Majesty

Ethan blinked. She hated him for looking so gorgeous in his tuxedo. Sunlight caught the deep purple-black of his hair, which curled a little at the base of his neck. “What happened?”

“Daphne happened! Your secret girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or whatever she is! By the way, she’s the one who told that reporter about us.”

“I know,” Ethan said quietly. Nina felt a momentary rush of satisfaction that he believed her—unlike Jeff, who’d refused to hear a word against Daphne—but it quickly evaporated.

“Please, let me explain.” Ethan hurried down the remaining steps toward her. “Don’t run away because Daphne scared you.”

“Scared?” Nina repeated, stung. “I’m angry as hell, and I feel betrayed. Don’t make the mistake of confusing that for fear.”

Ethan faltered, chastened. Sunlight fell over the planes of his face, caught the amber flecks in his eyes. She swallowed, wishing she didn’t have to ask this next question.

“Did you ask me out only because Daphne told you to?”

He was silent for a moment, then gave a quick, pained nod. At Nina’s expression, he rushed to explain.

“Look—Daphne did ask me to flirt with you. She worried that if you spent too much time around Jeff, you guys would get back together. So she wanted me to run interference. But, Nina, I never—”

“Why would she ask you?” Nina cut in. “What made her think that you would do what she said? She claims you’ve been in love with her for years!”

Ethan closed his eyes. “I was in love with her for years.”

He’d whispered the words, yet Nina heard each syllable as if he’d shouted them. She flinched away, horrified. “How could you ever have feelings for Daphne? She’s awful!”

“She’s done a lot of awful things,” Ethan agreed, and Nina couldn’t help noticing the way he’d shifted her wording.

She was seized by a nauseating sensation of déjà vu. This was exactly what had happened at Beatrice’s engagement party, when she’d tried to talk to Jeff about Daphne. Except this time it was almost worse, because Ethan knew what Daphne had done, and still he was defending her.

“Nina, please don’t blame me for things that happened in my past. It isn’t fair,” Ethan protested. “I’m not proud of my original reasons for hanging out with you. But everything is different now! I’m different!”

“If you spent time with me just because Daphne said to, then you aren’t that different at all.” Outraged pride flamed in Nina’s cheeks. “How can you possibly have loved her?”

“I thought we were the same—”

“Because you both move people around like pieces on your own personal chessboard?”

Ethan winced, stuffing his hands awkwardly into his pockets. “Because we were both on the outside, and wanted in,” he said miserably. “I saw Daphne’s energy, how single-mindedly she went after the things she wanted. It’s the same determination that I’ve always had. Or used to have,” he added, more softly. “Nina, you know how much I’ve always wanted to belong.”

“So when Daphne asked you to ‘run interference’?”—Nina angrily lifted her hands to make air quotes around the phrase—“why did you agree? You didn’t stop to think that I’m a real person, with feelings?”

“First of all, I never thought it would go this far, okay? I figured I would hang out with you a couple of times, just to prove that I had. I hardly knew you back then—the only thing I remembered about you was that you could be a know-it-all.” Ethan gave a helpless shrug. “But you surprised me, Nina. You weren’t at all what I thought you were, and I kept wanting to know more about you.”

Nina hated the way her mind kept sifting back through her memories. How many of them were real?

She crossed her arms, feeling cold despite the sunlight. “That night when you walked me home, and we kissed,” she heard herself say. “Was Daphne the one who called you?”

“I—yeah,” Ethan admitted. “It was Daphne.”

Nina tugged at her neckline, wishing she could get out of this prison of a dress. “So you were thinking of her the whole time.”

“I was thinking of you!”

At the raw urgency in his tone, she fell silent. Ethan swallowed and continued.

“I was thinking that I don’t deserve you,” he said quietly. “Nina, I’m not as confident as you. I wasn’t able to grow up alongside the royals without always feeling like I was less than they were, like I had something to prove. I guess I thought that if I kept moving, kept focusing on the next thing—the next AP class, the next scholarship, the next upward rung in my ladder—eventually I would climb high enough.”

