She cast a swift, cautious glance around the room. Even now, behind a closed door, she couldn’t be too careful. Then she leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the back of Himari’s hand, closing her eyes as if begging for a benediction that would never come.
“I never meant for any of this to happen,” Daphne whispered. “It all went so wrong. I just wish … I wish you had talked to me. You didn’t leave me many options, Himari.”
Daphne wasn’t like the other aristocrats, the ones whose families had been titled since the Revolution, who grew up trained in the rules of elegant behavior. She had a boxer’s instinct when it came to fighting, and Himari had backed her into a corner.
She wished she could shed a tear for her friend. But Daphne couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. Probably before Himari’s accident.
Maybe she’d lost the ability to let herself show weakness. Maybe the guilt had dried up her tear ducts, and she would never be able to cry again.
“I never meant for this to happen,” Daphne repeated.
There was no reaction from Himari, not even a flicker of an eyelid, to show that Daphne’s words had registered at all.
NINA
“What’s the name of Juliet’s cousin in Romeo and Juliet?” Rachel glanced up from her laptop to where Nina stood at the opposite table, organizing books onto wheeled metal carts.
They were in the workroom at Dandridge, the main library at King’s College. Technically this space was supposed to be employees only, but no one minded when Nina brought Rachel back here. None of the other library staff were even working today.
“Tybalt,” Nina answered automatically, then paused. “Why are you writing about Shakespeare for your Russian history paper?”
Rachel pulled her arms overhead in a stretch, as if she’d been in the library all day rather than a single hour. “I took a break to do an online crossword. It’s important to take breaks, you know, to keep the creative well full.”
“You’re writing a four-page history paper, not a novel,” Nina teased.
Her phone buzzed with an incoming call from Samantha. Nina declined the call, then typed a quick text. I’m at work, can I try you later?
Her mind whirled as she tried to figure out what exactly she would tell Sam. The princess had been checking in with her all week, urging Nina to spend New Year’s at the Washingtons’ house in Telluride. Nina had gone on that trip almost every year for the past decade; she’d even learned to snowboard with Sam and Jeff’s private instructor.
She wanted to be there for Sam, who’d been noticeably dejected ever since the ball last weekend—when she kissed that guy from Boston, only to learn that he was going on a date with Beatrice.
But how could Nina face Jefferson after what happened on the balcony that night?
“How about this one: ‘empire founder.’ Caesar? Except it’s eight letters …”
“Augustus,” Nina supplied, trying and failing not to think of Jeff. Augustus was one of his names, as was Alexander: the only thing missing was William, or perhaps Attila, and then he would literally be named for all the great conquerors of world history. For someone who wasn’t the heir, he sure had a lot of power packed into those four names.
“You know, you could use the internet for this, instead of asking me,” she pointed out.
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Nina shook her head, smiling. She didn’t actually mind that Rachel kept peppering her with questions. It would have been different if she were reading, but sorting books was second nature to Nina by now. She knew the Dewey decimal system by heart. Honestly, she might have taken this job even if it hadn’t been required by the work-study terms of her scholarship, if only for an excuse to spend extra time in the library.
Nina had been raised on a steady diet of books. The weekends that her parents used to work, when she didn’t want to go to the palace, Nina would beg them to drop her at their local branch library. She happily spent the whole day there, working her way through the library’s children’s section, in both English and Spanish. She and her mom always played a game at the end of the day, where Nina had to describe the book she was reading in as creative a way as possible. Never cross a reptile—Peter Pan. Don’t be fooled by a reflection—Alice in Wonderland. And so on.
Here at the campus library, Nina’s job was to collect books from the return chute and put them back in their places on the shelves. It was actually pretty fun, seeing how diverse people’s research needs were. She never knew what she would come across, from the memoirs of King Zog of Albania to a seventeenth-century cookbook that she’d actually copied a recipe from. It reminded Nina just how much knowledge there was, out in the world.
“Logan is an awful texter,” Rachel complained, frowning down at her phone. A bright turquoise sweatshirt slid off one shoulder. In the months Nina had known her, she’d never seen Rachel wear an article of clothing that was either black or white; her entire wardrobe seemed positively fluorescent.
“What did he say?” Nina paused over a tattered cloth-bound book titled Extinct and Dormant Peerages. Did this go under gentry, or heraldry? She waved its bar code under the scanner to check.
“I told him that I couldn’t go to the party tonight because I have to write this paper, and all he said was ‘Best of luck’! What do you think that means?” Rachel pursed her lips. “Is he trying to blow me off?”