She headed through the front door of the palace—and there he was, Prince Jefferson himself, clattering down the staircase.

Somehow Nina was unsurprised. In her experience the palace had always worked that way, as if the building were under some perverse enchantment, flinging you directly into the path of the one person you’d hoped to avoid.

“Hey, Jeff.” She strove for a casual, friendly tone, more good to see you again than I’m secretly dating your best friend. “I was just heading up to see Sam.”

She started to edge past him, but Jeff’s next words made her fall still.

“Is it true? Are you really sleeping with Ethan?”

Nina felt his words like a punch to the gut. She glanced back and forth, then swallowed. This wasn’t at all how she’d hoped to have this conversation.

“We’re not—I mean—” she stammered. Ethan had been sleeping in her dorm room, yes, but they hadn’t actually…

“So it’s true.” Jeff took a step back, a hand braced on the stair railing. “When the reporter told me, I didn’t believe it. But now I do.”

“You talked to a reporter?”

Jeff’s jaw tensed. “Just this morning, I got a call from some editor at the Daily News—I have no clue how she found my number—asking if I’d like to comment on the fact that my ex-girlfriend and my best friend are the new ‘it couple’ of King’s College.”

“We’re not an ‘it couple,’?” Nina protested, and immediately winced.

“I told the reporter she was wrong. ‘I’ve known them both since kindergarten,’ I said; ‘if they were together, they would have told me.’ But she’d done her homework—she had a whole story ready to go, complete with quotes from classmates who said they always saw you together, holding hands.”

Nina’s stomach lurched. She and Ethan should have been more careful. Now that story would go to print, and it would be like last time all over again: her name the punch line of a trashy joke, her parents’ house swarmed with reporters—

Jeff sighed, clearly following her train of thought. “I got my lawyer involved, and he convinced the reporter not to run the story.”

“Thank you,” Nina said softly.

A trio of footmen walked past, carrying an enormous vase between them. They cast the prince and his ex-girlfriend a few looks, then quickly averted their eyes.

“Of course. I wasn’t about to let them drag you through the mud like they did last time.” There was a pained softness to Jeff’s eyes, a pinch at the corner of his mouth. “I just…I never thought it would be like this. I knew that you and I would date other people, but I assumed we were on good enough terms that we would give each other fair warning. At least, I was planning on giving you that courtesy.”

Nina blinked. “Are you and Daphne getting back together?”

“Maybe,” Jeff said bluntly. “If we did, I wasn’t going to let you find out from the tabloids. I thought we owed each other that much, at least.”

Nina squirmed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so small. “I’m sorry. You’re right; we should have told you.”

“How long has it been going on?” Jeff asked. “Since before the party?”

“Um. Not technically.”

He closed his eyes, and Nina knew he was thinking of all the times he’d seen Ethan since then, when Ethan could have brought this up and instead kept his mouth shut.

“I want you to be happy, I really do,” Jeff said hoarsely. “But does it have to be with my very best friend?”

In that moment, Nina realized the full extent of the hurt she’d caused.

She had always known that dating Ethan would make things awkward. But she hadn’t fully grasped that in dating Ethan, she was fracturing Jeff’s relationship with his best friend—one of the few people he really trusted, in a world where it was hard to trust anyone.

How would Jeff and Ethan move forward from this? What were they supposed to do, hang out and play video games as if Nina didn’t exist? As if she and Ethan hadn’t gotten together, knowing full well it would hurt Jeff, then purposefully hid it from him?

Jeff ran a hand wearily through his hair. “Nina,” he said, in a deflated voice that cut her to the quick. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“When you broke up with me, you said it was because you wanted out of this world. You told me that you couldn’t handle the royal life, with all its scrutiny and publicity. And now you’re dating my best friend.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “I just had to kill a tabloid story about your relationship. From where I’m sitting, you haven’t really gone that far from the spotlight.”