“Climb where?” she exclaimed. “What did you want, Ethan?”

“I wanted to feel like I deserved things. Like I had earned them myself, and had just as much right to them as everyone else.” By everyone else, Nina knew he meant Jeff.

“But, Nina, you make me feel like I do deserve things. Not because of what I’ve accomplished, but because of who I am. I’ve never had anyone look at me the way you do—like you actually like me, as I am now, without excuses or complications,” he added. “You make me want to be a better person, just because I’m with you.”

Nina’s heart was straining against her ribs. She glanced away, to where the leaves in the orchard flashed a brilliant gold in the sun. The fragrance of the apples mingled with the heady, earthy scent of last night’s rain.

“How long?” When she saw Ethan’s confused look, she clarified. “How long were you obsessed with Daphne?”

“A long time,” he said bluntly. “How long were you obsessed with Jeff?”

She stiffened. “That isn’t fair.”

“Maybe not. But, Nina, don’t you see? You and I belong together! No matter how foolish this is, no matter how many years we spent chasing other people, we found each other in the end. Please,” he added. “Don’t hold my past against me. You’re the one that I want. Not Daphne.”

Far off in the distance Nina heard the low rumble of conversation. Probably gossip about the royal wedding, making its slow way through the capital. That was Washington, she thought: so crowded, so hungry, so merciless.

She lifted her eyes to Ethan’s. His face was pale and vulnerable in the afternoon sunlight. Nina couldn’t help it; she stepped forward into his arms.

Ethan made a strangled noise and pulled her in to his chest. He held on to her tightly—not as if he wanted to kiss her, but as if to reassure himself that she was still here, that she hadn’t run off and left him.

“Please believe me,” Ethan murmured, and Nina felt her resolve melting. She loved the feel of his breath against her skin.

“I do believe you,” she said at last, detangling herself from his arms.

He broke into a broad, relieved smile, but it faltered when he saw the look on Nina’s face.

“I believe you, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to trust you,” she explained. Not when he’d originally gotten close to her because he was following Daphne’s orders.

Ethan shook his head. “Don’t you see, this is exactly what Daphne intended. She attacked you like that because she wanted to break us up!”

“Just like she broke up me and Jeff at the last big palace event? I would say that history is repeating itself, but I’ve figured out by now that this is Daphne’s signature move!”

“She can be…very ruthless when it comes to the people she cares about,” Ethan agreed.

“I think you mean the people who are in the way of what she wants.” Nina bit her lip. “You know, I used to wonder why you and Jeff never dated that many people, even during the time he was broken up from her. Now I’ve figured out why! It’s because Daphne thinks she has claim to both of you. Whenever either of you gets too close to someone else, she swoops in to chase them off. And the worst part is, you let her!”

That hurt more than anything else: the realization that, in the end, the only two men Nina had ever loved had both been under Daphne’s thumb.

Daphne was like a spider, beautiful and insidious, spinning her webs around people with such dexterity that they never realized they’d been caught until it was too late.

“Please don’t let Daphne come between us,” Ethan said again. “There must be something I can do to prove that I’ve changed.”

Nina’s eyes burned, and she stared down at the walkway, tracing a crack in one of the stones with her shoe. “I just…I need time.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right, to show you that—”

“I need time without you, Ethan.”

Nina had some thinking to do—about everything she and Ethan had done, the mistakes they had both made. About how Daphne and Jeff fit into all this.

It sickened her, how painfully tangled the four of them had become.

“I understand,” Ethan told her, his voice surprisingly formal. “Take as much time as you need. I just hope…I just hope that you’ll come find me afterward.”

He took a step back, and the distance stretched out between them. Nina had to fight the urge to step forward and pull him close again.

“I’ll see you around,” she replied, through a tightness in her throat.