Viktor

Though I should be back on duty at the manor, instead, I’m pacing my modest bedroom in the converted carriage house on a phone call with my brother. Alexander is five years my junior, the youngest of the three of us, and also the most worldly and open-minded.

The most like our father.

Who would have been my first choice for a phone call tonight, but mobile signals don’t reach the afterlife.

“You’d make a fine king,” he tells me. “Amoria should be lucky to have you, and you know Mum and Eva would support you.”

As would our father and grandfather before him. One day, Amoria will need us again, and one day, we shall answer the call, my grandfather used to say. I sit hard on the reading chair beside my bed and rub my forehead. The letter His Highness handed me lies open on my bed, and I’m aware there is still a guest in his house waiting to speak with me.

Because the king of Amoria, the man who stole the throne and exiled my grandfather fifty years ago, has died heirless, and the country would like our family back.

And I, the eldest son and most likely heir, do not meet all the criteria necessary for such a transition.

I had expected that they wouldn’t come looking for us. That they had other plans for succession.

Apparently they’ve decided to right an old wrong that I believed the rest of the world to have forgotten.

My grandfather’s country may in fact be the country he always remembered it to be.

“I haven’t a wife, Alexander,” I remind him.

Because there’s still that hurdle.

“Just select a woman. Any woman. They’re all a bother, so why be picky?”

“If it were truly that easy, I’d let you take the job.”

He barks out a laugh. “Samuel has always wanted to be my dirty secret. I should marry our cousin and then tell the palace staff Samuel was my butler.”

So perhaps the country still has some room for growth. Should I fail to take a wife, Alexander, though happily married, would also be ineligible to inherit the crown.

“Quite a waste to go from physician to butler,” I observe.

“But how convenient to have a butler trained in open-heart surgery. Have you spoken at all with Mum yet?”

The hand-delivered parchment bearing the seal of Amoria mocks me from atop the crisp blue quilt. Mum will be most disappointed when she realizes I’ve failed at the family’s only chance to accomplish the one thing my father always wished he could have succeeded at in his lifetime—reclaiming his family’s throne.

I sigh. “I’m rather terrified she’d produce a bride within minutes.”

“She has been singing your praises to Elisabet down the road. You remember Elisabet? Dark hair. Long nose. Rather twitchy tail.”

“While the horse would undoubtedly be lovely in a wedding dress, she’d be quite a mess at tea time. Though I daresay probably better at diplomacy than most world leaders.”

“You do comprehend, of course, that the peace of an entire nation is dependent upon your love life?”

“I’m beginning to comprehend that you’ve no intention of being helpful.”

He chuckles. “Were the country not arcane in its requirement of a married heterosexual monarch, I should be quite helpful. They’ve economic opportunities they’re overlooking, a crumbling infrastructure that should be easily fixed with a few social programs, and their tourism board is dreadfully out of touch with the global world. And ‘country of love’? Passion, perhaps—they do so like to yell and be dramatic. But love? I daresay they’ve forgotten the meaning.”

My brother is spot-on. We all grew up on tales of Amoria as it once was, the country with parades of roses and neighborly acceptance and romantic mountain escapes. I’ve seen enough of the world to understand the rose tint my grandfather, and then my father, gave to the country of their birth. I’ve also seen enough of the good in people to know that unexpected heroes can come from anywhere.

Have I a desire to be king?

No. It’s not a role I should wish upon anyone.

The gold and glory appeal little to me, and even less so when the position comes with the knowledge that nothing in your life shall be your own anymore.

However, it’s not desire driving my thoughts tonight.

It’s duty.

Duty to my family, to their memory and their history and their future. Duty to a people who have been failed and who will tumble farther without a steady monarch.

“There’s not a single woman who’s caught your fancy?” Alexander asks.

An unbidden image of blond hair, blue eyes, and a smart red mouth pops into my brain. I shake my head.

That would be sheer insanity even if a monarchy were not on the line.

A knock sounds at my door, and I rise. “I believe the messenger has found me,” I tell Alexander. “I must go.”

“Call anytime,” he replies. “Don’t answer any questions about your love life. By my calculations, you still have a week to find a bride.”

I hang up, descend the stairs and cross between the small kitchen and the comfortably-appointed living area to open the door, expecting a royal messenger.

Instead, Prince Manning himself stands there wilting in the heat. The humid air leaches into the lukewarm steadiness of the carriage house, and I immediately snap to attention. “Your Highness.”

“I daresay it’s time we cut the formality, Viktor. May I come in? It’s bloody intolerable out here.”

He’s wearing his normal smile, but his light eyes are too keen. If he’s unaware of why I’ve a visitor from a foreign country, he’s intelligent enough to have guessed.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

He steps into the carriage house with a flat stare over his still upturned lips. As fourth in line to inherit his own kingdom, he’s always maintained a more relaxed attitude toward crowns and titles, and he’s recently been granted leave to stay in the States indefinitely, playing professional hockey for the Thrusters in Copper Valley, Virginia.

