“You will cry for sex. We all do, eventually. I’ll find myself a fine European prince over spring break, when there’s time for things like that. But when you should have been designing and collecting fabric, you were out canoodling around and buying fancy lingerie with some rich boy.”
I blush. “It wasn’t like that—”
She looks up and winks at me. “I know that’s what you think. I want you to admit what it was, though. I see you staring off into space, and I think, ‘My friend, she’s here. But she’s not really here. What happens when she needs to present a design to the professors?’ Since we got here, you’ve sewn one dress. And it looks shockingly similar to that pink one you say you wore on your date with Matthias.”
“It wasn’t like that either, Em. Not the way you’re thinking.” It was something fun, tinged with regret at the end, but still, it was just fun. Maybe I got a little carried away, but why wouldn’t I? A man like that has never shown an interest in me. And there he was, telling me I was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen, that I fit with him perfectly. Of course, I got carried away. But he was what he was. And I won’t submit myself to him just to get my heart broken. That’s not part of the plan.
Kim had told me to meet someone and go on an adventure. I’d done that, and the someone happened to be Matthias. Being attracted to someone and thinking of them after you’ve slept together—after you’ve spent a week sharing the intimate details of your lives—doesn’t mean anything at all. Not really.
Two more months, and he’ll be a faded memory.
Right now, the images of him are vivid, so vivid that they’re almost painful to me. When I close my eyes at night, I recall the feeling of tracing over his muscles with my fingers, the ever-present scent of his skin, rich and masculine. Just because I turn these thoughts over in my mind doesn’t mean I’m pining away for a man.
The relationship wasn’t real. It was a myth, a fairy tale. Something I did at the end of the summer.
I’m two weeks into the fall semester at Studio Berçot, and I only think of him at night. Sometimes, when I’m in the shower. And if a lecture is particularly boring or if I already know the skill, I might let my mind wander to the feeling of his hands on my breasts, his mouth, lingering between my legs. Or the way, in the last few days, that we traveled around Brussels, using each toy he’d bought for me in Amsterdam. In bed, once. Against a brick wall in an alleyway outside of a four-star restaurant. Inside the dressing room at that same lingerie store, when the owner was getting something for us from the back.
I shiver.
If I admit it for this moment, on a sunny Sunday afternoon before Emilie and I start making omelets for dinner, it is sometimes like Matthias is still with me. His cock, pressing insistently against my leg, hands ripping away clothing, burying himself inside me like a man possessed, desperate.
I have to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like it seemed at the time. It wasn’t anything like love. That’ll come later for me, after graduate school is done and I have time to concentrate on other things. Even if I hang on to the image of him in the darkest part of night, it doesn’t mean that he was anything more than a short summer romance, destined for stories told between girlfriends, over glasses of wine. Just like this.
“I’m sure it wasn’t like that,” Emilie says, interrupting my reverie. “Not with the way you’re looking right now. With the absent stare and all that. You’re chewing on your lip. The bottom one is delightfully pink. A good contrast, Mal. You’ve been pale recently. Lovesick.”
I ball up one of the designs I’ve been working on, and I hurl it at her. She ducks, and it misses her by an inch.
“I’m just adjusting to living in France. It’s culture shock or something.”
“Sure, Mallory.” She rolls her eyes dramatically and winks at me. “Maybe it’s adjusting to the fact that you’re no longer a rich nobleman’s center of attention. But I’ll drop it—I promise.”
“A nobleman—probably not. There wasn’t much noble about him. That’s for sure.”
She chuckles. “They’re hiding in the woodwork all around Europe. It’s not fashionable to actually be noble these days, didn’t you know?”
I have another balled up piece of paper ready to launch at her, but we both dissolve in laughter, and I throw the paper in the trashcan instead. “Okay. We can just forget it all and make dinner. Right?”
“Right.” She hops up and starts in on dinner, shoving stray bits of fabric in kitchen drawers and open cabinets. The smell of omelets cooking—the only thing we can cook these days since the refrigerator is the only place not overflowing with fabric—usually sparks my hunger. But today, it seems to make my stomach flip instead, and when I go into the kitchen and sit at our little table, I eat toast instead. Emilie raises an eyebrow, but she doesn’t say anything.
I feel unsettled more than anything, like there’s something I should be doing. To tell the truth, there are many, many things I need to be doing. I need to work on the designs that sit, discarded, on the table next to the purple sofa. I need to meet with my advisor about my winter project.
And I need to forget about Matthias.
After Emilie puts the dishes away and goes back to her couch full of fabric, I take out my phone and scroll through my contacts to Matthias’s number. I deleted myself from his life, from his thoughts, but I didn’t take him out of mine. The numbers sit there, blurring on my screen before my eyes. Suddenly, I feel very, very tired. More exhausted, in fact, than I’ve felt since the day after Kim died. I’d been up at the hospital with her all night, running interference with the nurses and the front desk receptionists to make sure that none of my family came to find her. She had a strict no-contact policy at the hospital—the only person who could come see her was me. And I was there, day after day, night after night. That fatigue settled into my bones, combined with a grief so deep and piercing I could barely see to finish my work for school.
What I’ve been feeling in the past week is vaguely reminiscent of that time, bringing me back to Kim and the smell of antiseptic in the hospital. Maybe I’m lovesick, like Emilie says. Maybe it’s just the change—the change from living in Florida, kowtowing to my mother’s needs to traveling Europe to coming here and having no contact with home at all. As Emilie said last week, that might be enough to exhaust anyone.
I walk to the living room and sit back on the couch, dizzy, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the tall purple cushion. A wave of undeniable nausea hits me, and my stomach turns when Emilie starts cutting garlic and onions in the kitchen.
There’s an ache deep in my hips, like something is in there, suddenly expanding.
It’s funny—it seems the time change and all the travel messed up my body in more ways than one. I haven’t had my period all summer long.
My eyes pop open, heart racing like it did when I saw those text messages from Matthias’s mother and father.
It’s not possible.
It’s not even a little bit possible.
I think of Kim telling me in hospice care that I’d need to carry on without her, have the family she didn’t have. She had laughed and told me just to have sex for a while, not to worry about all that other stuff. It had seemed years—lifetimes—away then. I’d imagined that I’d feel excitement. Instead, there’s a deep, cold, chilling fear.
“Emilie?” My voice cracks when I speak.
“Hm?” She’s busy at work on hemming one of the designs she made last week. “I left the omelet on the counter in case you were actually hungry—”
“Em.”
She looks at me this time. We’re not close friends—not yet—but she’s the nearest thing I’ve got. And if I went outside by myself to get to the pharmacist at this time of day on a Sunday, surely she’d know. Or she’d wait at the door until I came back, hands on her hips.
“Is there a single pharmacy open in Paris on a Sunday?”
“I don’t know. There’s the little grocery store down on the corner. I think that might be open until eight tonight. Why? What do you need?”
“A pregnancy test,” I whisper, thinking back to that last time on the train. It was only three weeks ago. I do the math in my head. I will have skipped two periods this summer. The second one would have been due last week. “It’s probably nothing—”
Emilie hops down from the couch and grabs my hand pulling me off the purple sofa. Her eyes linger on my unfinished glass of red wine, and my stomach turns again. Is it that same fear, or is it something more biological?
Like my need for Matthias that last time. Like his need for me.
Silently, she leads me down the stairs and out into the street.
The windows to our apartment are still open. It’ll be cold inside when we get back.
Would a pregnancy test show anything this early?
And what if it does?
Emilie holds my hand as we walk down the street, and for once, I’m grateful that I allowed one person to be my friend. Even if I don’t have Matthias, I have someone to walk me to the grocery store, and then to the chemist.
I pick up a single test, and Em picks up a second one, putting it in my hand and closing my fingers around it. “You’ll want to see it twice, if it’s positive. To make sure. Same if it’s not. Trust me.”
I walk back, my arm in Emilie’s, leaning on her shoulder from time to time and clutching the small bag with two home pregnancy tests. Before we go back upstairs, Em pulls me into a small brasserie near the apartment. We eat hot steak frites. I didn’t realize I was hungry before the crunchy, oily taste hits my tongue.
