His voice was eerily quiet. “Because that’s what you’ll be if you choose him, you know. Alone. Even if you get what you want someday, and have a ring on your finger and a crown on your head and a big elaborate title before your name. There will still come a moment when everyone else leaves the room and it’s just the two of you. You, and a prince who hardly knows you at all. I hope it’s worth it.”
The plaintive echoes of that word—alone, alone, alone—seemed to chase after her, long after Ethan had shut the door.
NINA
“My turn,” Daphne purred, an eyebrow lifted in unmistakable challenge.
Nina fanned out her cards and held them close. Their ornate black and red faces, printed with clubs and diamonds and spades, stared impassively back at her. Her hand was no good.
Daphne set down the jack of hearts with a flourish. “The knave,” she declared, using the old-fashioned term—from back when face cards represented the royal family, when the knave was meant to signify the prince, the one who broke hearts.
There was nothing for Nina to play, and Daphne knew it. She gave a narrow smile. “I win,” she declared. Nina watched as she swept everything on the table toward her, her eyes glinting with avarice.
Daphne piled the jewels into her lap, then glanced up at Nina in cold surprise. “What are you still doing here? You know you don’t belong.”
Nina sat bolt upright, her heart thudding dully in her chest. It had only been a dream.
Then the events of last night rushed over her in painful detail—her confrontation with Daphne, her breakup with Jeff. After that, Nina hadn’t been able to go back to campus, where she would be surrounded by all those eager, curious eyes. She’d asked the courtesy car to bring her home instead.
At least here she wouldn’t be bombarded by constant reminders of Jeff. Everything else, even her dorm room, felt too tangled up in memories of him. She couldn’t even get herself a post-breakup Wawa milkshake, because now that, too, seemed to belong to her and Jeff.
This was exactly why Nina hadn’t wanted to get close to him in the first place: because she’d known, deep down, that it wouldn’t work out. That no matter how much they wanted to be together, circumstances would always conspire to force them apart.
The early-morning light touched on all the familiar comforts of her childhood bedroom: the old wicker screen in the corner, her brass light fixtures, the deep purple of her throw pillows. It was warm up here, a dry dusty warmth that Nina wanted to wrap around her like a blanket. She realized that she’d fallen asleep with her arm tucked around her old stuffed cat, Lenna, which she hadn’t done in years.
Nina started to turn her face stubbornly back toward her pillow, only to hear noises coming from downstairs. It sounded as though someone was crying. She pulled a terry-cloth robe over her old pajamas and trotted down the stairs barefoot.
Her parents were on the couch together, Isabella tipping her head onto Julie’s shoulder. The light of the television flickered over their faces, underscoring the shadows beneath their eyes. Isabella had a box of tissues in her lap, which she kept nervously picking at. Both women were sniffling.
“What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
Her mamá lifted a tear-streaked face. “The king is in the hospital, in critical condition.”
“What?”
Nina’s mom shifted wordlessly, letting Nina wedge herself on the cushion between them. This was how they always used to watch movies when she was younger—Nina in the middle, surrounded by her parents’ warmth, the competing scents of their perfumes.
Her mamá reached for the remote and turned up the volume. “All the cable networks have suspended their regular shows. It’s been round-the-clock coverage.”
A reporter stood before St. Stephen’s Hospital, one hand stuffed into the pocket of her black peacoat and the other clutching a microphone. “To all the viewers just now joining us, we have been covering this unfolding story since two a.m. Eastern time, when the king was rushed to the hospital after his daughter Beatrice’s engagement party. The palace has not yet issued an official statement about his condition. All we know is that His Majesty is being treated in the intensive care unit of St. Stephen’s.”
Nina shook her head. “I saw him last night at the party, and he seemed fine. He even danced with the queen for a while! How could this happen?”
The king was always so vibrant, with that booming, larger-than-life laugh. It seemed impossible that illness could strike someone so utterly alive.
“It just happened,” Julie said softly. “There’s no how or why for this kind of tragedy. No explanation. Not everything gets to make sense.”
Nina fumbled in her pocket for her phone and dialed Sam’s number, but it went straight to voice mail. She wondered how her friend was holding up, how Jeff was holding up.
This was the worst kind of tragedy, wasn’t it—the kind you didn’t see coming. Some things, like breakups or fights with your best friend, you could at least prepare for. But there was no bracing yourself for something like this: for the heart attack that struck at random, mere hours after your daughter’s engagement party.
“Do you remember the day he was crowned?” Isabella’s voice cut through her thoughts.
“Vaguely.” They had staked out a spot on the edge of the parade route, eager to catch a glimpse of the new king and queen. Nina recalled clutching a small American flag on a wooden stick and waving it furiously, remembered buying a cherry snow cone from a street vendor and licking its syrupy sweetness from her fingers.