Nina’s head was spinning. She wanted to call a quick time-out so that she could catalog everything she’d felt in the last few minutes: her anger at being attacked by a reporter yet again; her hurt at learning that Jeff and Daphne might get back together. And her guilt at the realization of how epically she’d hurt Jeff and Ethan.

Was Jeff right? She had worked so hard to distance herself from the royal world, to make people forget that she was someone they’d seen in the newsstand tabloids. By dating Ethan, was she letting herself fall into the same mess all over again?

She looked up at him with sudden uncertainty. “Jeff—”

“Whatever. Forget it,” he said, and his steps receded down the hallway.

Nina stood there for a moment in cold, shaky silence. Then she squared her shoulders and headed upstairs.

She found Samantha on the couch in her sitting room, her hair twisted back with a clip as she tapped viciously at her phone. There was a blurred shadow in her eyes that set Nina’s best-friend radar on high alert.

“What are we looking at?” she asked, sitting down next to Sam.

The princess gave an aggrieved sigh and handed over her phone. She’d been scrolling through Kelsey Brooke’s profile page.

“Can you believe this girl?” Sam snapped. “I mean, she’s nauseatingly fake. I don’t know what Marshall sees in her.”

Nina flicked through a few photos: Kelsey wearing a denim jacket and short-shorts, rollerblading on a boardwalk; Kelsey’s glittery dark nails curled around a green juice, with the caption Rise and shine, my witches!

Well, at least it was better than what Nina had assumed Sam was doing—flipping through the comments section of one of the articles about her and Marshall.

“Did I miss something? Why are we hate-stalking Kelsey?” she asked.

“No reason,” Sam said swiftly. “Just that I’ll see her when Marshall and I go to LA next month. And he’ll want to talk to her, since, you know, he’s trying to get her back.” Sam rolled her eyes. “God knows why.”

Nina pulled one of Sam’s pillows onto her lap and began playing with the fringe. “So…I ran into your brother on the way up here. He knows about me and Ethan.” At Sam’s concerned look, she let the whole story pour out, about how Jeff had learned the truth from a reporter.

“It’s not entirely your fault,” Sam hurried to assure her. “Ethan deserves at least half the blame. Maybe more, since he’s Jeff’s best friend.”

Nina flinched. “Exactly. I took Jeff’s best friend from him! I can’t imagine how I would feel, if you secretly dated my ex—”

“That would be slightly problematic, given that your ex is my brother.”

Nina choked out a laugh. “You know what I mean. I just…I would be devastated, if something like that ever came between us.”

“Nothing could ever come between us. I swear it,” Sam said fervently.

Sam’s phone buzzed with an incoming message. Nina didn’t mean to pry, but she instinctively glanced down at the screen—and bristled when she saw who it was.

“Why is Daphne texting you?”

Sam typed out a quick reply. “She’s actually on her way over.”

“Why?”

Nina had never told Sam the full story of her breakup with Jeff: how Daphne had confronted her in the ladies’ room at the palace, and threatened to ruin Nina’s life unless she broke up with the prince.

“I know I always complained about her,” Sam was saying, oblivious to Nina’s inner turmoil, “but—I don’t know, maybe she’s not as bad as I thought. She’s going to help train me for all the stuff I need to do as heir to the throne.”

“I thought Robert was training you?” Nina asked hoarsely.

“Robert is insufferable and irritating, and Daphne…” Sam shrugged. “Just give her a try, for my sake?”

No, Nina thought plaintively, she couldn’t just give Daphne a try. She didn’t want to be anywhere near that girl.

“If Daphne is coming, I should get going,” Nina said, rising awkwardly to her feet. “I—next time I come over, I’ll call first.”

“Please. You don’t need to call,” Sam scoffed, but Nina didn’t match her smile.

Sam had been wrong, when she said that nothing could come between them.

If anyone could, it would be Daphne Deighton.

Daphne waited for Samantha at the entrance to the Brides’ Room: a small room on the ground floor of the palace, near the ballroom. She glanced down at her phone, her pulse skipping when she saw she had a new text—but it wasn’t from Himari.