Alix hadn’t thought that she’d be walking toward Duncan’s room so soon after their fight in the car. Not that it was really a fight. More like an emotional roller coaster. If she was being honest with herself, she thought that had been the last time she’d ever see him. But a conversation with her parents had changed how she felt about certain things, and she didn’t want to leave the country without explaining herself to Duncan.

After leaving Duncan’s car that night, she’d gone straight to her room and burst into tears. She couldn’t figure out why, exactly. The emotional dinner, the fight in the car, the near crash—it was all too much for her to handle. Her parents arrived soon after and found her curled up under her blanket on the couch, chilled by the cool night air coming in the open window. In her crying fit, Alix hadn’t even noticed that it was open. She liked to leave it open during the day – it got so stuffy in the palace sometimes.

Her mother sat down beside her and took her in her arms.

“My darling girl,” she said, as the tears poured down Alix’s face. “Why didn’t you tell us you’d applied?”

Alix sniffed, melting into her mother’s embrace.

“I didn’t think I’d get it,” she admitted, her voice small. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed if I didn’t get in.”

“How could we ever be disappointed in you?” asked her father, who had come to sit on her other side after closing the window. “You’ve done so much already.”

“I’ve barely done anything!” she protested. “Just college, and a few charity things over the past few months.”

“That’s more than most of the young nobles around here, and you know it,” reminded her mother. “None of them ever saw university as anything but an excuse to get closer to the princes. You were top of your class at one of the best universities in the States.”

“They’re just so awful here,” she whined. “In the street, everyone was staring at me. The girls at the events are rude, they never talk to me. I can barely say two words in Prynessian, they all think I’m ridiculous.”

“You know you’ve gotten much better since you’ve been home,” said her mother with a smile, in her own, much more heavily accented Prynessian.

“And don’t you think that perhaps no one is talking to you because usually Duncan already is?” asked her father, sagely. “They might be jealous.”

She scoffed.

“I’ll be gone soon and they can have him. He needs someone mindless who’ll follow orders, just like he does.”

Her parents exchanged a glance.

“You speak so harshly about him,” said her mother. “But when he first walked into the restaurant tonight, your face just lit up.”

Alix blushed.

“That’s not true,” she said. “He’s just, you know, really attractive.”

She squirmed uncomfortably. She talked to her parents about a lot of things, but how attractive she found men wasn’t one of their habitual topics of conversation.

“Hmmm,” said her father, no doubt wondering what a ‘really attractive’ prince managed to get up to with his daughter.

“I know you’re eager to get away,” her mother said, coming back to the main topic at hand. “And we are very proud of you for getting accepted into the program, but you really could have told us sooner.”

“I know,” she said, sitting up. Her tears had mostly stopped by now. “I was going to tell you tonight. Really. But Duncan ruined everything.”

“I’m sure that he thought he was being helpful,” her father said. “He could see how nervous you were about telling us.”

“He was thinking of himself,” she said bitterly. “Just like all of the other egotistical maniacs here.”

“Now really, Alix,” scolded her father. “You know that not everyone is as shallow as you’d like to think they are. Helena stayed with us after you stormed off. She’s quite lovely.”

“And you’ve been friends with Stella since you were in diapers,” her mother added. “I used to think that the only reason you came to Prynesse during school breaks was to see her, not us.”

Alix crossed her arms petulantly and grumbled to herself. She couldn’t tell if she was more frustrated by her parents being right, or with the fact that they’d proven her wrong. Overall, people really had been relatively nice. They had put up with her fumbling in Prynessian with polite smiles, and welcomed her back into the small, private world she had only seen glimpses of growing up. She was, after all, one of them, even if she didn’t always feel like it.

There were, of course, exceptions to be expected. There were jealous and disappointed girls who had been hoping for Duncan’s attention this summer. And there were bigheaded, idiot rich boys, but she’d seen her fair share of those in Manhattan, too – even more than there were here, probably.

“You don’t have to like everyone here,” her mother went on. “Goodness knows I certainly didn’t when I would visit your father before we were married. But the work the nobles do is very important. It’s not their fault that they were born into this. If you stayed, you could really help.”

“I want to help people who are actually in need,” Alix said stubbornly. People being nicer to her than expected hadn’t changed that.

“Then go,” her father said with a sigh. “But not because you’re running away from a life you don’t want. Do it for the right reasons. We’ll always be proud of you for that.”

They stayed and talked a bit more, but it was late and they all had various events in the morning. After they left, Alix thought for a long time about what they meant. Was she running toward the right thing? Or running away from the feelings she didn’t want to admit that she had?

When the letter had arrived several days later, by official post, with details of her placement in Jordan, Alix was surprised that her strongest urge was to let Duncan know. She didn’t try to understand why, she just gathered her courage and headed to a room where she’d spent so many happy hours over the past few weeks. She was still leaving, and nothing could change that. But she didn’t want to leave without a proper goodbye. She needed to be sure that she was running toward the right thing.

Shaking herself out of her jumbled thoughts, she realized that she’d arrived at his door. She summoned her courage and knocked.