By the end of today, she was determined that she and Jefferson would be back together, officially.
Her gaze drifted forward, to the breathtaking jewels and crowns that gleamed in the rows before her, where the foreign royalty were all seated. Daphne had never seen so many heads of state in a single room. She glanced from the Duke of Cambridge to his wife, who was pregnant with their fourth child, yet managed to look as coolly chic as ever in a high-necked maternity gown. The eighty-four-year-old German king had come here in person, rather than sending his children to represent him: a singular honor, but he’d had a soft spot for Beatrice ever since she lived at Potsdam for a summer, studying German. Behind him sat the Italian and Spanish princesses, who, incidentally, were both named Maria. And finally, there was Tsar Dmitri and his wife, the Tsarina Anastasia: Aunt Zia, Jefferson had always called her, though really she was his fifth cousin twice removed. The Romanovs’ famous pink-diamond tiara glittered ostentatiously on her head.
Daphne sat up straighter, flashing her brightest, most social smile—only to freeze as a siren blared into the throne room.
For a split second, everyone was too stunned to react.
No one coughed or rustled their skirts or squeaked their shoes on the floor; no one even seemed to breathe. The only movement was the gentle swaying of the ostrich feather that the Grand Duchess Xenia wore in her hair.
Daphne had been afraid plenty of times in her life. Afraid of Himari, afraid of public shame, afraid of her own mother. But the fear that now sliced into her chest was somehow sharper and more visceral than any she’d felt before.
Her mind distilled down to a single, panicked thought: Ethan. Was he hurt was he okay what had happened where was he?
Bulletproof panels slid over the doors to seal the exits. And then the silence broke.
Security guards lunged forward, forming a protective phalanx around the guests. Private bodyguards were sprinting toward the various foreign royals, their movements quick and dangerously precise. The room dissolved into a swirling riot of sequins and diamonds and ragged shouts.
One of the guards fought to be heard above the turmoil, begging everyone to stay calm and remain in their seats, but no one was listening. People hurtled down the aisles in search of friends, tripping over the hems of their gowns, overturning chairs in their haste.
Daphne climbed up onto her chair, for once not caring whether she seemed elegant or princess-like. Shock had broken her perfect veneer and her anxious, pent-up self was pushing through. She craned her neck, scouring the crowds for any sign of Ethan, who was probably far in the back.
When she spotted him, she let out a throaty gasp. He was standing next to Nina, her hand gripped tightly in his.
Daphne scrambled down from her chair, yanking up her skirts as she started into the crowds. Muttering breathless apologies, she pushed through the dukes and marquesses and earls, all the way to the lower-ranking peers, trying desperately to avoid her parents. These were all familiar faces, yet they blurred senselessly together in Daphne’s brain.
At last, there he was—standing to one side of the room, mercifully alone. Knowing Nina, she’d probably run off to find her parents.
Daphne plowed through the intervening courtiers as if they were so many blades of grass.
“Ethan,” she breathed, when she’d reached him. She just barely restrained herself from reaching for his arm.
“Sorry, I don’t know where Jeff is,” he said curtly.
“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
“Can it wait?” he demanded, with a touch of his usual sarcasm. “As you may have noticed, we’re in a bit of a situation.”
“Ethan—please.”
Something flickered behind Ethan’s dark eyes, but his expression was as inscrutable as ever. “All right.”
Before he could refuse, Daphne grabbed his sleeve and pulled him along the edge of the room, past the earls and marquesses and dukes she’d just elbowed her way through. Past stone-faced security guards, men tapping frantically on their phones, women in billowing gowns.
Normally Daphne would have worried about being with Ethan like this, in such a public place. Yet normality had crumbled to pieces around her. She felt like she was no longer Daphne Deighton at all, but someone else entirely.
Or maybe this was the real Daphne Deighton, and the other one—the polite, impeccable Daphne she’d invented for the press—had shattered, revealing the yearning and anxious girl underneath.
Behind the raised dais that held the thrones, the vaulted space was transected by small side rooms. Candles glowed with long tongues of flame, the same flickering red-gold as Daphne’s hair.
She tugged Ethan into a side chapel, where rows of triangular pennants hung from the ceiling. Each was a different color, and stitched with a coat of arms, one for each of the current Knights and Peers of the Realm. The more recent additions—men and women King George had invested with knighthoods at last year’s Queen’s Ball—were toward the front, while the older peers were at the back, their flags faded with age. When a peer died, their pennant was removed from the throne room so that they could be buried with it.
“What do you want?” Ethan asked warily, his arms crossed.
Already the atmosphere in the ballroom was shifting. Now that the initial moment of fear had passed, people were talking in less hysterical tones: exchanging theories about what had happened, debating whether security had caught the culprit, wondering what the media would say about all this.
“I had to tell you something, and it couldn’t wait. I…” She hesitated, but all her years of artifice and subterfuge had melted away, and for once the truth fell bluntly from her bright red lips. “I want to be with you.”
Ethan barked out a laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. You want to be with Jeff. You’ve spent the last four years chasing him, remember? Speaking of which,” he added carelessly, “let me be the first to congratulate you on getting back together. You’ll make a fantastic princess.”
