by Becker Gray
Okay, that was a lie, and we all knew it. But over the last few months, I’d grown so fucking tired of whatever death match Phin and I seemed to be locked into with each other. After I’d found him kissing Lea Clayton at Sera’s party nearly two years ago now, all I’d wanted to do was make Phin pay. Make him suffer. And I succeeded for a while, making sure that he knew about all the boys I’d had it off with. Making sure he knew that what we’d shared at the party meant nothing and that I was much happier kissing and screwing literally anyone else.
Except I hadn’t planned on all that pretending hurting me just as much as it hurt him.
I hadn’t planned on him hurting me back.
And now I was tired of it. We could do this for the rest of our lives, him and me. Him screwing anything that moved, and me doing the same—although the depressing truth was that I hadn’t found someone who lit my body on fire the way Phin had that night in Sera’s garden.
I told myself it was because the boys at Pembroke Prep were all predictably self-obsessed and boring, but deep down, I knew the truth.
None of them were Phin.
But anyway, the cycle was stopping here, now. No more antagonizing Phin, no more crying alone at night when I heard about the latest girl he was shagging. I was going to get through this year, and then maybe I’d meet someone nice and non-Phin-like at Cambridge, where I’d be attending university.
“I’m only saying that if you decide to piss Phin off, that’s the way to do it,” Sera said.
“He wouldn’t care even if I did canoodle.”
“He’d care,” Sloane said quietly. “He watches you when he thinks you’re not looking. However else he feels, I can promise that he feels possessive.”
“Classic toxic Hellfire behavior,” Sera declared. “Which is why you’ll never find me in a Hellfire boy’s bed. Oh, here comes your grandmother, Aurora.”
We turned to see the black-suited men and women of her security team step discreetly into the corners of the room as my grandmother, the Princess of Lichtenstein, stepped in, looking as coolly regal as ever. Behind her came her daughter, my mother, Brigitte, dressed in a dove gray dress that set off her white-blond hair and her svelte figure.
She didn’t wear bright colors to weddings. Not anymore.
And no sign of my grandfather, which either meant he was back at the hotel in Manhattan where he and Oma were staying, or he’d found a quiet corner to hide in and read a book. For someone who’d grown up royal all his life, he deeply hated anything smacking of ceremony—even a granddaughter’s engagement party.
To my surprise, my mother and Oma weren’t coming to find Elsie’s family but were walking straight toward me. As they came closer, I could see that both of their faces were set in grim expressions.
Sera and Sloane executed graceful curtsies as my grandmother approached, and she nodded back at them before looking back to me. “Aurora,” she said brusquely. She wasn’t an unkind woman, but neither would she ever be famous for her warm demeanor. “We need to talk.”
I shot a look to Lennox across the tent and managed to catch his eye. He lifted his shoulders.
I have no idea, was what that shrug said.
With a resigned look and two supportive smiles from Sera and Sloane, I followed my mum and my grandmother out of the party and toward the sprawling Yates mansion, a cloud of suited security people hovering around us as we went.
* * *
“There’s no way to say this but directly,” Mum said as we stopped inside the Yates’s conservatory. It was choked with rows of statues and antiquities that were probably acquired in a semi-dicey way by some Victorian Yates ancestor. We were mostly hidden among all the sculptures and things, although I could still see the party through the sea of marble and limestone.
I turned to face Mum, ready to deal with whatever it was. We’d all had a hard run of it after Daddy’s crimes and infidelity were discovered, and it had made us loyal to each other and drew us close—the kind of closeness that comes through shared disillusionment. Together, we’d faced losing all our money, selling off our family home, changing schools, and moving countries.
Whatever this was, we’d face it together too.
“So,” Mum said, swallowing. “As you know, there is one family your father stole from who still haven’t settled their case. They were humiliated by him and by the scandal, and since they have no further legal recompense now that he’s in prison, they are attempting to sue the royal family for ignoring your father’s activities.”
“That is such bullshit. He lied to everyone, not just his victims!” It wasn’t fair. I knew my father was an arsehole. That he’d stolen hundreds of millions. But why should my mother’s family have to pay for his sins? They hadn’t known what he was doing—Christ, neither had we, and we’d lived with the damn man.
My grandmother pursed her lips. “Yes, while it is indeed bullshit, the longer this drags on, the worse it is for all of us. The charities we support, those who count on us, are being affected by our name getting dragged through the mud continuously. And unfortunately, the court of public opinion isn’t interested in the truth of what we knew or didn’t know. It’s all too easy to believe a royal family would opt to ignore a family member’s criminal behavior; it’s all too easy to believe they’d worry about nothing but the potential bad press if a crisis came to their attention.”
“That seems fair,” I said bitterly, “considering that’s exactly what we’re doing now.”
Her tone was as cool as ever, but I heard regret threading through it too when she responded. “I understand your frustration, Aurora, but as much as I might wish it otherwise, our reputation is our currency. The money we can raise is only as good as the crown and the name, and right now many people are hurting because of our negative press and the damage it’s caused our fundraising efforts. The Nichols have offered a solution.”
