Her eyes traveled again to his tuxedo. It fit perfectly—he’d clearly had it tailored—but the fabric was stiff in the way that new clothes always are, when they haven’t yet molded to your body. Beatrice wondered with a pang if Connor had bought the tux specifically for this wedding—if he’d decided against wearing his Guards’ uniform because he didn’t want to look like a member of security, but instead like a young aristocrat.
Like all the young men her parents had included in her folder of options, the night they’d asked her to consider getting married, what felt like a lifetime ago.
“Connor—where have you been? I mean, what did you do, after…”
“I went to Houston. I’m chief of security for the Ramirez family.”
“Chief of security for the Duke and Duchess of Texas? That’s impressive.”
“They know I used to personally Guard the queen.”
Beatrice looked away, at the folding makeup table with its brushes and lipsticks laid out on a white hand towel. “I’m glad you’re doing so well. Congratulations.”
“Damn it, Bee, don’t use your cocktail-party voice with me.”
Beatrice’s mind knew that he was no longer hers, but her body seemed to have reverted to an instinctive muscle memory and couldn’t keep up. She fought back an urge to step forward and hold him, the way she used to.
Instead she hugged her arms around her torso. Her dress felt so heavy: all that stiff boning, all the layers upon layers of weighty embroidered silk.
Connor was next to her in a few steps. “Bee, listen—”
She looked up sharply, her vision blurring. “I can’t do this right now—”
“But right now is the only time we’ve got!” His gray eyes burned into hers. “When I came here today, all I wanted was to see you one last time, to make sure you’re happy. I never meant to say any of this. But here we are, and I’ll probably never get another chance to be alone with you. Maybe I’m selfish, but I can’t not tell you that I love you. Which you already know.”
Connor leaned closer. There was an instant when Beatrice knew what was coming yet felt powerless to pull away, as if her mind hadn’t yet regained control of her bewildered limbs.
He settled a hand on her shoulder, the other tipping her chin to turn her face up to his. Finally Beatrice seemed to snap back into herself. She opened her mouth in protest—and Connor, seeing her parted lips, leaned in to kiss her.
She didn’t resist. It felt so powerfully familiar, because she had been here before, so many times: folded in Connor’s arms, surrounded by his tensed strength. The sheer Connor-ness of him overwhelmed her senses.
It was as if that kiss had slipped her back in time, to before she lost her dad—back when she wasn’t a queen, but simply a girl in love with the wrong boy.
Then reality crashed back in and she pulled away, her breathing unsteady.
A single tear slid down her cheek. Seeing it, Connor lifted a hand. His fingers were callused, yet he brushed away her tear with painstaking gentleness.
“Run away with me, Beatrice. Let me help you get out,” he said fervently. “Let me save you from all of this.”
It was precisely what Beatrice had threatened to do the night before her father died: to run off with Connor, abandoning all her responsibilities. And yet…
Let me save you. Connor didn’t understand that Beatrice no longer needed rescuing. She hadn’t been forced; she wasn’t trapped. If she’d wanted to escape being queen, the only person who could have saved her was herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“So that’s it? You’re going to get married, just because you think it’s part of your job description?”
Her heart broke at how fundamentally he’d misunderstood, and she bit her lip, searching for the words to explain.
Back when Connor had been her Guard, she’d accepted that she would someday be queen. Now she chose it. Some people might not understand the distinction, but Beatrice knew it made all the difference in the world.
A destiny was something that happened to you, that fell upon you like rain no matter how desperately you tried to hide from it. But if you walked toward it with your head held high, then it wasn’t your fate—it was simply your future.
Beatrice looked into Connor’s eyes and said the only three words that would make him listen.
“I love Teddy.”
For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her. Connor’s eyes closed, and when he opened them again, they glinted like newly forged steel. “You can’t.”
She placed her hand, with its glittering engagement ring, over his. “I loved you so much, Connor. Some part of me will always love you.” She thought of last night with Teddy, of everything she was still discovering about herself. Her feelings for Teddy might have been the greatest discovery of all. “But now…I’m in love with Teddy.”
Beatrice had come to understand that the human heart was a magical thing. It had so much room inside it, enough room to contain more than one love over the course of a lifetime.
Connor and Teddy had each given their hearts into her safekeeping. Beatrice imagined she could feel the weight of them in her hands—they were smooth like bird’s eggs, like the massive rubies down in the Crown Jewels vault, and infinitely more precious.
It wasn’t right of her to keep Connor’s heart any longer, not when he didn’t have hers.
Connor stared down at their clasped hands. “I don’t understand what changed.”
“I changed. I’m not that girl anymore, the princess who fell in love with her Guard. I’m queen now.”
That girl had been lonely, and naïve about so many things. More than anything, she’d been desperate for someone to understand her.
But that girl had died that day at the hospital when the flag sank to half-mast and she realized that she’d spoken to her father for the last time.
“Beatrice—that’s exactly my point. You’re only with Teddy because you’re the queen! If you hadn’t been forced into this role, we would still be together.”