When we go upstairs, I’m full and nauseous.
It’s not a good sign.
We go in.
I take the tests with me to the bathroom.
I can’t think of anything to do with the damn tests. Instead, I think of Matthias. How the apartment is colder than it should be. How I need to ask Emilie if I can borrow some of that blue-gray fabric with the swirls.
I freeze where I sit, holding the first test, still in its package.
It won’t be long now, and I’ll know.
Matthias’s number is still on my phone.
And maybe I should delete it before I give him the one thing he never, ever wanted.
An heir.
Chapter Fifteen
Matthias
I scroll through my contacts again. Just like it was last time, Mallory’s name is gone. I can’t say I blame her. I don’t at all, not really. It made me angry as fuck the first time I saw it. I flew into a rage in the white marble room at the palace my mother insisted on revamping for me and my new bride.
Fiancée. Betrothed. Whatever she is. Caryn, wispy and beautiful and ginger-haired. Like an angel really, except one who’s been caught in my mother’s grasp. A princess kept in her own high tower at the other end of the castle. I guess they don’t want me accidentally fucking her and taking her virginity before we’re married. Caryn certainly has given me the eye when we’ve been at dinner. The past month, she’s made it very clear that she’s both ready and willing to do whatever I want of her as my wife.
I admit it. She’s my type. More than any of the other women my mother has paraded before me.
It might even turn me on—in another life, the one from before—that they’d found a woman more beautiful than I could have imagined, and they made sure she wouldn’t care about my lifestyle. The others, they were so formal, so drawn to the idea of marrying royalty. For Caryn, I think she feels that same draw, but with none of the formality the others expected. It’s all I could have hoped for—if I was in fact to follow my parents’ plans.
I won’t. That’s not what I’m here for. But when I walked into their home again, my mother went into a panicked, angry uproar, talking about my choices to be with a parade of women, each worse than the last.
And this last one, she was American, wasn’t she?
That stopped me cold. They knew. They had seen her. Right now, whatever they’re thinking is just a threat. But I don’t know how much they know, or if she’s in any danger where she is.
So, I’m here now, dining with them, taking walks with Caryn, spinning through the days on the quiet palace grounds. It’s all I can do.
We know you were with some girl, Matthias. My mother hissed the words. We can find her quite easily, and the outcome for her wouldn’t be entirely pleasant. Not if you don’t do as we say.
“It’s ironic,” I say to the white walls of my marble room. “They can find her. I can’t. Not from here.” It’s white like my apartment back home, but there’s no way I could ever feel comfortable in a place like this. No way at all. It’s too sanitary, too neat. My childhood room was torn apart when I left, and this is all that stands in its place—a neat palace room, its contents tightly controlled. If Mallory knew, would things be like they were before? I think of her, riding me, her body moving rhythmically against mine. I could have said it then, when she asked me to come inside of her, begged for it.
Don’t go. Come with me. We’ll go somewhere we can’t be found.
But there’s no such thing, not when it comes to my parents. If I went right now, by myself, I might be able to hide for a time, as I’d planned. With Mallory, I’d be a walking target. A missing prince, with his American mistress. The media could put any spin on it they pleased, especially with my betrothed waiting back at the castle.
Yes, it’s good that Mallory deleted her number. One less way for the poison of my family to creep into her life.
There’s a soft knock at the door, and my heart stops for a second. If it’s Caryn, I might be forced to talk to her myself. Every time I’m with her, there’s someone else around, preventing us from touching, from kissing. But it’s three in the morning here, and if she comes into my room now, there’s only one reason she’d be here. In any other season of my life, I’d be happy to welcome her. As it stands, I look at her and feel nothing, less than nothing.
At night when I sleep, Mallory weighs heavy on my mind.
There’s a wedding planned for a month out.
Photo opportunities for the prince and soon-to-be princess, the first photos of me that I’ve consented to release since I was fifteen years of age.
And Mallory, she’ll see them. The world will. My wedding—my life—will become public property, just like the princes’ lives over in England.
She’ll never know the time I’ve spent thinking of her in these hidden weeks, locked up in this castle, forced to spend time with a girl that’s nothing like her, a girl who only wants to become a princess and immediately get pregnant with my child.
There’s another knock, louder this time.
“Who is it?” I say after a minute of sitting on the edge of the bed.
“It’s Adelaide. Let me in. I have something to talk about.” A soft, accented voice comes through the door. She speaks in English only rarely, and only to me. Just turned eighteen, my sister, another pawn my parents like to move from place to place. After I’m married, Addy is next at the altar. With her decidedly meek nature, she’s quite likely to go along with every part of Mother’s plan.
“Come in,” I say, switching to Dutch and walking over to the door. When I open it, she stands there, her small body clad in a white nightgown that might have cost Father thousands of dollars on his last trip to Paris. She brushes a pale, blond lock of hair behind her ear and tiptoes in, looking into the hallway behind her. Three years, and she’s grown into a woman. Whenever I look at her now, I’m overcome with heavy sorrow. She’s old enough to get it now—and that in itself is sad.
“No one saw me leave my room,” she says, taking my arm and pulling me over to the couch. For a tiny thing, she’s strong. I wonder if she’s taken advantage of the judo lessons I attended when I was a boy. It doesn’t match her quiet little personality, but then again, coming to me secretly in the middle of the night doesn’t either.
“You’re getting to know the game, Adelaide. Aren’t you?”
She lifts an eyebrow. “What kind of game is that?”
“The game where Mother and Father have us both locked up in the palace. They couldn’t be happier now, could they?” As I speak, my voice lowers into a whisper. It does that automatically, almost without my thinking about it. Nothing scares Matthias the gambler, the bad boy, walking the streets of Amsterdam. Thinly veiled threats and promises—those are the things that scare me now.
“That game. Yes. They decided not to let me go to college at St. Andrew’s, you know. I tried to convince them that I needed to learn better English, but you’ve scarred them against letting their children leave the country.” She shrugs. “But I’ve got plans of my own—”
“What are those?” This isn’t the sister I left all those years ago. When she looks at me in the dim light, I see that her eyes have hardened. For the past weeks, she’s been playing it up, pretending to be as mild and obedient as she ever was. I see someone different now.
“None of your concern. Not right now. What I am concerned about is you. I make it my job to be innocent and listen sweetly to everything Mother and Father say. So I know about your girl—”
“There’s Caryn. There’s only Caryn. Right now.” I back away slightly from Addy. I don’t want her knowing Mal’s name, either. If I’m the only one who knows, Mal is far safer.
Addy laughs. “No. That’s not true at all. There’s nothing between you and Caryn.”
“She seems pretty invested in being a princess.”
“She does do a good job acting like that, it seems,” Addy replies with a cryptic look. But then she leans in, her eyes serious. “I’m talking about the girl in Brussels. The one who was with you when Cheon came to find you.”
That fucker. He was sent by my parents. I goddamn knew it.
“There wasn’t a girl in Brussels. No one special, I mean,” I say, stumbling over the words. I’d predicted I’d have to come here, certainly. But even when I was leaving Brussels, I never expected I’d be pushed this far, expected to go through with the plans as they were set out. They had nothing over me, until they got word from Cheon about a girl, a girl I’d spent a week with. Fucking her every night, sometimes twice, molding her to my every whim, and growing to know her like I’ve never known anyone.
If I’d stayed any longer, I might have fallen for her.
It might have just been a guess on their parts that she was special.
“You’ve never spent a week with anyone.”
“How do you know, little chick? You just graduated high school.”
“I make a study of looking like I don’t know a damn thing, Matthias. But I know plenty. I know you don’t want to be here, and I don’t either. But you don’t want this girl hurt. They know her name, you know.”
“How’s that?”
She shrugs. “They have ways. And I know something else too. Father isn’t well. You may have to take the throne earlier than you thought. He’s talked about stepping down when you marry Caryn and succeed in getting her pregnant. However that happens. You know they’ve already sent her to three fertility specialists?” She sneers when she says the last part, like the whole thing disgusts her. It should. But it still shocks me to see her face like that.