“The Nichols?” I asked, looking back to Mum. “Like Brantley Nichols?”
Mum gave me a single, slow nod. “Yes. Like Brantley.”
“They were victims of Daddy?” I asked, trying to think back to the days when the revelations of Daddy’s crimes kept raining down on our family. Seizures followed by more seizures, followed by lawsuit after lawsuit. Our trust funds alone were shielded, but our house, any money that was held in my father’s or my mother’s name, was gone. Our reputations, our names, were mud.
It had been so chaotic that I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t remember the Nichols family by name.
“Aurora,” Mum said carefully. “There’s been a proposal.”
I’d been at prep school too long because my mind flashed to pitches and decks and presentation software. “A proposal?”
“A marriage proposal,” Mum clarified. “From the Nichols family. In exchange for dropping the suit and ending the smear campaign.”
I looked at my mum. She was like one of those preserved roses—still soft and lovely, still a total catch for anyone wanting to marry, even without the whole princess thing.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told her, understanding immediately. “You don’t have to ask my permission to remarry or anything. It’s your life, and Lennox and I will both support you no matter what decision you make. Although I hope there’s a way you can get through this without having to marry someone you don’t want to marry.”
I looked at her again. She was looking down at her feet, her lips pressing together. “Is that it? You don’t want to marry this person and you need help figuring out how to get out of this?” I straightened my shoulders, righteous anger flowing through me. “To hell with the Nichols, Mum! We’ll figure this out. There has to be another way. They can’t force you to—”
“The proposal isn’t for me,” Mum interrupted in a quiet voice. “It’s for you.”
There was a moment when I didn’t entirely understand what she was saying. A moment when the words she’d spoken weren’t words at all but just sounds. Sounds which meant nothing.
I st
ared at her then tore my gaze away to look at Oma, and that’s when it finally sank in. Because my grandmother, the Princess of Lichtenstein, was looking at me with a soft, gentle pity.
Pity. From Oma.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Oh my God.”
My belly bottomed out. They couldn’t be asking this thing of me.
“We’ve tried to think of literally any other way,” Mum started to say, but it was my turn to cut her off.
“No. No, I’m not doing this. I’m not marrying some random Nichols—”
“It’s Brantley,” Mum told me. “So he’s not random, because you seem to already know who he is.”
“Because he’s a creep!” I burst out. “He wouldn’t leave me alone today, and he touched my thigh, and he’s boring, and I get dodgy vibes from him!”
“Aurora,” my grandmother chided. “You’re being too loud.”
“There’s no one else who can hear!” I said, not modulating my volume at all. Unless someone was skulking around the conservatory—which was possible but not probable—no one could hear me except the security staff, and they were all NDA’ed to hell and back. “And I refuse to go quietly into an arranged marriage to save my family’s reputation. Do you even hear how medieval that sounds?”
My grandmother lifted a brow. “I live in a castle, Aurora. Medieval comes with the territory with our family.”
“But this isn’t the territory of the crown, this is the territory that comes with my thieving bastard of a father! Why should we suffer for what he did? Better yet, why should I suffer? Why can’t we just tell the truth, and if people don’t believe us, then fuck them?”
Mum’s eyes were shining, but she dropped her gaze to the floor to hide her tears. “I don’t want this either,” she said miserably. “But we’ve tried to think of any other way, and there isn’t one. If the Nichols pursue their case, we will be ruined. They want our family to feel this, tying us up in court for generations to come. We could go bankrupt fighting them, and then it’s not just us paying for your father’s crimes, it’s your Opa and Oma, all your cousins and their children, and all the people who depend on the charities our family partners with. It’s not just about us and our truth, Aurora, as much as I wish it was—it’s about everyone else who could be hurt by your father, even now. Even years later. He could still hurt more people. We have to stop that from happening.”
I felt her words like a throbbing in my funny bone. “Of course I don’t want more people to be hurt, but why does this have to be the solution? Why is there no other way? You didn’t raise me to be bartered off like this!” My voice was growing sharper. “Isn’t that the point of Pembroke Prep? Of Cambridge after? So that we can make our own way in the world? Make our own choices?”
Oma sniffed. “The point is for you, as an ambassador of this family, to be a well-educated and well-mannered young woman.”
“And you can forget about Cambridge,” Mum said tiredly. “After this case happens, all future plans will have to be put on hold while the family charts out a new strategy. That might mean a less expensive university or a long gap year.”
That did quiet me. I knew that I was privileged, of course—that was hard to miss when your mother had grown up in a castle. Even if I had missed it, the tabloids had made gleeful fodder of Lennox and me over the years, characterizing us as leeches who grew fat on stolen money. But it somehow had never occurred to me that my future plans could be contingent. It had never occurred to me that after we’d lost almost everything after Daddy’s fall from grace, there could still be more to lose.
“I don’t care,” I said, after digesting this. “I can go somewhere else. I have options that aren’t marrying Brantley, and if I don’t have them right now, I will make them.”
“And you would condemn your own mother to ignominy and disgrace in the process?” my grandmother asked. “Your brother?”
“And it wouldn’t be marriage at first,” Mum said in a voice like she was offering some kind of gift. “You would date, of course, and then the engagement wouldn’t be until a few years after that.”