Daphne flushed. She should have known that Ethan wouldn’t make it easy on her, that he would be difficult and sardonic and out of reach.
“I don’t want Jeff.” She looked up at Ethan through her lashes, a hot soft glow in her eyes. “Remember at the museum gala, how you said you couldn’t keep waiting around for me? I’m saying that you don’t have to wait anymore.”
Ethan held her gaze for a moment, then blew out a breath and looked away. “I think I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Ethan, I love you.”
What a relief it was to speak the words aloud. Daphne took a step forward, to reach for his hand and interlace their fingers.
Of course she loved him. Ethan, the only person who understood her—who knew what she had done and why she had done it and had remained her ally, her friend, in spite of it all.
For years Daphne had taken his support for granted. Countless times she had leaned on him, as easily as she might lean against a wall to catch her breath, before striding out to face the world. She’d let her pride fool her into thinking that her strength came from herself alone, when this entire time she’d had Ethan at her back.
Hadn’t some part of her always known that she loved him? But she had shoved that knowledge down deep, because she’d been so intently focused on Jefferson. Because Jefferson had the titles and status, and she’d thought that was what she wanted.
“I won’t pretend that I didn’t spend years wishing you would say this,” Ethan told her at last, pulling his hand from hers. “Daphne, you may not remember the day we met, but I do. It was at Sam and Jeff’s party over winter break, my sophomore year.
“I had no idea who you were until I saw you that night. You were talking to a group, and damn if you didn’t name-drop a Renaissance painter and a fashion magazine in the same breath.” His mouth lifted in a ghost of the old smile. “The other girls at cour
t just chase whatever trend the internet tells them to. But I saw at once that you were different. That you actually thought for yourself—and that your thoughts were wasted on that crowd.” He shook his head at the memory. “I think I fell in love with you then and there.”
Daphne held her breath, her every nerve afire with eagerness.
“Later that night, I saw you with Jeff. You dropped a sparkler on the ground and pretended to need his help stamping it out,” Ethan went on. “He believed your damsel-in-distress act, but I could tell exactly why you’d done it. It killed me a little, knowing how ruthlessly smart you were, and that you were going to use it all to try to get him. Just like every other girl we know,” he said darkly. “I wasn’t surprised when you and Jeff got together soon afterward. He would have been a fool not to go out with you.”
There was a sudden raw stinging in her throat; Daphne swallowed. “Ethan—”
“A terrible, jealous part of me wanted to hate him for dating you. But not as much as I hated myself for feeling this way.” Ethan sighed. “At first I tried to stay away from you, avoid parties or trips where I knew you’d be. But that was torture, too. I didn’t know what was worse, being around you while you were with Jeff, or not being around you at all.”
It seemed to Daphne that the pennants of the chapel lifted and fell a little, almost as if they were sighing. The candles flickered but didn’t go out.
“I loved you, god help me, and I knew better than to let you ever find out. So I tried to forget you,” Ethan said brutally. “I told myself that you and Jeff were happy together. I wanted you to be happy, no matter how much it hurt me. Even if I suspected that you didn’t really love Jeff, I told myself I had no right to interfere.
“But at Himari’s birthday party, when you told me how upset and hurt you felt—what it cost you, being with Jeff—I broke all my promises to myself. I couldn’t not fight for you, Daphne,” he said heavily. “I didn’t even feel all that guilty about it. I had loved you for so long that it made it impossible to regret sleeping with you. No matter how wrong it was.”
Daphne’s heart fluttered in her chest. She’d endured the same confusion: knowing that she should feel terrible, yet not being able to muster up more than a shred of guilt.
“When you wanted to meet up afterward, I had this absurd hope that you might have changed your mind about us. I think if you had given me the slightest sign, if you’d taken even a single step toward me, I would have blurted out that I loved you.” He shook his head. “Of course, the only reason you wanted to meet was to cover up what we’d done.”
“But you didn’t say anything!”
“You think it would have changed things?” Ethan asked flatly. “You’re so cruel to the people who love you, Daphne. You use their love to serve your own purposes, hold it over their heads like a weapon. You are selfish, and I have always known that. But I used to imagine that someday you might love me, too, and turn that selfishness outward. That you would be selfish for us, instead of for yourself.”
Her and Ethan, facing the world, together. It was what Daphne had always wanted, if only she’d let herself realize it.
“I know you, Daphne, in a way that Jeff could never know you—and if he did know, he would leave you in an instant. Whereas I loved every last part of you: your ambition and your inner fire and your utter brilliance. We could have been so happy together, if you’d ever given us half a chance.”
“We can be happy now,” Daphne protested, but Ethan hardly seemed to hear.
“At the museum, when you suggested this ridiculous bargain, I agreed to it. It was never really about the title—not that I don’t want one,” he said helplessly. “But, Daphne, I put my heart out there and you flat-out rejected it. Then, to add insult to injury, you asked me to date someone else. You made me a pawn in your master plan, just like always.