“No, I didn’t know that.” I chew on my lip. The very idea of it is repulsive. No one’s said the North Islands is a progressive country. It sticks out in this part of Europe as positively medieval, with the church ruling every one of its citizens—and its monarchy. Male heirs are valued above all else, and I’m the only one. They need another to make their plans work.
“Believe it. You need to get the hell out of here.”
“And where is it you suggest I go? They’ll find me in Amsterdam. They’ll find me anywhere I go. And if what you say is true—”
“It is,” she says simply.
“If it is, then they’ll find Mal too.”
“Not if you find her first.” Addy smiles a sweet, secretive smile. She draws something out of one of the pockets of her nightgown.
“What’s that?” I reach out, grabbing for the paper.
“I need a promise first, Matthias.”
“What’s do you need?” My heartbeat quickens. Whatever that paper is—I can see now that it’s an envelope with my name on it—it has to do with Mallory. It’s her handwriting. I saw it only twice, but I memorized it, the loops of her letters, their jagged look.
“I need you to remember me. I’m not going to be a part of this monarchy, not until it’s quite significantly changed. There are plans we need to make. And there’s your future to consider. Your heir.”
I notice that the tattered envelope is slightly open. “I’m not marrying Caryn. And I’m not giving her an heir. I just haven’t figured out how to avoid that quite yet.”
“I know,” Addy says. I reach for the envelope again and she pulls it away.
“Then what in God’s name are you on about?”
“Promise me. I don’t want to be married off, not any more than you do. But there are things we can both do to protect ourselves, and for that, you actually need to take the throne.”
“Addy—no—I can’t.”
“There’s a provision in the constitution, such as it is,” she says, transferring the envelope to her other hand. “It says you can marry a commoner and still take the crown. And once you’re married, you can take the throne if father is ill. And he is.”
I shake my head dumbly. “What are you saying? And what’s this shit about an heir?”
“I have friends who work in the palace. In the wrong hands, this letter sent to your apartment in Amsterdam would be disastrous. But in your hands, I think it can do a world of good. For you, for me. For Mallory Jane Matthews. And her child.”
She shoves the paper in my hand.
Matthias, it starts, in the sloppy cursive of Mal’s handwriting.
I really hope this letter finds you well. I think of you often, but I know there’s no real relationship between us. I thought I’d inform you that I am six weeks pregnant, but I don’t expect a thing from you. I just wanted you to know. I’ll call you when the baby is born. I do promise that. It was so sweet while it lasted, and I’m so sorry this thing happened.
—Mal.
I turn the envelope over in my hands, the paper shaking. It’s postmarked from Paris, but I can see that Mal went to the central post office to mail it, giving me no indication of where she might be, or which school she chose in the sprawling, crowded City of Lights.
“Paris?”
Addy nods. “Congratulations, Matthias. You did exactly what Mum and Dad wanted, but not with a girl they picked. How do you feel about that?”
A surge of fear rolls through my body—not because of the pregnancy, the one thing I feared for years. It’s for Mal. And the baby. Can they even call it a baby yet? Or is it still hypothetical? A piece of Mal’s body.
Even if Addy hid this from the palace, it’s only a matter of time before my parents find out. The letter is postmarked two weeks ago. She’ll be showing soon. And I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they have someone watching her. Or they will, once they find out where she is. And there’s very little doubt that they’re looking.
“I’ve never tried to find anyone before.”
“How hard can it be? The city is finite. Finding a pregnant American girl should be easy.”
“And convincing her to marry a prince for her own protection?”
“That one is up to you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mallory
“Do you need to puke again before we go?” Emilie looks at me from across the room. I’m still working on the skirt and draped top I’m supposed to make for my class. Ready to wear. Simple, appropriate, expensive looking. Sometimes I think I should have stayed in the States and auditioned for Project Runway instead of going to graduate school. I wouldn’t be pregnant, living in a tiny apartment, and wondering how to squirrel away my sister’s money for the rest of my child’s life.
My child. My hand absently goes down to my belly.
“No. I think it might be just about cleared up. The sickness. They say it takes a turn right before the second trimester.” Twelve weeks. A scan this morning showed a perfectly formed body, a heart with four beautiful chambers, ten fingers, ten toes. The next scan will show us for sure, but the tech said she thought it was a boy. My boy. Emilie started work on a wardrobe for him, using scraps from her projects. I tried to stop her, but she declared I didn’t need to spend a dime on baby clothing, not when we know how to make clothes. And I’ve been too sick to try.
“You’ll be showing soon. You need to make an impression at the brasserie today so you can stay there.”
“And save money. And get a new apartment. And figure out how to hire a nanny.” And when he’s born, I’ll send Matthias another letter. Right now, he doesn’t need a damn word from me. He’s got enough to deal with—and I know I’ll be the last thing on his mind. He made that clear when we parted ways. I don’t know what kind of child support he’s required to give, or if he’ll sneer at me and demand a paternity test.
I’d rather spare myself the pain. I half-considered leaving an email or phone number at the bottom of the letter. But a man dealing with his own problems shouldn’t be expected to connect with his pregnant—what? I’m nothing. Not a girlfriend. A friend maybe. An acquaintance with a new-found penchant for public sex, and the idiocy to forget to renew her birth control the week after she left Brussels.
But God, it felt so good. He felt so good. His length buried deep inside of me, nothing between us. I didn’t even think of the danger then. Just trusted him when he told me he kept himself clean, and he’d trusted me when I told him I was on the pill.
I betrayed that trust, didn’t I?
I didn’t follow through on picking up Plan B. And I waited three days to start a new pack of birth control when I got into Paris. I went years thinking that my own caution would always take care of me. But it only takes once to slip up.
I put the finishing touches on the shirt and put my hand on my belly again as I stand up. There’s not much of a bump growing there yet, but I can feel my body starting to change, my hips shifting, belly tilting forward. The drunk, sick feeling of my first trimester is starting to wear off.
If anyone had asked me a year ago if I would have considered terminating an unexpected pregnancy, I would have said yes. Yes, I’d consider it, without hesitation.
And if the follow-up question had anything to do with my being excited or looking forward to something like this—I’d have said no. Twenty-three, heading into graduate school, heading into a career. No, I’d never be so foolish.
But I do look forward to it. As Kim’s death has sunk in over time, I feel in my bones how important family is—how important I am. And now, how important I could be in a child’s life.
I throw the skirt onto the overlock machine. “There. C’est fini. I’m ready for the brasserie. I can serve food in the evenings, make clothes to sell all night, and ace my classes during the day.”
“And you’ll sleep when?” Emilie takes my arm. “You can use some of that money your sister left you to put a down payment on a real apartment. And I can move in with you, and you charge me rent. How about that?”
“I still need the money from the brasserie. And I need to start my own brand long before I graduate if I’m going to be a mom, too.” She walks me downstairs, and I wonder how long it will be before my body is unwieldy. Maybe weeks. Maybe months. I don’t know how these things go.
“But we should still consider the apartment.” Emilie tosses her blond hair over her shoulder and hands me my sunglasses from her purse. When we’re at the door, she fixes my scarf, and pulls my deep plum blazer so it closes beneath my breasts. “You’re a sexy pregnant woman, Mal. Show it off to the guy who owns the brasserie. We’re going to get you this job.”
“He said it’s all mine.”
She pulls me out of the door beside her. “I think it can be. But you need to do well this evening, and it doesn’t hurt to show your figure. Hell, this man might like pregnant ladies. You can never tell about these shop owners.”
“So you say.” I laugh out loud, and she puts my arm in hers.
“We’ll make it. Both of us,” Emilie says.
“You keep saying ‘we,’ Em. I’m just some American girl you barely know. And I’m knocked up. And I have baggage. I might flunk out of school. I might never make a name for myself. I might hold you back and—”
She turns to me and puts her hands on my shoulders, stopping me in the middle of the sidewalk as people push past us. “There’s a ‘we’ now, because you’re my friend. You don’t have family. I’m an only child, and I don’t have much either. So, we can be family in a big new city. Mm?”
I nod, tears stinging my eyes. “Okay.”