“But this is a… a gamble, right? A way to hedge your bets in case you can’t figure out a better way to stop the Nichols.” My mind was turning. I wouldn’t do this. I couldn’t. But the screw-you attitude that got me out of most sticky spots wouldn’t work with Mum, and it especially wouldn’t work with my grandmother. There had to be a way. There had to be a way.
If this was only bet-hedging, then that means there was room. Room to wriggle out of this.
To buy time while I thought, I asked, “If the tables were turned and it was someone wanting to marry Lennox, would you make him do it?”
“No,” Mum said, shaking her head. “Of course not. He’s in love with Sloane.”
Oma looked at me shrewdly, as if she could see the wheels turning in my mind. “Aurora Lincoln-Ward,” she said sternly, and I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t act fast. “You are going to listen to your mother. You are going to marry this boy. And that is all there is to it.”
Chapter Four
Aurora
I stared at my mother and Oma. “There’s no way.”
I started to back up toward the door. My mother’s voice was firm. “Now, Aurora. Look, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but—”
I shook my head. “Except make me marry someone? I’m only eighteen. I’m not ready to get married yet, Mum.”
“Sweetheart, I know. I understand all of that. But it will still be a very long courtship for you two to get to know each other.”
“So all those fun years that I should have, living it up, being young, I’m going to have a fiancé?”
My mother sighed. “As if you haven’t lived it up until now. You have a great life, Aurora. And from what I’ve read of your security team’s reports, it’s not like you haven’t had any fun. Honestly, I would expect resistance like this from your brother. But you two must remember that you’re royalty. Part of being royalty is being able to use your status as a bargaining chip.”
My gaze flickered to my grandmother, and she looked over at my mum. “You’ve raised her to be too much like yourself, Brigitte. You were too willful to listen at that age too.”
My mother’s eyes closed her eyes for a moment, as if fighting back a wave of misery, and then opened them again. She ignored Oma and spoke to me. “ I’m not forcing you, Aurora. If you want to say no, you can say no. I’m just saying that this could save us. Save the family and those who need us. But if you have a real reason you can’t—”
My mind had been whirring while looking for an answer to get me out of this, and it spat out the solution right as I needed it. “Yes, I have a reason. I have a boyfriend.” The lie just tripped off my tongue.
Even my grandmother looked surprised, and she blinked at me. “You do?”
“Yes, I do.” I was at the door now. I could feel the knob digging into my back. I reached behind me for it. “And you can’t do this to me. I won’t let you.”
My mother sighed. “Aurora, just wait.”
But I was gone. Out the door. Running. Oh my God. Sera would know what to do. Sera always knew what to do. Sloane too. But Sloane’s solutions almost always veered toward murder. And I liked my mother and my grandmother. I didn’t want to murder them. I just didn’t want to get married to some rando’s son just because they wanted the slate wiped clean.
My mother could marry him instead. That would be hilarious and really fucking fitting, giving what she was trying to force me into.
Though I was doubtful Brantley wanted to marry a MILF, because I was being honest, my mother was a MILF.
Except you’re single. And your father did steal from them.
Of course, they’d want a pound of flesh.
This was not Game of Thrones. I was not giving them a pound of my flesh. And frankly, my mother couldn’t force me into it. As a princess and my parent, she had some control over me, yes. But I was half British, and la
st I checked, UK laws protected teenagers from having to get engaged to gross prep school boys.
Though if I was being honest, my British folk weren’t exactly claiming me right now, either.
Thanks, Daddy, way to be an arsehole.
I rounded the corner, hoping to find Sera through the crowd somewhere. I mean, it should be pretty easy. She usually stood out in any crowd. Mostly because she looked like she had an aura wherever she went, but also… Well, the engagement party was very, very white. It would be easy to find her. With her curls on full display, she’d look like a queen amongst the drab of plain nude dresses that was the norm of parties like this. There was something about wealthy women. They wanted to stand out, but of course, be exactly the same as everyone else. It was tedious.
I rounded another corner looking for my friend, but I couldn’t find her. Fucking hell. I needed a solution because sooner or later, my mother would need me to produce my imaginary boyfriend so she could make sure that this relationship was real. Otherwise, she wouldn’t give this up.
On the next corner, with my gaze directed over my shoulder to locate Sera, I slammed into a wall. A warm one. A wall of suit and muscles.
Motherfucker.
A tendril of black hair escaped the knot on top of my head, and I cursed. I would never tell anyone this, but I didn’t love the black. But as I knew Phin had liked my natural hair color, black it was.
“What are you up to, princess?”
I scowled, looking up. Why was he so damn tall?
“What do you want, Phin?”
“Hmm, testy, testy.”
“Listen, I’m kind of in a hurry. I have a problem I needed to solve, so if you could get your fuckboy arse out of the way…”
Something in his eyes shuttered. It was brutally imperceptible, but I saw it. I was aware of him. Too aware. I hated that term. Loathed it. Which was one of the reasons I used it all the time. At every opportunity. He was a fuckboy. He would fuck anything in a goddamn skirt.