If her dad hadn’t died, if she hadn’t become the queen, if Connor hadn’t left, giving her the time and space to fall for Teddy. If, if, if. It frightened Beatrice a little, that the world was built on so many small ifs that decided people’s fates.
No, she thought intently, that wasn’t true. From now on, Beatrice would choose her own fate.
“I know you’ve been through a lot this year, and it’s changed you,” Connor added, his voice breaking. “But can’t we find our way back to each other?”
Beatrice shook her head, looking up at him through wet lashes. It had been a long, hard road out of the dark haze of her grief, and she still wasn’t entirely free of the shadows. Maybe she never would be. But the only way she’d managed to make it this far was because she’d been leaning on Teddy, and now Samantha, drawing from their seemingly bottomless pool of strength.
She couldn’t go back the way she’d come. Certainly she couldn’t go back to being the girl she had been, when she was in love with Connor.
He loved her—Beatrice could never doubt that—but he’d never truly understood her, not entirely. Connor’s instinct would always be to protect her: with his life, if it came down to it.
Except Beatrice was no longer a girl who needed protecting. Connor wanted to charge in like a knight in shining armor, offering to rescue her. Whereas Teddy gave her the confidence to rescue herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I really do love him.”
She watched Connor’s breathing slow as understanding settled in, his eyes brimming with pain. She still hadn’t let go of his hand.
There were no windows in here, not even a clock. It was as if they’d escaped to some pocket of time outside time itself: as if the universe had ground to a halt, so that they could finally say what they needed.
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“Teddy—he’s good to you?” Connor asked, and she sensed the words were costing him more than she would ever know. “He really deserves you?”
There was no coherent way for Beatrice to answer that, so she nodded.
“I figured. You couldn’t have fallen for him otherwise.” Connor attempted something like a smile, but it came out lopsided and wrong, or maybe it just looked that way through Beatrice’s tears. “I’m happy for you,” he said gruffly.
“You don’t have to say that,” she insisted. “I mean—I’ll understand, if you hate me.”
“I could never hate you, Bee. I just…I miss you.” There was no reproach in Connor’s words, only a weary, unflinching truth.
“I miss you, too,” she said, and meant it.
Beatrice’s tears were coming more freely now, but that wasn’t surprising. Nothing in life hurt more than hurting the people you loved. Yet Beatrice knew she had to say all of this.
She and Connor had loved each other too fiercely for her to let him go without a proper goodbye.
“I am…forever changed by you,” she added, her voice catching. “I gave you part of my heart a long time ago, and I’ve never gotten it back.”
“You don’t need it back.” His voice was rough with unshed tears. “I swear that I’ll keep it safe. Everywhere I go, that part of you will come with me, and I will guard and treasure it. Always.”
A sob escaped her chest. She hurt for Connor and with Connor and because of Connor, all at once.
This wasn’t how breakups were meant to go. In the movies they always seemed so hateful, with people yelling and throwing things at each other. They weren’t meant to be like this, tender and gentle and full of heartache.
“Okay,” she replied, through her tears. “That part of my heart is yours to keep.”
Connor stepped back, loosening his hand from hers, and Beatrice felt the thread between them pull taut and finally snap. She imagined that she could hear it—a crisp sort of sound, like the stem of a rose being snapped in two.
Her body felt strangely sore, or maybe it was her heart that felt sore, recognizing the parts of it that she had given away, forever.
“You’re such an amazing person, Connor. I hope you find someone who deserves you.”
Again he attempted a crooked smile. “It won’t be easy on her, trying to live up to the queen. For a small person, you cast quite the shadow,” he said, and then his features grew serious once more. “Bee—if you ever need me, I’ll be there for you. You know that, right?”
She swallowed against a lump in her throat. “The same promise holds for me, too. I’m always here if you need me.”
As she spoke, the steel panel began to lift back into the ceiling.
Beatrice straightened her shoulders beneath the cool silk of the gown, drew in a breath. Somehow she managed to gather up the tattered shreds of her self-control, as if she wasn’t a young woman who’d just said goodbye to her first love—to her best friend.
As if she wasn’t a young woman at all, but a queen.
The steel-reinforced doors lifted without a whisper of a sound.
They seemed so heavy that they should have groaned and creaked, like the portcullis of a medieval drawbridge being raised in battle. Yet Nina heard nothing except a low, hissing silence.
A Revere Guard appeared in the doorway. When he lifted his hand, the gossip rumbling through the room was abruptly cut off.
“The palace is secure; there’s no need to panic,” he began—but his next words were drowned out by a stampede of footsteps.
The guests cried out breathless questions: where was the threat, what about the royal wedding, were they free to leave. The Guard seemed helpless to stop the sea of frightened people rushing past him and out into the hallway.
Nina realized that she was still clutching tight to her mom’s hand, and quickly let go. “You all right, sweetie?” Julie asked, glancing over.
Nina’s mamá, standing on her other side, rested a hand on her daughter’s back in silent reassurance.