“And I’d wager you haven’t seen the last of Matthias.” She walks me along to the brasserie, leaves falling around us.
“Oh? I think he’s got enough to deal with on his own.”
“Some guy was by asking about you when you were in class this afternoon, and—”
My heart stops. “And what? Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“You were working on your designs, finally. Can’t a girl get a break around here?”
I shiver involuntarily, and Emilie pulls me down the street. I didn’t leave enough information for Matthias to find me, did I? He may know from the postmark that I’m in Paris, but that’s the only information he has. Matthias even told me it would be best if he had no idea where I was. I think back to the comment, his voice echoing in my head. At the time, that had merely seemed hurtful, like he wanted nothing to do with me. But could it have been something more?
I can only hope the man asking for me was Matthias. The alternative is too scary to consider.
“What did the guy look like, Em? This is important.” I whisper the last words as we approach the brasserie. There are a few people outside, eating fries and drinking coffee. One of them has a steaming soup. The smell from it almost knocks me out, but it makes me hungry at the same time.
“I dunno. Tall, handsome. Blond. Wearing a long coat even though it wasn’t that cold. He didn’t leave his name.”
“What color were his eyes?”
Emilie looks at me and takes my hands in hers. “Mal, why wouldn’t it be Matthias? Or someone else you already know? Maybe a friend from home visiting Paris? You can’t really think that someone from his family—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about them. I don’t even know if I want it to be him. That would mean that we’d have to talk about all of this.” I gesture broadly to my abdomen, which hasn’t quite started straining against my jeans yet, but there’s a tight firmness there that didn’t exist last week.
“Yeah, well. You know that’s coming at some point. Maybe you misread him when you were traveling together. Maybe he’d want to be part of your life—”
“You’re talking like it’s definitely him. And you don’t even remember what color his eyes were.”
“I do,” she protests, chewing on her lip. “I think they were blue. I’m not sure. But whatever it was—it was probably him, don’t you think? He might be back.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Mal, we need to get you inside that restaurant so you can work and get that steady income you’ve been talking about.”
“Just tell me what you told him.”
“Relax. I spared your privacy. I said that you lived in this apartment but you were looking for a new place. I left it at that. I know how you are about people, Mal. I’m not stupid. You can text him. If he’s here, you can meet somewhere neutral. It doesn’t have to be painful or awkward, and he doesn’t need to know where you live. We can start looking for a new place now. Okay? You’ve got the ball in your court, and you can do what you want. Now go inside, okay? Go to your shift, kick ass, and you can think about it when you’re serving up steak frites and practicing your French.”
I nod warily. I wish it were that simple, but Emilie doesn’t know Matthias. She doesn’t know how he told me repeatedly that he didn’t want a family or a marriage. Or even a long-term relationship. He couldn’t have made it any clearer. On top of that, his family. Anything that could get a man to move that quick could easily be dangerous.
And I know nothing about them.
Matthias said it was better that way, but now I’m carrying his child. He knows it—does that mean they do, too?
I walk into the brasserie, nearly shaking. The manager greets me kindly and steals a look at my growing breasts as he talks to me about the menu and the schedule of daily specials. I nearly burn myself trying to work the coffee machine, but after an hour of work, I fall into a rhythm, letting the noise of the cafe drown out my thoughts until I’m moving by instinct. When I leave, the manager smiles and compliments me, and I nod and smile back because it’s what I’m supposed to do.
All the while, I go over the images of Matthias in my head, trying to match him up to Emilie’s description. Her details were so vague that I come up empty each time. There are no more pictures of him on my phone—I deleted them all shortly after I found out I was pregnant. And the lines of his face are starting to blur.
As I walk home in the darkness, hands shoved deep in my coat pockets, my throat tightens. Tears sting my eyes, and I start to cry in earnest, the wind whipping around me.
None of the passersby pay attention to me. No one stops to lend me a shoulder. Em is back in the apartment, probably sewing, waiting for me to come back. But while I’m anonymous, I let myself think the things I’ve been avoiding for the past months, as summer truly turned to fall and I settled into my new life.
Matthias, I miss you. It’s a blasphemous thought. I’m not supposed to miss someone I barely know, someone who made it clear our relationship was casual, that we weren’t really meant to be.
I miss him, and maybe something more. There have been men who’ve asked me out—friends of Emilie’s, one or two of the straight guys from my classes. I turned them down immediately, even before I knew I was pregnant. They weren’t Matthias. They didn’t look at me the way he did, like he wanted to know me, the small details of my old life, like those things meant something to him.
I wonder as I walk up the stairs to our apartment if things would have been different had Matthias and I met in a different time, a different way. Maybe I owe it to him to text or call.
Midway up the stairs, I take out my phone and look at his number again.
I click my phone off and stand still for a moment. There’s a change, a shift in the air. Our apartment door is slightly cracked.
Emilie would never leave the door open, not at this time of night, and not in the part of town where we live. I shift closer, tiptoeing up the stairs so I’m standing just below the entrance to the apartment. There are voices inside, Emilie’s sing-song French ringing through the space. I can tell she’s speaking louder than usual, and there’s an edge to her voice that I can’t quite place.
“She’s not here right now, no. I don’t know exactly where she is,” she says. I can tell she’s angled her body toward the door, that she’s speaking directly to me. “She went out, and she didn’t say when she’d be back.”
There’s a male voice that responds, but I can’t make out what he’s saying. My heart skips a beat. It might have been the main from earlier today. It’s definitely not Matthias’s voice. The cadence and tone don’t match, and there’s a gravelly undercurrent to it that makes my blood run cold.
“I’m quite sure she won’t be back until after midnight. And she’ll be tired. I don’t think she’ll want any company. In fact, I bet she’s spending the night at school tonight. She said she had some projects to work on, and she needed the studio.”
There’s more rumbling from the man, and I pick up that he’s asking about the pile of baby clothes Emilie has made.
“Those are for a friend,” she responds. “Mallory’s not—no—and I don’t see why it’s any of your business.”
There’s a pause, and I can’t tell if anyone is speaking.
Blood buzzing in my ears, I back down one step and then another.
“I have the police on speed dial, right here. They’re down the street. Now, I’d ask you to get out before I call them, or I think we’ll have a problem. I don’t want you here.” There’s another pause, and I hear shuffling in the apartment, a muttered apology from the man, a promise that he’ll return.
“Well don’t come back tonight. Mallory, no matter where she is, is not coming back here tonight.”
Before the man makes it to the door, I’m at the bottom of the stairs and at the door. My heart pounding hard, I run back in the direction of the brasserie, phone clutched in my hand. I back into a shallow alleyway beside the restaurant, leaning against the wall, and I take the phone in my hand, bringing up Matthias’s phone number again. This time, I call.
The phone rings once, and a frazzled voice comes through on the other end of the line.
“I know you’re probably in Amsterdam—and you probably don’t want to hear from me—but I need your help—”
“Mal,” he says, his voice tired. He sighs deeply, with what sounds like relief. “Thank God.”
“I’m sorry I called. I know I said I wasn’t going to, but there’s some guy at my apartment, and I don’t know anyone else on the entire continent. And I’m pregnant. You know I’m pregnant, right?” The words tumble out in a rush, and I hear Matthias on the other end trying to get a word in. I stop speaking. My pulse races.
“I’m not in Amsterdam, Mal. I’m in Paris.”
I hold the phone away for an instant, staring at it, like it might be lying to me.
“Mal?” His voice is hoarse and worried. “Mal? Answer me.”
I sink down to the ground, jeans against the cold pavement.
“I’m here,” I say, after a minute, maybe more. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
I let the tears come, and he stays silent, just listening.
Matthias is here.
Chapter Seventeen
Matthias
I pace the apartment floor. It’s nothing like my real home in Amsterdam. The floors are worn and sag in the middle, and the windows are painted shut, which doesn’t make much sense for a place like Paris. Whenever I’m here, I see people with their windows open the entire season of autumn, in winter until the deathly cold and rain take over, and again in spring.
