“How is he?” Magnus asks.

We’re standing outside the door to my father’s room. It’s not quite a hospital room because it’s within the palace, but there is a full team of doctors and all the monitoring equipment you’d find in a normal hospital room.

I shake my head. “It’s too early to say. It was definitely a stroke, but they don’t know yet if there was significant brain damage.”

Magnus pats me on the back. “He’s a tough motherfucker. He’ll pull through.”

I nod solemnly. I want to have a positive outlook like Magnus, but my father taught me to be realistic above all else. I might end up being one of the youngest kings Nordia has ever seen, and it would mean a new king taking the throne during a separatist crisis. That’s the reality of the situation.

The one silver lining is having dinner tonight with Jane. I have to be realistic about her, too, though. Am I convincing myself there’s more to her than there really is just because I know that I need to marry a commoner to ascend to the throne? Is there any chance I’m tricking myself into falling for her just so that I can serve my country as king?

No. I remember her face, her smile, her resolve. She’s the real deal, and I want to do nothing more right now than to get to know her better.

“Some seriously bad-ass shit in there,” Magnus says. “I know you had the auto-gun, but you dropped six guys and all together they only got off one shot, for real?”

“One of the hostages saw me sneaking in,” I say. “Helped me sneak in undetected by creating a diversion, then helped me paint and hold some targets for the auto-gun.”

“Damn,” Magnus says. “Was he like an ex-SEAL or something?”

I grin. “She.”

His eyes widen. “Was she an ex-SEAL?”

“No, I say, my smile growing even wider. “She’s a commoner. An American. And I have a date with her tonight.”

* * *

I arrange for a driver to bring me to Jane’s hotel, and he parks at the curbside. I get out of the car and see her straight away.

She’s wearing a short red dress with a white coat and red high-heels. The dress is too short and low-cut for this weather, but I sure as hell won’t complain. I can tell even from this distance that she’s shivering beneath the coat.

I wave and smile to her, and she wastes no time rushing toward me.

“It’s so cold,” she says.

I put an arm around her and hold her against me, and then I guide us toward the car. I open the door for her and help her into the back seat. She slides into the limousine, sighing in relief as she rubs her hands together in an effort to get warm.

“God, that feels good.”

“My country is cold,” I say. “Nordia means ‘Northern Realm’ in the old language. The nights are especially cold.”

She nods, still shivering a bit. “Nothing like a warm car or restaurant on a cold night.”

“And some hot, spiced wine,” I say. “I’ll order us some when we arrive.”

“Sounds good,” she says, glancing nervously down at her feet.

The car starts to move, and I reach into the wine cooler and remove the bottle.

“Your limo has its own wine cooler?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I think most limos do,” I say.

She laughs. “Guess I’m not very familiar with limos then.”

She has a wide face; it’s definitely not the textbook definition of beauty, but the uniqueness of her features manages to strike me as even more beautiful than what many men consider the ideal form of beauty. The ideal form promoted in magazines and movies is predictable and boring, while Jane is anything but.

“Do you speak the old language?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I say. “I used to speak it with family, but it’s almost been entirely replaced by English now.”

“That seems sad,” she says.

I nod. “It is sad. My grandfather had a choice to make: preserve that element of our culture and history, or push for English as the language used in schools. We are a small country, and making all of our citizens proficient in English provides them with huge advantages throughout the rest of Europe and the world. I think he made the right choice, though it is sad to see children today that can barely understand basic Nordian.”

“So,” she says, “sorry to bombard you with questions, but why the hell did the Prince of Nordia sneak into the castle alone. That seems way too reckless to me.”

I grin. “I wasn’t supposed to do it. My cousin, Magnus, helped me sneak in. General Breivik had some choice words for me after we got the hostages released, though.”

“He yelled at a prince?” she asks in surprise.

“Breivik trained me,” I say. “I didn’t want to be the kind of prince who just sits on his ass and polishes his crown. Breivik personally trained me to shoot, fight, do all the kinds of stuff I needed to know how to do when I saved the castle today. He was shouting at me and swearing a lot, but I saw some pride behind that drill sergeant act.”

She laughs. “So the Nordian prince remains anonymous so he can train to become a commando that’s an expert with crazy gadgets and weapons?”

I shake my head. “We’re given anonymity so we can pursue anything we want. I could have been a pianist, or an artist, or a racecar driver. Whatever I wanted. The idea is for me to become proficient in something so that by the time I’m crowned king, so that there is more to me than my royal blood.”

“You could have done anything in the world,” she says, “and you chose to become a soldier?”

“It wasn’t a well-received decision,” I say. “Usually if you’re third or fourth in line to the throne, like my cousin Magnus or Siegfried, it’s a commendable choice. But first in line? A lot of my family tried to stop me from doing it, saying it was too dangerous. I pointed out that my little sister, or even either one of my cousins, would be perfectly acceptable leaders even if I was killed in action.”