“I’m all right.” Nina plucked nervously at her gown. Why wasn’t there any circulation in here? There were too many people, crowding the room with their shrill complaints. Nina hadn’t seen Ethan since she’d left to find her parents; she wondered if he was still toward the back of the room. And where was Sam? The Guard had said the palace was secure—that meant the royal family was all safe, right?
“Sorry, I just need some space,” Nina muttered. Her parents nodded in understanding as she joined the flood of people headed out the ballroom’s main doors.
She jostled blindly down the hallway, past oil portraits and carved side tables and iron sconces, past Guards and footmen who spoke in low tones, too preoccupied to worry about her. Finally, a few doors down, Nina turned in to an empty sitting room. She collapsed onto a couch, slumping forward and closing her eyes. At least now she could breathe.
“Oh. It’s you.”
At the sound of that voice, Nina went hot and prickly all over.
“Excuse me.” She hurried to stand, but Daphne had planted herself before the door like a human barrier. A strange series of expressions darted over her face: surprise and dismay rapidly giving way to a hungry, avid sort of calculation.
Nina knew that look didn’t bode well for her.
“Don’t run off just yet. There’s something we need to talk about.” Daphne smiled like a lion, bold and beautiful and utterly deadly. It shattered what remained of Nina’s self-control.
“I already did what you asked, and broke up with Jeff! You’re here as his date, Daphne. You won,” she said acridly. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
Daphne made a show of stepping aside. Her smile never faltered, but it became, oddly, more relieved. As if Daphne was secretly thrilled to speak openly, without any pretense at being the polite, well-mannered Daphne Deighton that the world knew and loved.
It struck Nina as oddly pitiful, that she was perhaps the only person with whom Daphne could be herself.
“Of course I’ll leave you alone,” Daphne sniffed. “I can assure you that this isn’t pleasant for me, either. I just felt like I should warn you, from one woman to another, about Ethan.”
Nina wasn’t sure how Daphne knew about her and Ethan—whether Jeff had told her, or whether Daphne had seen them holding hands in the throne room. She found that she didn’t especially care.
“It’s none of your business,” she tried to reply, as calmly as she could.
“But aren’t you afraid of what will happen once everyone finds out?” Daphne made a clucking, concerned sound. “Nina, for a girl who claims to hate the spotlight, you somehow keep finding it over and over again. America isn’t going to be very kind to you, once they learn you’ve left Jefferson for his best friend.”
Nina itched to slap her smug, perfect face. How did Daphne always seem to zero in on her greatest fears?
“I’m not stupid. I know it won’t be easy,” she replied, with more bravado than she felt. “But Ethan is worth it. We have something real.”
Daphne gave a sharp laugh. “You fool. I’m the one who told Ethan to go out with you.”
Silence scraped at Nina’s eardrums. She couldn’t hear anything anymore: not the muffled sounds of footsteps, not the security guards speaking into walkie-talkies. It had all receded behind a wall of shock.
“Ethan only ever started dating you because of me.” Each of Daphne’s words was like the sting of a lash, like a knife digging into Nina’s side. “You see, I was worried that Jefferson still cared about you. I realized that I would never get him back if you were still an option. So I asked Ethan if he would keep tabs on you.”
“You’re lying.” Nina’s reply was automatic.
Daphne rolled her eyes. “I orchestrated the entire thing. I told Ethan everything I’d learned about y
ou, from your weird M&M obsession to the fact that you love Venice. I wanted him to flirt with you a little, and he did exactly what I said.”
Nina’s heart lurched with a sick sense of betrayal as she recalled the pleasant glow of surprise she’d felt when Ethan had noticed those things. She’d thought he was so observant, that they were compatible.
She’d never really questioned why, after they’d lived on the same campus for months without seeing each other, he’d suddenly shown up in her journalism class and asked to be partners. Had he been following Daphne’s orders the entire time?
At the hurt look on Nina’s face, Daphne smiled. “Well. It’s nice to know he made use of all my intel.”
Some stubborn part of Nina refused to back down. “Ethan wouldn’t do that to me. He’s nothing like you.”
“You have no idea what Ethan is really like.”
Nina’s stomach plummeted as she remembered what Ethan had said, just this morning: My reasons for hanging out with you, earlier this year, were totally messed up. And that night at the twins’ party: You shouldn’t want to be with me….If you only knew.
Daphne cast her a withering glance. “Don’t you see, Nina? Ethan loves me, not you. He dated you when I told him to, because he loves me. He’s kept secrets so dark you couldn’t begin to imagine them—covered up things that would make your blood run cold—because he loves me.” Daphne spoke with a terrifying calm. “Whatever you think of me, that I use people and manipulate the tabloids, then you have to think the same about Ethan. He and I are cut from the same cloth.”
Manipulate the tabloids. Nina drew in a breath. “You told that reporter about me and Ethan, didn’t you? The one who called Jeff?”
“Of course,” Daphne said, smirking. “Don’t you get it by now? I’m behind everything.”
What a fool Nina had been, thinking she could escape. No matter how much Daphne took from her, no matter that Nina had broken up with Jeff, it would never be enough. Daphne had meant what she’d said at Beatrice’s engagement party: she would always be one step ahead of Nina, making her life a living hell.
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