I think of Mallory’s rental back in Amsterdam. I never saw the place but briefly, but it was nicer than this. In the past two months, I’ve thought of her again and again, staying in tiny places, fitting herself in, trying not to be noticed.
Here I am, blending in, trying not to be noticed, on the run from something far more dangerous than my past.
This was the only place I could find on short notice that would take cash by the day. No questions asked. I can only hope that my family—or their henchmen—don’t approach the dodgy little owner. This type of individual always sings for the right price. And I’m sure my parents have more cash on hand than I have.
The phone is off, battery discarded in a dumpster. Mal only has directions here, and I can only hope she makes it in one piece.
There are soft steps on the stairs, coming up from below. When the steps reach the old, wooden door, I go to it and open it before a knock even comes through.
“Mallory,” I say, pulling her into my arms. “I had no idea where you were, not a damn clue. Why didn’t you give me your address in that letter?” I breathe the words into her hair, taking in her scent. Her arms are around me, but loosely, and I pull back, looking into the blue-gray eyes I’ve thought of every day since I left her in Brussels.
“I didn’t—I didn’t think you’d want to see me.” Tears come to her eyes as she stands there, solemn, in front of me. These aren’t the first of tonight’s tears—it’s easy to see. She’s already been crying, and I wonder if it’s because of me. I was the one who told her that we needed to part, we needed to stay away. She doesn’t yet know all the reasons why.
“I told you I wanted to see you again, Mal.” I tip her chin toward my face and kiss her. Her eyes are filled with tears, mixed emotions of guilt and relief crossing her face. I notice that there are pale freckles covering her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and I wonder if they appeared there because of the Parisian sun in the fall.
I remember telling her I would see her again. But the message I gave her with each one of my actions, with all of my old stories of wandering the continent and taking tourist women home with me, I’d told her the opposite.
And the baby. That wasn’t something I’d wanted—no. But with Mallory standing here in front of me, warmth takes over my body and expands through me like nothing I’ve ever known.
This is right. This is what I want. This is everything I never dreamed, circumstances be damned.
“You didn’t want anything more than what we had.” She says the words simply, directly. And they sting.
“I know what I said.” I take her hands and lead her to the faded leather sofa in the corner of the dusty little apartment. “But I haven’t stopped thinking about you since you left.”
She sits down and pulls her hands to her lap. She’s wearing jeans and the same purple shirt she wore on our trip to Brussels. Her letter told me she was carrying our child, but she doesn’t look any different. Just like the Mallory I sent to Paris, stupidly, without me. The Mallory I lost. Inside of her, there’s a life that’s hers and mine, an extension of ourselves.
“That’s a nice thing to say but—” She looks at me and bites her lip, pulling her jacket tight around her so that it sits just under her breasts. With a glance, I can tell that those are rounder, firmer. I want to reach out and touch her, eliminate the space between us, but the time and space between us make that feel impossible.
“But it’s true.” I want to lean in, to kiss her, to peel off her clothes and take the time to get to know her body again. Instead, I take her hand in mine. She doesn’t squeeze my fingers in return. Her long artist’s fingers sit in mine.
“There are complications, Matthias. This isn’t just a week of fun anymore. There’s your family—is it your family? The man in my apartment? Like you said? I thought you might not be serious. People don’t do this kind of thing, do they? Come by and intimidate and make demands? This isn’t real, is it?”
Her voice speeds up as she speaks, and I raise a hand to stop her. “It’s real. And I do have reason to believe it’s them.”
“That’s why you came?”
I nod. “Partly. And you’re…” I almost can’t say the words. Mal just appeared here after I’ve spent days scouring the city, going to each of the graduate schools with her name and asking the administration if she was enrolled. As it turns out, most people in school administration won’t accept bribes for information—even in France. The whole night feels surreal, and here she is, wide-eyed and scared, and somehow more real than she ever was during the days we spent between Amsterdam and Brussels.
“I’m pregnant. I’m going to assume that’s one of the reasons you’re here. Or no?” She speaks slowly, diplomatically.
I feel a rush of protectiveness, all at once. This woman, she trumps every other girl I’ve been with, and I can’t articulate all the reasons why. And she’s carrying my child—mine and hers. An indelible tie that binds us together. I’d have thought it was impossible to feel this way. But I’m feeling it, deeply, as I watch her sitting across from me. I take my hand to her hair and run my fingers through it. She sighs softly, the sound sudden, like she didn’t expect it to escape her lips.
I sigh. I’ve been toying with my thoughts for a solid week now, on the flight here, on the train. And I come back to one single thing—I don’t want to lose her. I’ll do anything to keep her, and more than that to keep her safe.
“Matthias,” she whispers. “Answer me. This wasn’t something I was going to talk to you about until he was born. Or at least until I made it to the third trimester—or I don’t know. It hasn’t seemed real enough yet. And I know—I really do—that this isn’t part of how you envisioned your life.”
I bring my fingers to her chin, stopping when she pulls away from me slightly. “Sometimes there’s a better life than what you envision. And maybe this is the one for both of us.”
I wait, watching. Her dark eyebrows are knitted together, tears drying just below her lash line. But she moves closer to me and takes my other hand, grasping it. This time, I bring my lips to hers, and she yields to me, her mouth melding with mine, the feeling of it at once gentle and brutal. I’ve kissed many women, and I’ve met maybe a thousand in my time. But none of them have been Mallory—with her sweet warmth, her laughter, the aching need of her body when it collides with mine. As I kiss her, my tongue darting against hers, I think that she’s someone I want to know, that maybe I had a longing in my life all along, and it was Mallory that made me see it. She sighs into me, a tiny whimper, and I can feel the fear and hesitation in her body. I pull her close, pushing her jacket away from her shoulders and bringing her onto my lap to straddle me.
Panting, she pulls away from me. “Is that true, Matthias? Or are you just saying it because it sounds like what you should say? Because your family has decided I’m important enough to hunt down when I’m keeping entirely to myself?”
“It’s true,” I say without hesitation. I pause, bringing my hand to her belly where her low rise jeans are buttoned. I place my hand there, and I can feel a gentle swell. Not enough for anyone who didn’t know her to notice, not enough for her to get questions or concerns wherever she goes. But still, I smile when I touch her there. “It’s not something I thought I wanted. But I think of you, and I think of this child. And I want to protect both of you. I almost went insane when I got your letter and didn’t know where you were. I don’t want to be without you.”
She looks at me sadly. “You say you want to do the right thing. What’s the right thing? There’s no one right thing, is there, Matthias?”
Mal looks the same as she did when I first met her, round-faced and dark-haired, smart, curious eyes. But there’s deeper maturity there, like all these thoughts and all the days we spent apart brought on a piece of her adulthood that had stalled when her sister died.
I kiss her lightly on the lips again, pulling away after I do. “I knew when I met you that I wanted you. More desperately than I’ve wanted anyone. When you left, and I knew I wouldn’t see you again, I went home and met the woman my parents want me to marry. She’s from the family they selected. She’ll do as they please, and she seems more than willing to let me lead my own life and do exactly what I want—”
“Do you want to marry her?”
“No. I didn’t think I wanted to marry anyone. It was always something my parents wanted for me, so I never had it on my mind. But Mallory, now, I don’t feel that anymore—” This is the truth.
“Matthias, what are you saying?” Her eyes grow wide, and she shifts away from me, almost imperceptibly. “I’m glad you’re here but—”
“Stop, Mal. Let me say what I need to say.” As I think through what I discussed with my sister, all the words and promises that would save both me and Mallory, I realize I believe each one of them. I may not have wanted a real life with anyone—but that was before I met Mallory. She makes it all seem possible. Is that love? The heat I feel when I’m with her? The impulse to ask her every secret longing she’s ever had, to listen to her speak. “Mal, I want to marry you because it’s right for both of us. I want to provide for this child. I want to keep you safe. And I want to wake up next to you every morning.”
She turns her head away. Her face, even when she’s sad, betrays this pure beauty, this vulnerability. It’s something I haven’t seen many times in my life. I ask myself—even if my sister hadn’t come to me with that letter, even if my parents weren’t going to find Mallory or threaten her, even if she wasn’t pregnant—would I want to wake up next to this woman every day?