“So I decided that I would punish you by doing what you thought you wanted.” He gave a wry, bitter smile. “I guess I hoped that once you heard that I’d been spending so much time with Nina—because I knew you’d find out; you always know everything that happens in this town—you’d start to feel jealous, and realize that it wasn’t what you wanted at all.”
“But, Ethan, I have realized!” Daphne cried out. “I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to see. I was just…blinded by things that don’t matter.”
“Yeah. You were.”
Light slanted through the flags of knighthood, making his profile stand out as clearly as on the head of an ancient coin: handsome and prideful and resolute.
He wasn’t making this easy on her, but she deserved it, after everything she’d put him through. If he wanted her to beg, then Daphne would do it, and gladly.
“I’m so sorry, but I’ll make it all up to you,” she swore. “Don’t you see—Ethan, look at me!—things will be different, now that we finally know how we feel!”
“Felt,” Ethan corrected. “You had my heart for years, and you kept on treating it thoughtlessly.”
“I’m sorry!”
“It’s too late for sorry.”
Daphne’s hands darted up to grab Ethan by the shoulders. “I love you, okay?” She tightened her grip, her voice hard and furious. “And you just said that you loved me!”
“I did love you, for a long time. But even I couldn’t sit around waiting for you forever.”
He spoke impersonally, as if that love were an emotion that someone else had felt, a very long time ago.
No. Daphne refused to accept that his love for her had just…faded away. That it had guttered and burned itself out like one of these forgotten candles. No, if he had loved her that much then there must be something left, some ember of feeling that she could coax back to life. Unless…
“You fell for her, didn’t you.” She couldn’t bear to actually say Nina’s name.
“I did.”
Daphne’s hands fell to her sides as she stepped back, fighting the urge to stamp her foot like a child. How had the only two men in her life both ended up with the same mousy, unexceptional commoner? “That girl is painfully boring, has no sense of style—and has nothing at all to say for herself—”
“She has plenty to say; you’ve just never bothered to listen—”
“If you loved me the way you say you did, for as long as you say you did, how can you possibly care about Nina?” she hissed.
Ethan didn’t blink. “If you wanted Jeff for as long as you claimed to, how can you possibly care about me?”
A strained silence fell between them. Daphne’s pulse echoed dully through her veins. She almost wished that Ethan resented her, hated her, even. Anything would be better than this smooth, cool indifference.
And yet she loved him in spite of everything: all her flaws, his betrayal, both of their stubborn prides.
Ethan was right; he was the only person who’d ever truly known her, aside from Himari. And now that he’d pushed her away, it was the real Daphne he was rejecting.
To think that she’d come to the wedding in triumph, on Jefferson’s arm, only to realize in a panicked flash that Ethan was the one she’d wanted all along. And now, somehow, he no longer cared.
She felt that she had gained and lost the world in a single morning.
“Well then, it seems like we’re done here.” Daphne pivoted on one heel and stormed off, blinking back her stupid, traitorous tears.
She’d always thought there was such power in knowing other people’s secrets. At court, secrets were even better than money: you could hoard them and guard them and barter them away. But for what?
What did any of it matter when the entire time, she’d been keeping the greatest secret of all from herself—only to discover the truth when it was too late.
Beatrice’s skirts frothed up around her like lace-stitched clouds, probably creasing in countless places, but it didn’t stop her from pounding
at the door.
“Beatrice, don’t,” Connor pleaded.
She ignored him, though she knew she looked utterly absurd: standing here in her wedding gown, slamming her fists against the reinforced steel. But that alarm had sent her careening past all rational thought. All she wanted was to get out.
Connor stepped forward and caught her hands in his, circling her wrists as he gently lowered them. “It won’t do any good, Bee. That door can’t open until a full sweep of the palace has confirmed that it’s safe.”
Beatrice tugged at her hands. Chastened, Connor let go of them, but he didn’t step away.
His face was much too close. She could see each individual freckle and eyelash, could hear each shallow breath as it escaped his lungs. He was so familiar, yet at the same time he felt oddly like a stranger, like a shadowy figure from her dreams.
Except that he wasn’t a dream at all. He was here, real and flesh and immediate. Alone with her in a sealed room.
Beatrice backed away a few steps, and the panic flooding through her stilled a little. Without it she felt curiously uncertain, as if that frantic terror had been holding her aloft, and now that it had ebbed she had no clue what to do. The blaring of the alarm had stopped, but Beatrice imagined she could still hear it, echoing beneath the silence.
“Can you find out what happened?” she asked.
Connor’s hands drifted to his waist, then hooked uselessly in his pockets. “I don’t have my ERD anymore,” he said, naming the encrypted radio used by palace security. “But don’t worry; I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Beatrice nodded slowly. Her fear had thrown all her senses into confusion; she had no idea how long it had been since the alarm went off.
“You didn’t wear your Guards’ uniform,” she observed softly.
“I wasn’t sure I was allowed to wear it, now that I’ve left.”
Beatrice heard the lie in his voice. Connor knew perfectly well that he could wear the dress uniform at state occasions for the rest of his life.
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