm can hold it.

Thom’s trying to figure me out. Am I lying? Am I making up a story so he’ll let me go? Or am I telling the truth?

I have to convince him. “We’re not kids anymore. We can’t play in your rooms, hiding out from everyone.”

“I don’t want to play and I don’t want to hide. I have alternatives. The Suttons aren’t the only family with money who want access to the crown.”

“You don’t want to sell access, Thom. Last night, you wouldn’t even meet with the petitioners who waited for hours to talk with you.”

His pretty mouth thins. “Please, they just wanted a selfie to post on their social media. Besides, they can get access during regular business hours.”

“That’s not how it works and you know it.” He’s being frustratingly obtuse. “When all the scandal rags believed you were out partying, you were making connections, seeding stories so that the public would be inspecting you instead of Stephen. And Stephen was constantly attending events around the world to bring new business to Matlavia. This is a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. If it were easier, Stephen wouldn’t have left.”

“So stay and work with me.”

“I don’t know anything about how to be a queen, Thom. You need someone by your side who understands how that part of the world works. I know that a vinegar and water solution cleans glass better than any commercial product and that baking soda on the carpets and couches will get rid of bad odors. I know that toothpaste helps to get your sneakers back to their just-out-of-the-box whiteness. I don’t know the titles to all the heads of state in the world. I don’t know which way to bow and how deep. I don’t know how to even do one dance.”

He wants to stop me from leaving, but doesn’t know how to do it without force. And he’d never hurt me. It’s hard to force my legs to move across the plush carpet that has laid in these chambers for generations. At the door, I turn back. “They don’t end up together.”

“Who?” he asks.

“Henry and Clare. I wanted you to know because we wouldn’t be finishing their book, but they don’t end up together. It’s not a happy ever after ending.”

“I’m glad we didn’t finish it then,” he replies.

“Me too.” And I take a deep breath and walk out.

It’s easy enough to get into the Duke of Frederick’s rooms. Maids truly can go everywhere, especially if they have a tray in their hand. No one turns away food.

“Put that on the table,” the trim man orders without looking up from his newspaper.

I set the tray of egg whites, avocado toast, and blended smoothie on a small glass table next to his striped wingback chair.

The Suttons were given a set of spectacular rooms overlooking the lake to the east of the palace. It’s early yet, but according to Zoya, the Duke rose with the sun. Callista is nowhere to be seen, and the breakfast tray ordered was for a single serving.

I rub my now empty hands together and take a deep breath. I had every intention of walking out of the palace and down the long service road to the side gates where all the staff enters and exits. My suitcase still sits just outside the staff entrance doorway.

But I couldn’t leave. Not without doing one last thing for Thom. I wanted him to have the best shot at being the King of Matlavia, which meant not being shackled to the wrist of Callista or living under the thumb of the Duke of Frederick. I know I’m not the suitable bride, but neither is Callista. She’s mean-spirited, self-absorbed, and occasionally cruel, and her father is of the same bolt of cloth. Those two would eventually destroy Matlavia so I am going to get rid of them. Not for me, but for my country and my love.

I clear my throat.

“What is it?” he snaps, folding a corner of his paper down to direct an annoyed glare in my direction.

I tug on the chain under my shirt and pull out the pendant. “My mother told me who my father was when I was ten. She felt I was old enough to know and old enough to keep a secret.”

The Duke’s eyes widen for a moment—long enough to confirm what my mother had shared so long ago and that I had semi-doubted all of my life. I stand with a smidgen more confidence.

“What does that have to do with me?” my sperm donor scoffs.

“It means that I’m your illegitimate daughter you fathered with a maid from the Royal House of Matlavia. You didn’t care for her. You didn’t educate her. You didn’t take on any of the duties and responsibilities of fatherhood.”

“Who cares?” he says, but he’s sweating around his hairline. This type of information would hurt him. It wouldn’t ruin him, but it would tarnish his reputation and standing amongst the Matlavian people.

“Many people would. There would be stories in local papers and international ones. There would be side-by-side pictures of Callista and me growing up, with her at her special schools or on your private jets and me following behind my mother carrying a bucket of cleaning water. The headlines will be creative and endless. People will whisper behind their hands. You will never know when you enter a room who is talking about you and what they’re saying. Your family would be the subject of embarrassing gossip for years.”

Frederick pales and the paper in his hand begins to rattle, causing him to slap the entire mess onto his lap. “You will be humiliated as well.”

“Not really. I’ll be the poor Cinderella who was mistreated by the evil stepfather and stepsister. People will feel sorry for me.”

“This story will be a seven-day wonder. As soon as the wedding takes place, no one will remember you.”

“They will because I will be calling the press all the time, reminding them of my story. I’ll tell them I was forced to eat gruel—”I have no idea what gruel is, but it sounds terrible—“and clothes made out of cleaning rags”—the palace supplied all my clothes. I was a very well-dressed little maid—“and slept on a pile of hay.” That might be a little too out there, but the Duke of Frederick is so caught up in the awful pictures I’m drawing with my words that he doesn’t even object.

He snaps his paper in half and gets to his feet. He stalks over to me, but I don’t back down an inch even though I’m quaking inside.

“You think that you’re entitled to the throne instead? That if I had taken you in, it would be you at the altar and not Callista? Is that it?”

He leans forward and a wave of terrible morning breath nearly knocks me over. I lock my knees and shake my head. “No. I don’t care about the throne. I want Thom to have a choice, not to be railroaded into something because he has no options.”

“How noble of you,” he sneers, trying to snatch for my pendant.

I twist away, barely avoiding his hand. I scamper to the door and have it half open before I say, “You wouldn’t recognize it because you’ve got the emotional wherewithal of a stone, but it’s love.”

I let the door slam behind me, in the face of the man who has haunted my life for so long. But no more.