The answer is instant. I would.
She turns to me. I want to tell her I love her, that all the things I was before aren’t real.
“Is that enough, Matthias? Enough to build a marriage on? What is this, really? My roommate keeps telling me that there are old families that do things like this—force their children to marry to keep up a bloodline. But they’re all noble. Royal blood, and all that. Are you doing this to keep me quiet or—what? I know you’re here because you say I’m in danger. But I don’t know the nature of that danger. I don’t understand it—”
“My family is—” I pause. There’s a long history that revolves around a powerful, controlling monarchy that’s not kind to its citizens or its children. They’ll do anything to keep me from marrying a commoner, whether it’s legal or not. And yes, the danger is deeply real.
I imagine Mallory fleeing, running back to her home country or, worse, straight into the North Islands militia. The thought leaves me speechless.
“Matthias, it’s time to tell me who you are. Or I go. It’s not just you and me anymore. There’s someone who’s far more important.” She bites her lip, like she’s shocked at what she just said. But I just nod. For the first time in my life, I understand.
“I love you, Mallory. That’s why I want to marry you. And I need to marry you now because my family is very old, very powerful, and utterly ruthless when it comes to making their children do what they want.”
She’s quiet, studying me. Where my fingers touch her wrist, I can feel her pulse racing. The color rises in her cheeks, but before she feels like she needs to respond, I begin the long story of my family. Her hands stay in mine, her body angled over my lap. It’s no fairy tale. The events might be the same in any dysfunctional family, but with my mother and father, there’s far more money and power involved. She grows pale when I tell her about Adelaide and the way they keep her locked in the palace—maybe she imagines herself in the same position, unable to escape, to do what she loves.
With this marriage, I can protect Mallory and our child. But with it, she also must give up the plans she had for her solitary life, at least for now.
If she makes this decision, she chooses to face my family head on, to become a part of something that might damage both of us. And if she doesn’t—it’s a devil of a decision. Because of me, she and our child might be in real danger.
When I finish, I tell her again that I want to be with her, forever, if she wants that too. She answers with a small nod and asks me to take her to bed.
Instead of spoken answers, she gives me her body, and I come to know it again. And this time, I’m quite sure I’m making the right choice.
Chapter Eighteen
Mallory
When I wake that next morning, nothing has changed. It seems like it should have. After all, I agreed to marry a man I barely know. And I’m carrying his child. I move a hand to his muscled shoulder, and he stirs in his sleep. What we have when we’re together—it’s incendiary. I wasn’t imagining it. All the time spent thinking about him, I didn’t dream it.
There’s something there, but I don’t think either of us knows what it is. We haven’t spent enough time figuring it out—and I’m not entirely sure that’s how a marriage should go.
He told me he loves me, but the words felt rushed. And I had no idea how to respond. It’s a word I’ve toyed with in my mind a thousand times, but when I think of the Matthias that I know, reckless and wild, the word seems wrong, like it doesn’t fit.
This night, this morning. This proposal. None of it happened how I imagined it would.
I wasn’t one to flip through bridal magazines and make plans for the perfect wedding. I didn’t ooh and ahh over dresses the way my sister did. And the relationships I had—well, they weren’t exactly romantic.
But if someone had asked me, I would have told them that the man I’d choose to marry wouldn’t be asking me to protect me from imminent danger. It would be a mutual decision, one that we came to together, after about a year of dating. Maybe at the age of thirty.
Instead, Matthias methodically told me about his home, the people under his parents’ control, and thousands of years of sanctioned bullying. He’s the first to break away—and if it weren’t for me, he might be able to.
He didn’t add that last part himself, but I’m sure it’s crossed his mind. It might be the first thing on his mind when he wakes up and sees me this morning.
But there’s no other choice for me, is there? I put my hand to my belly. I can feel it growing over the waistband of my jeans. Thirteen weeks this morning, with a real, growing life inside. Matthias assured me his parents or one of their people would find me, no matter where I went.
Soon, I’ll be feeling flutters.
Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.
I promise.
I have a sick, sinking feeling when I think about leaving the program, leaving Emilie, leaving the life I worked for. But this man—this prince—told me I could trust him. He told me that there would be a time when this was all over, when we could both be who we are. And we would do that together.
“Matthias,” I say, pressing my hand to his shoulder again. Despite the darkness linked to his proposal, I can’t help feeling the inward pull to him that I’ve felt since the first time I laid eyes on him. I swallow hard, fighting back tears. I test the words out in my head again.
I do love you, I think. Is that what you really feel for me? Or is it something you said to get what you want?
“Mm?” He turns over, eyes still closed. His face is smooth while he’s sleeping, the worry lines I saw last night vanished.
I lean down and kiss him, and his lips melt against mine. I throw one leg over his body and catch him in my grip. I can’t help myself. My body, close to his, responds, heat searing through my core, making its way to my sex. Throbbing, pulsing need. My body seems like it’s betraying me, making me want this man that I shouldn’t want. I need him. I want him.
Do I love him?
His eyes open, and he pulls me on top of his body. Tenderly, he touches my thighs. His hands travel over my thighs and up to my hips. One hand travels to my belly and touches it gently, almost reverently. My cheeks color, and there’s a different kind of heat in my body now, mixing with the desire I feel for Matthias. “Do you feel anything yet?”
“No. No flutters. Soon, though. Maybe. My mother said she felt both of us early, so maybe soon.”
“You said you had an ultrasound. Did you keep any pictures?”
His hand rests on my abdomen. I’m thirteen weeks this morning. It’s tiny, the life inside of me. But it’s beautifully formed, with a face and hands and feet. I saw it all, just before Matthias came. “I didn’t. I didn’t have anyone here who would care.”
“I do care, Mal.” His hands move to my waist and rest there. “I want this. I want to be a part of this. And I want you to be a part of my life.”
A thrill runs through me. “That’s what you said last night. But you also said you wanted to do the right thing. And that you and I needed to be married to protect ourselves. All of those things you said—they’re different things. They mean different things.”
“They’re all true. And I love you. I do.” He brushes the back of his hand over one thigh, closer to my sex. I’m aware that he wants me again. I can feel him growing hard against me, and my own need is growing, making my blood buzz, making it hard to think about the things we need to talk about.
“That’s what you said.” When I say the words, tears sting my eyes again. “I love you, Matthias. At least I think I do. But when I left Brussels, I thought I’d never see you again. I wasn’t prepared for this.”
“Neither of us were.”
“I’m not like that other girl,” I say. “The one who wants to marry you. I won’t share you with anyone else if we do this. I’ll do everything you ask. I’ll protect all of us. But I won’t share you. I won’t give you up. This is forever, for me.”
He nods and grips me by the waist, moving me over his growing length. I sigh, body aching for his. But I stop him, putting my hand to his tight abs. “I’m not sharing you with anyone either, Mal. And I’m not leaving you once we do this. This is real. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
He moves me again, the head of his cock pressing against my entrance. I shudder with the same desire I felt when he first touched me. “Is this what we should be doing? What we really need?”
With concentrated slowness, he pushes himself inside of me. I’m already sopping wet, and when he thrusts from below, there’s no resistance. He groans deeply, and the longing I felt when I woke up next to him intensifies until I’m gripping his shoulders, moaning, riding him.
He looks me in the eyes, pulls me toward him, and kisses me hard, biting down on my lower lip. When he pulls away, he rolls me over in the bed and pins me to my pillow. “Yes.”
He brings his hands to my breasts, teasing my nipples, and then lowers his mouth to one, pulling it between his lips as he fucks me. Each thrust hits hard against my clit. I realize now that where I once felt he was too big for me; he fits me perfectly now. The tension in my body begins to build, bringing me closer and closer to the edge until my mind tips into oblivion. Pressure spreads through my legs and thighs, and I come hard, my body tightening around his. Shivers run the length of my spine, down to my toes, which curl against the plain white sheets.
Matthias rides me through my orgasm, and as I come down from my high, I realize that this sex is simpler, sweeter than it ever was before.
“Then I will, Matthias. I will marry you.”
