“You proposed to Teddy.” Sam was gratified to see her sister flinch.
“I guess news travels fast in this place.”
“That’s all you have to say for yourself? I can’t believe you would do this to me!”
“Do this to you?” Beatrice gave a puzzled frown.
“I like Teddy! I’ve liked him since the Queen’s Ball. And I met him first,” Sam cried out, unable to stop the sudden flow of words. “Or didn’t he tell you that he spent the entire ceremony making out with me?”
Beatrice inhaled sharply, but her expression remained unchanged. “I’m sorry that you have a crush on my fiancé—”
“It isn’t a crush!” Sam cut in. “I really like him, okay?”
“You like everybody, Samantha.”
She was speaking in a calm, level voice, which somehow made Sam even angrier, as if the more rational Beatrice got, the more out of control Sam wanted to spin. She was seized by an irrational desire to grab hold of something—a whorled glass paperweight, maybe—and hurl it against a wall, just to watch it shatter.
“I know that Mom and Dad asked you to date him, but why did you have to jump all the way to a proposal? Don’t you feel like you’re rushing things? Or are you that desperate to remain the center of attention?”
A darker, heavier emotion flitted behind Beatrice’s deep brown eyes. “As always, you have no idea what’s really going on,” she said cryptically. “I hate to break it to you, Samantha, but not everything is about you.”
“Trust me, I know that. It’s all about you,” Sam shot back.
Beatrice bristled. “I don’t know why you’re so upset. You’re the one who can do anything you want, and no one even cares.”
“Exactly!” Sam cried out, triumphant. “No one cares!”
She was shouting by now. Some rational part of her realized that the staff must have heard. That was the downside of living in a palace—that nothing was private, certainly not her tears or hysterics.
At Sam’s words, Beatrice seemed to fold inward, like a balloon that was deflating. “Sam, I would trade with you in a heartbeat.” Her whisper was so quiet that Sam wasn’t quite certain she’d heard.
Beatrice seemed utterly broken; the sight of her like this slammed into Samantha’s anger, twisting it into something else.
Except—Beatrice had won. She had Teddy; she had the throne; she had everything. So why did she seem so miserable? She looked as sorrowful as Teddy had been, as if this engagement had somehow been forced upon them both. But they didn’t get to play the victims here. Not when she was the real casualty of this engagement.
“Forget it.” Sam started toward the door. “You and Teddy clearly deserve each other.”
NINA
Nina tossed and turned listlessly. Her eyes were closed, but she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep, despite the blackout shades she’d ordered online and stapled to the top molding of her window. Well, it was one p.m.
She’d been hiding in her dorm room ever since those horrible articles came out the other day—when the paparazzi set up camp outside her dorm. The few times Nina did leave for class, or to work at the library, she’d texted Rachel and Logan to come meet her at the door. They would stand protectively on either side of her while Nina shoved her way forward, trying her best to ignore the paparazzi’s shouts.
Nina, give us a smile! they cried out. Nina, when’s Jeff coming to visit? When she kept her head down and didn’t answer, they began saying much worse things, calling her cruel, nasty names. Nina knew they were just trying to upset her, because pictures of her walking weren’t any good to them. They needed a shot of her crying—or better yet, yelling—to get a real payout from the trashy blogs that bought these photos.
Even when she did make it to a lecture, Nina felt the weight of everyone’s stares. She’d seen more than one student surreptitiously take out a phone and snap a picture of her looking disheveled and sad. The one time Nina had ventured to the campus convenience store, to buy shampoo and tissues, she’d seen her own face all over the magazines at the checkout counter. One of the headlines actually read, NINA TELLS JEFF: “I’M KEEPING THE BABY!”
She went back and bought an extra-large box of tampons after she saw that one.
Her parents kept calling to check on her, to ask whether Nina wanted to come home for a while, but Nina insisted she was fine. It was one thing for the press to start attacking her, but the way they’d been treating her parents was completely out of line. At least when she stayed at the dorms, she drew the paparazzi away from her family’s house.
A knock sounded at her door. Nina shifted, squeezing her eyes shut. “Wrong room,” she called out. The only person who ever came over was Rachel, and she was in class right now. The same history class that Nina was supposed to be in. Well, at least she knew Rachel would share her notes from the lecture.
The knock sounded again, a familiar one-two-three knock that could only come from one person. It used to be their secret knock, back when they played at being knights in a castle. “Please, Nina? I want to talk,” called out Princess Samantha.
Nina’s stomach twisted. She’d been avoiding Sam the past few days, for almost the same reason she was avoiding Jeff—she didn’t know what to say to her. It was all so unbelievably weird.