“And so they let you fight in wars?” Jane asks, her eyes wide.

“No,” I say, laughing. “They let me watch the front lines in Iraq and Syria through binoculars, with a squad guarding me at all times. They let me go on humanitarian missions where I mostly handed out food to starving people.”

“Well,” she says, “that’s definitely a good thing, isn’t it?”

I nod. “It is, but I had trained so hard, and today was the first day I have really been able to put all that training to the test.”

I don’t tell her that my father has suffered a stroke. That news is being kept secret under lock and key. If the separatists found out, they likely would escalate their attacks. I can’t even risk telling Jane.

The car pulls up to the restaurant, and as soon as he puts the vehicle in park, my driver exits and comes around to open the door for us.

I get out first, and then I take Jane’s hand to help her out. Her delicate hand is so soft and warm, and when she looks up at me with those big brown eyes, my heart beats faster than it did when my grappling hook connected over the castle walls.

When we reach the entrance, I hold the door open for Jane, and we go into the restaurant together.

“Two for Dick North,” I say.

The hostess looks down at the list of reservations. “Yes, right this way.”

We follow the hostess through the main part of the restaurant until we come to a candlelit table positioned in front of a window. We take our seats, and I grin as Jane takes in the view. All the buildings on the hill are lit up now, and each and every one is visible through the large picture window. The Danish Steps are lit up, too. There’s a light on each and every step, and we can even see the outline of people climbing the steps.

Jane points. “I can still see the police lights over by the castle.”

I nod. “They’ll be there for a while. You’re lucky you got in the castle when you did because it’s going to be closed for weeks now.”

She laughs. “Lucky? I was taken hostage.”

I lock eyes with her. Maybe it was insensitive for me to say she was lucky, but we’d never have met each other if she hadn’t been taken hostage. The little smile she gives me lets me know she’s thinking the same thing.

“Do you still feel cold?” I ask. “I’ll order us some of that hot wine I talked about.”

I call the server over to order wine and some appetizers, and it’s delivered to us in short order.

“Dick North,” she says, sipping at her wine.

“It’s close enough to my real name,” I say.

“I like your real name better,” she says. She looks down at her wine. “This is really good.”

“One of this country’s oldest recipes,” I say. “We drank it to celebrate when we conquered Latvia, and we drank even more when the Danes took the Hill. We drink it both to celebrate and to mourn.”

“Today is to celebrate?” she asks.

“Of course,” I say. “You and I defeated six terrorists and saved the castle.”

I realize that I’m partly drinking to grieve over my father, even though I shouldn’t be mourning him when he could still recover.

Her face turns red. I don’t know if it’s from the wine or from what I said.

“I think you’re giving me a bit too much credit,” she says.

I shake my head. “No, I’m not. If you hadn’t helped me get down, I may have had to take shots from up above. I couldn’t keep more than three of them painted red from up there, and there’s every possibility some hostages would have been killed before I took out all of the separatists.”

I speak in a low whisper, not wanting to risk anyone overhearing me.

“I should have been more scared,” she says. “I don’t know why I wasn’t. You should see how terrified I get when I see a cockroach in my apartment. I think I was probably so terrified that I did a complete three hundred and sixty, and forgot to be scared.”

“It’s survival instinct,” I say. “Some have it, others don’t. You have it. You knew deep down that you had to do something. You couldn’t just stand there and be a hostage or a victim. Your switch to fight back was flipped on.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she says, taking another sip of the wine. “I think that was the first time ever that my life was really in danger. It was definitely the first time I ever had a gun pointed at me.”

“What do you do?” I ask, changing the subject.

She looks down at her glass, not answering.

“That’s a question Americans ask, isn’t it?” I ask, worried I overstepped the boundaries somehow.

“It is,” she says. “You don’t ask that question here?”

I shrug. “In our culture, it’s seen as a rude question. We believe you are more than your career or profession.”

She laughs. “If it’s considered rude, then why did you ask me?”

“I was trying to adapt to your culture. Also, I just wanted to know more about you.”

“I’m an adjunct professor,” she says. “That means I’m basically an indentured servant.”

“Ah, I see. What do you teach?”

“I teach a few general education courses,” she says. “That means I’m mostly free labor for the tenured professors in the department. I earned my master’s anthropology.”

“So you know a lot about people,” I say.

She laughs. “God, I can tell you are just laughing at me. I bet you’re wondering why I would be dumb enough to dedicate my life to anthropology, of all things.”

I shake my head. “I wasn’t thinking that at all. In Norida, we don’t think like Americans. It’s not at all about how much money you can make at a job. There’s real value in doing what you love, in advancing human knowledge.”

She gives me a weird smile. Her lips smile, but her eyebrows are furrowed. I can tell she thinks I’m bullshitting her.

“I’m not bullshitting you,” I say. “Honest.”