We don’t speak anymore that morning. Instead, we eat a simple breakfast from a cafe downstairs, sitting inside. Later, we shower together and watch something on TV that I can’t quite follow. It’s in French, and I can’t quite follow it. The words are too fast and seem to blend together. Even though my French has improved, it’s not quite good enough for things like this. I wonder, while we’re sitting together on the old couch in the rental Matthias found, if I’ll need to learn to speak French like that—fast and fluent. Or if we’ll have to raise the baby speaking Dutch. Maybe I’ll have to learn that too.
I try to push away the rising swell of anxiety. I take solace in being close to Matthias. This seems to be the calm before the storm, the part before our plans become a reality.
Before we have to face all the things that are coming for us, just so we can be normal.
Maybe Matthias being by my side will make it all manageable.
But I have yet to see.
Chapter Nineteen
Matthias
For the next week, we keep to ourselves. In the mornings, I make phone calls to the Parisian government, leaning on personal connections I know won’t contact my parents. There’s the marriage license to sort out, the witnesses. And finally, finding a minister or justice who won’t balk at marrying two non-Catholics, one of whom is pregnant. Mallory tells me she trusts her friend Emilie enough to come by and fit her for a dress—something simple, knee-length, elegant. I know she doesn’t actually need it, the dress. It’s something to occupy her mind while she sorts all of this out. She throws herself into designing it, talking to Emilie, taking measurements. And I try to make sure no one sees where Emilie is going at any given time. Her roommate eyes me suspiciously any time she comes by, but she doesn’t say much.
She was right—the roommate. There are families here who are old and powerful and don’t stop until they have exactly what they want. They just don’t know they’re playing against me. They might not know me well enough—or Adelaide either—to figure out that no matter what happens, I’ll find a way to defeat them. And while I’m at it, I’ll keep this woman safe.
On the morning of the wedding, I get breakfast just as I usually do, hopping from cafe to cafe so no one will spot me in one place. I feel eyes on me, people searching me out for signs that I’m not who I say I am, that I’m hiding in plain sight and have been for years. It’s just my paranoia, a thing that’s steadily developed over time. It’s become more than I can manage, and today I’ll finally end it. With Mallory’s name on a French marriage certificate, our bond will be legal, here and abroad. And whatever happens, I’ll keep her by my side until she gives birth, and long after that.
Maybe, I think, as I go up the stairs to the apartment, we can have the life we’ve been hoping for after that.
“Mal,” I say as I open the door. “I think the minister said he’d come here—we don’t have to go anywhere to meet him. I gave him the rings yesterday for safe keeping.” I kick the door open with my foot, and I hear no response. When I go in, holding two coffees and the bag of pastries I picked up, the place is eerily empty, like all the life has been sucked out of it. One window is open, and the dingy gray curtain is fluttering in the breeze. It’s odd—we haven’t opened the windows since it got cold. And the wind coming through, it chills me down to the bone.
“Mallory,” I call again, my voice cracking. “Tell me you’re here!” I check every inch of the tiny one-bedroom apartment, my heart racing.
This is what it feels like to lose everything.
My mother’s voice rings through in my mind, echoing with a ghostly cackle.
Shit. They’ve got her.
I take out my burner phone and call Mallory’s number, hoping beyond hope that there’s a chance she’s safe. After five rings, there’s no answer. Heart pounding, I know that the next ring will let the phone go to voicemail.
But Mallory answers, panting and nearly out of breath. “Matthias?” I can hear a hint of fear in her tone, and it’s like a dagger to my heart. “There was a man—across the street. I think—I don’t know if—I went to Emilie’s parents’ apartment in the Northern part of the city. Could the minister come here? Would he? I got so scared.”
“We’ll work it out, Mal. I’m just glad you’re safe. God, I’m glad. Keep calm, lieverd. Text me the address, and I’ll be there.”
“I have the dress, and Emilie is here. She can be the witness. And if the guy—the minister or whatever—does he have the rings?”
“He does, princess.”
“Don’t call me that again, Matthias. You know this is what I want—just not that part of it. I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“I won’t. I won’t say it again, Mal.” My throat tightens. It was a simple impulse—a name I called her when we were running around Brussels, when all that mattered was the next restaurant or the next hotel where we might find respite. When I hang up, I realize that it was what I used to call the girls that I brought home to my house in Amsterdam. Mallory might have been that once, but she isn’t anymore. She’s far more.
I hail a taxi bound for the north side of the city, leaving the two coffees to sit and grow cold. I don’t have much, but I wear a button-down shirt, the one I wore when I first met her. And jeans, faded and worn, grown soft with time. It’s not the royal wedding my parents had always planned. But my instinct tells me it's better.
A friend’s parent—when I was off at boarding school—told me that it was never the wedding day itself that counted. It was the marriage. I might have been jealous of his parents—rich, yes, for everyone there was. But they had a genuine relationship, and here they were, telling me I could have one too.
I hadn’t believed it.
But when I hand ten euros to the driver and get out at an old gray stone building that looks nondescript, anonymous among the many others of its kind, I know that I’m going to something far better today than what my parents had. I walk up the stairs after Emilie buzzes me in, and Mallory stands there in her pale blush colored dress, with a skirt of tulle that comes down to her knees. The ruffles at the top of the skirt hide her bump, but I know it’s there. Her face is even rounder too, her hips deliciously curvy. The minister might not notice, but I will. I put my child in this woman, and now I’ll have her for good.
“Don’t Americans say it’s bad luck to see the bride in her dress?”
Mallory shrugs. “I guess so. But we’ve had enough bad luck that I don’t think we can have much more of the same.”
“I wouldn’t tempt fate, Mal.” As I say it, I walk up to her and kiss her. She melts against me, and I feel the simple excitement of holding someone I love.
There’s a sound on the stairs, and the three of us jump at the same time, Emilie leaping up from her seat. She runs over to the door and looks through the window at the top. “I’d say it was the minister you hired, guys. Or was he a minister?”
“Non-denominational minister. Hard to find around here,” I say.
Mal laughs and puts her hand to her belly. “And possibly more accepting of this kind of thing?”
“We’re just a modern family, Mal.”
She laughs again, and Emilie rolls her eyes, taking a seat by the window to keep watch. Both of them seem nervous, rattled. I haven’t had a chance to ask who they saw, but it scared them enough to get away from the apartment.
The minister knocks at the door, and I show him in. He’s a short, angry-looking man—who looks like he might well have been a disapproving minister in a former life. He looks between the two of us suspiciously and shrugs. “This is the wedding party?”
“You’re looking at it,” I say. Mallory shrinks back, pressing her hips into the dining room table that takes up most of the space next to the kitchen.
A friend at city hall assured me this guy’s a type who’s easily convinced with a fistful of euros, so I give him a nice stack of bills. He glances at Mallory’s growing belly, but he doesn’t say a word. Instead, he slides the cash in his jacket pocket and puts the marriage certificate on the elaborate dining room table.
“Is anyone else joining us?” He speaks in heavily accented, halting English.
Emilie answers from her spot by the window, glancing down to the street as she speaks. “I certainly hope not. We’ve got some relatives in town we’d rather only see at the reception.” She looks over at Mallory and smiles.
“Thank you,” I say to her, looking back to the minister. He puts the rings down on the table and starts the ceremony with no preamble.
It’s not how I would have wanted it. I wish I could give Mallory the time to write her vows, and I’d love to take her somewhere tropical and warm for our honeymoon. Instead, we’re standing in the gray light of a Parisian apartment that doesn’t mean anything to either of us. As the minister recites a few brief verses about the sanctity of marriage, I take her hand and pull her close to me. The heat rises in her cheeks, and she leans against me softly. Emilie stands just behind us, silent. The whole ceremony feels ominous, like there might be someone lurking behind the closed door that leads into the foyer.
There might be. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.
“Do you, Matthias Albring, take this woman to be your wife?” The words echo through the room.
“Yes, I do.” I say it without hesitation. Danger or no, Mal is the one I want standing next to me.
“Do you, Mallory Matthews, take this man to be your husband?”