“If you continue to Your Highness me,” he informs me, “I shall be forced to Your Majesty you. Is that quite clear?”

“It’s quite incorrect, Your Highness.”

He lifts his brows at me. “I’ve misread the reason for your visitor?”

“Unlikely, Your Highness.”

His smile flatlines. “It would be my utter pleasure to inform Gracie you’ve taken a recent liking to black licorice.”

I nearly smile in response myself. Baiting Prince Manning is nearly as relaxing as baiting Peach Maloney. “As Your Highness is fully aware, inheriting a monarchy is always accompanied by conditions. Though I have the bloodlines, I have not the wife.”

He pauses before rubbing his palms into his eye sockets. “Why is it always the wife?” he mutters.

“We men do like to make life difficult for ourselves, Your Highness.”

His smile has completely disappeared, though it’s been several months since he’s been in any royal danger himself. Were it not for Miss Gracie, he should be in his own personal marital hell right now.

“How long have you to find a wife?” he inquires.

“Seven days, Your Highness.”

He grimaces.

“Exactly, Your—down. Now.”

There’s movement at the window behind His Highness.

A person. Skulking through the bushes.

I shove His Highness behind the small kitchen table, which provides woefully inadequate coverage, especially for a man of his size, but it’s the best I have. Without a moment’s hesitation, I fly out the door and into the wall of hot, thick air, barking orders to Kristofer on the other end of the two-way radio always clipped to my side.

A slender blond figure is dashing toward the woodlands at the back of the property.

Papaya.

I give chase, both because I’ve no idea how much she overheard, and because the child needs a keeper even more than her sister does.

“Stop!” I order.

Of course, she ignores me.

Where I have training on my side, she has youth, and the footrace to the back of the property is more intense than it should be. We pass the gazebo His Highness had installed as a surprise for Miss Gracie before we understood the reality of the heat of the South, and I note that Miss Gracie’s flower baskets are in need of water.

Later.

First, Papaya.

I’m gaining on her, but not nearly as quickly as I should be.

Bloody hot Alabama.

She dashes into the woods two meters in front of me. Where the break from the sun should provide some relief, instead, the canopy of leaves merely traps the humid air and blocks any possibility of a breeze. I’m running through a bloody swamp with a solid floor of dead leaves and pine needles.

“Stop,” I order again.

To my utter astonishment, she veers left with a shriek. I’ve only a moment to realize why before I’m suddenly flying headfirst into a swarm of bees. I, too, leap to my left, snagging Papaya’s upper arm as she swats at her head, and within moments, I have her wrist in a handcuff.

She yanks at her hand, swats at a bee on her face, and glares at me while I force her back outside the woods. “Peach is right. You’re a pain in the ass.”

I scan the surrounding area, looking for any evidence of her normal companion in crime. “You’re a ways from home, Miss Maloney.”

“Out of breath, old man?” she replies in a pant.

“Merely warming up, I assure you.”

“For a heart attack.”

It’s remarkable. Such a bright, sunny face. So much similarity to her sister in her smart mouth, the cock of her hip, and the make my day flashing in her blue eyes.

I’ve at least three bee stings on my own face, my lungs are requesting air rather than the bathwater I seem to be breathing in, and there’s a rather large decision to be made about my entire future lingering in the back of my mind.

I’ve also just secured a prisoner who’s quite likely responsible for the only reasonable adult in her immediate family currently being held at the county jail for crimes against fruit and balloons.

Today could not get much worse.

“Jeeves, text Joey Diamonte. I’ve secured Miss Papaya Maloney and will hold her until I receive instruction otherwise.”

“Sending,” my phone answers.

“Ooh, the infamous Joey Diamonte,” Papaya says, digging her heels into the ground now that we’re outside the bee zone. “She’s all bark and no bite.”

“I wouldn’t know.” I give her a push, apply pressure to a point just above her elbow, and she marches with a yelp. “I, however, am both. Let’s go introduce you to the authorities, shall we? I’m sure they’ll enjoy hearing the real story of your sister’s adventure this morning.”

“Whatever you want to—ow! Child abuse!”

“Pressure point therapy. Good for circulation. Far less painful than juvenile detention, I assure you.”

Kristofer joins me halfway back to the carriage house, where His Highness is still waiting.

“I’ll watch her,” Kristofer offers.

“I believe this one shall take both of us,” I reply.

Because I’ve no intention of returning to the manor at the moment.

I dislike delaying the inevitable. As a general rule, I believe in facing problems head-on.

But it’s not every day a problem presents itself that will result in me carrying the weight of my family’s lost dreams.

I’ve seven days before I must decline the throne. Consideration of a solution to the marriage dilemma is in order.