Mal nods, and then looks up to me. “I do.” There’s a quaver in her voice, but it’s not about the words she’s saying. It’s about everything that comes along with that—the dangers I’ve shared with her. I’m not sure that she really believes the depths of my country’s xenophobia or its casual fascism. But once she meets my parents, she’ll understand each and every one of my warnings.
“You may exchange the rings, and kiss the bride,” the minister says, beginning to pack up his bag, presumably for the next shotgun wedding he’s attending on this dreary Saturday.
“Isn’t there—isn’t there supposed to be more?” Mal stutters, looking around the room anxiously, like someone else might show up.
“I can say the whole thing for fifty more euros. But you got the short version.”
I nod to Mal, and she picks the plain gold ring up from the table, and she slips it onto my ring finger.
“The short version is okay by me, Mal,” I say, taking the platinum ring I had made for her, and putting it on her long, elegant finger. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, it looks like she had time to paint her nails a pale pink. The platinum looks elegant against her pale skin, and it feels right that I’m doing this—in this apartment, in this place.
She looks at the ring and then glances back up to me. Her gaze, once unreadable, seems wiser now, reflecting the woman she’s becoming. “It works for me too, I think. I like the ring.”
“You may kiss the bride,” the minister reminds us. I need to be at Montmartre at noon, and I need a coffee before I get there.
I slip my arm around Mallory’s waist, drawing her close to me and bringing my lips to hers. Her lips are tender and sweet, the hint of berries lingering on her lips from her gloss. It’s a quick kiss, not intense like the kisses we share in private. But the meaning is clear—it’s a promise. That I’ll protect her and our baby, that she’ll stand by me as we navigate the uncharted waters of my family, that someday soon, we’ll be able to leave this behind us and become the people we were meant to be, standing side by side.
The four of us sign the simple document that binds us legally—the minister’s signature, followed by mine and Mallory’s. Emilie is the last to sign, and she leans over the table, pausing to look back at me. Her eyes are dry, and she furrows her brows in my direction, like she does each time she sees me. “I’d think this was all very romantic if you weren’t putting my friend in danger or taking her away to your weird little country.”
“I’ll take care of her.”
“I’ll be ferry-boating my ass over there if you don’t,” Emilie says, finally signing her name in large, winding loops. “And I’ll end you.”
“Em, it’s okay. I know what I’m getting into,” Mallory says, putting a hand on Emilie’s shoulder as she stands up.
The minister awkwardly leans over and grabs the marriage certificate, handing me and Mal our copies before taking his. “The one you signed last week is at city hall. I’ll get this entered into the records on Monday—”
“It needs to be today,” I say, handing him an extra hundred Euros. He scowls at me, and I give him another fifty. “And I’ll call your cab just to make sure you’re stopping at the hall of records before you get coffee.”
“Wonderful,” he says, waving a hand at us in annoyance. As Emilie walks him down the stairs to the front door, I call the taxi service and request one for the hall of records. Mallory and I watch through the front window as he climbs into the taxi, our marriage certificate in hand.
We sit, talking and eating ham croissants from the patisserie across the street. The three of us are on edge. But, finally, we get the call that the marriage certificate has been filed in the city of Paris.
Mallory and I are officially married.
And like she said, perhaps our bad luck is gone.
Chapter Twenty
Mallory
I’m fifteen weeks pregnant today.
Matthias’s family and their henchmen are biding their time—or they haven’t found us yet. His guess is that they know exactly where we are. Last week, we stopped hiding. And the next, we’re bound for the North Islands.
Best to face the problem head on.
It’s just past the beginning of my second trimester, and I have a small, round bump to show for it. Every once in a while, I feel something that could be a flutter, deep inside, behind the walls of flesh and muscle.
The semester at Studio Berçot is over, and the shoddy work I handed in somehow got me passing marks for the first—and last—term. It was a school I went to, I remind myself, because my friend had an apartment. And my sister told me that my future lay in going to Europe.
It turns out that she was right, but neither of us could have predicted what’s happened here, not in our wildest fantasies. I’m sitting in Emilie’s apartment, toying with the phone that Matthias got me from whatever weird underground friend he has in Paris.
It seems strange that a prince has gotten away with this kind of life for so long. And unfortunately, I was the one who made it catch up with him in the end. It wasn’t any of his gambling, or the debts he incurred in Italy or Spain, or the piles of cash sitting behind the door of a heavy safe back in Amsterdam. Something far more mundane got him caught.
Knocking up an American girl and perhaps, as he says, falling in love.
On good days, I believe it.
On days like this, I wonder why I agreed to the things he’s asked me to do, the life he’s asked me to leave. I put my hand to my belly, and I know that this was one of the reasons I said yes. This child will grow up, knowing his father. And I’ll be there to make sure he’s never in any trouble. It’s odd—I’d never thought much of being pregnant or getting married before, not in any real way.
Here I am. Here we both are.
I toy with the phone again and finally press call.
“Studio Berçot?” A chipper, Parisian voice answers.
“This is Mallory Matthews.” Or is my name Mallory Albring? It’s one more thing we haven’t discussed. “I’ll be unregistering for next term. Please cancel my tuition payments and my classes.”
There’s clicking at the other end of the line, and the lady on the phone assures me it’s taken care of.
Not for the first time, my heart races when I think about my future. The palace—which Matthias describes as cold and white—might be my home. And now that I’ve hung up the phone on the Studio, it feels like I’ve sealed my life, shut it down, like I’ve finally decided to become the thing I’ve avoided—tied down, shut in, and obligated to someone else.
Two someones. And Matthias’s family, too.
Lying back on the purple sofa in the apartment I used to rent with Emilie—it won’t be ours for much longer—I close my eyes and think of Matthias. Is love enough to warrant this change in both of our lives?
And more importantly, will it last?
He’s supposed to be coming over with lunch soon, and we’ll start packing for our extended visit to the North Islands, where Matthias’s family rules with an iron fist.
“It’s not the type of princess I wanted to be,” I mumble to myself. I sink further into the sofa and doze off. It’s unseasonably warm for the winter in Paris, and the windows are open. I hear cars on the street, zipping past. I’ll miss this. I’ll miss being in a place where my only responsibility is school.
And what would Kim think of all of this? It’s definitely more than a brief affair.
When sleep takes over, it’s a half-sleep. I’m aware of the apartment around me, the breeze blowing gently against my face, the warmth of the boiler below our hardwood floors. I feel what I think might be movement in the deep interior of my belly—a butterfly wing crossing over smooth muscle. Perhaps I dreamed it, but it feels like he’s there. In my dream, he’s a boy, small and tough, running along the street outside of my apartment, over to the park across the street. Matthias is there too, but he’s a man I met at a bar, or at school, not on the street in Amsterdam. He’s normal, and his family is too. There are no decrees, no hidden secrets within generations of families, ruling their children with harshness and royal requirements.
There’s a sound at the bottom of the stairs, and I wake slowly, coming to consciousness, piece by piece. My dream—or was it a vision of a shared future I won’t have? —fades around me like mist. I sit up straight.
“Matthias?” I call out his name, hoping he can hear me from the front door. Steps ring out, loud and clear, on the creaky old stairs that lead to our apartment.
“We haven’t seen anyone strange for more than a week,” I whisper to myself. “Not since the wedding. That means—”
That means precisely nothing.
The steps come closer, and I realize that there are two sets of feet falling on the wood. The sounds are heavy and ominous, nothing like Matthias and his quick, nearly silent footsteps.
“She’s in here,” comes a voice, speaking in French.
I shoot up from my seat on the couch, grabbing my purse and searching in it for the pepper spray Matthias gave me after the wedding last week. I’d joked it was my only wedding present, and hands shaking, I had shoved it into my purse. Matthias was serious when he gave it to me, even though I had every hope that I’d never use it.
“Are you sure?” There’s a woman’s voice, ringing from the bottom of the stairs. “This isn’t the type of place Matthias would go. Not the type of girl he should be seeing. But maybe he’s slumming with these low-life girls simply because he knows it frustrates me—” Her voice drips with disdain, and my blood runs cold.