by Lexi Whitlow
She was right—the roommate. There are families here who are old and powerful and don’t stop until they have exactly what they want. They just don’t know they’re playing against me. They might not know me well enough—or Adelaide either—to figure out that no matter what happens, I’ll find a way to defeat them. And while I’m at it, I’ll keep this woman safe.
On the morning of the wedding, I get breakfast just as I usually do, hopping from cafe to cafe so no one will spot me in one place. I feel eyes on me, people searching me out for signs that I’m not who I say I am, that I’m hiding in plain sight and have been for years. It’s just my paranoia, a thing that’s steadily developed over time. It’s become more than I can manage, and today I’ll finally end it. With Mallory’s name on a French marriage certificate, our bond will be legal, here and abroad. And whatever happens, I’ll keep her by my side until she gives birth, and long after that.
Maybe, I think, as I go up the stairs to the apartment, we can have the life we’ve been hoping for after that.
“Mal,” I say as I open the door. “I think the minister said he’d come here—we don’t have to go anywhere to meet him. I gave him the rings yesterday for safe keeping.” I kick the door open with my foot, and I hear no response. When I go in, holding two coffees and the bag of pastries I picked up, the place is eerily empty, like all the life has been sucked out of it. One window is open, and the dingy gray curtain is fluttering in the breeze. It’s odd—we haven’t opened the windows since it got cold. And the wind coming through, it chills me down to the bone.
“Mallory,” I call again, my voice cracking. “Tell me you’re here!” I check every inch of the tiny one-bedroom apartment, my heart racing.
This is what it feels like to lose everything.
My mother’s voice rings through in my mind, echoing with a ghostly cackle.
Shit. They’ve got her.
I take out my burner phone and call Mallory’s number, hoping beyond hope that there’s a chance she’s safe. After five rings, there’s no answer. Heart pounding, I know that the next ring will let the phone go to voicemail.
But Mallory answers, panting and nearly out of breath. “Matthias?” I can hear a hint of fear in her tone, and it’s like a dagger to my heart. “There was a man—across the street. I think—I don’t know if—I went to Emilie’s parents’ apartment in the Northern part of the city. Could the minister come here? Would he? I got so scared.”
“We’ll work it out, Mal. I’m just glad you’re safe. God, I’m glad. Keep calm, lieverd. Text me the address, and I’ll be there.”
“I have the dress, and Emilie is here. She can be the witness. And if the guy—the minister or whatever—does he have the rings?”
“He does, princess.”
“Don’t call me that again, Matthias. You know this is what I want—just not that part of it. I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“I won’t. I won’t say it again, Mal.” My throat tightens. It was a simple impulse—a name I called her when we were running around Brussels, when all that mattered was the next restaurant or the next hotel where we might find respite. When I hang up, I realize that it was what I used to call the girls that I brought home to my house in Amsterdam. Mallory might have been that once, but she isn’t anymore. She’s far more.
I hail a taxi bound for the north side of the city, leaving the two coffees to sit and grow cold. I don’t have much, but I wear a button-down shirt, the one I wore when I first met her. And jeans, faded and worn, grown soft with time. It’s not the royal wedding my parents had always planned. But my instinct tells me it's better.
A friend’s parent—when I was off at boarding school—told me that it was never the wedding day itself that counted. It was the marriage. I might have been jealous of his parents—rich, yes, for everyone there was. But they had a genuine relationship, and here they were, telling me I could have one too.
I hadn’t believed it.
But when I hand ten euros to the driver and get out at an old gray stone building that looks nondescript, anonymous among the many others of its kind, I know that I’m going to something far better today than what my parents had. I walk up the stairs after Emilie buzzes me in, and Mallory stands there in her pale blush colored dress, with a skirt of tulle that comes down to her knees. The ruffles at the top of the skirt hide her bump, but I know it’s there. Her face is even rounder too, her hips deliciously curvy. The minister might not notice, but I will. I put my child in this woman, and now I’ll have her for good.
“Don’t Americans say it’s bad luck to see the bride in her dress?”
Mallory shrugs. “I guess so. But we’ve had enough bad luck that I don’t think we can have much more of the same.”
“I wouldn’t tempt fate, Mal.” As I say it, I walk up to her and kiss her. She melts against me, and I feel the simple excitement of holding someone I love.
There’s a sound on the stairs, and the three of us jump at the same time, Emilie leaping up from her seat. She runs over to the door and looks through the window at the top. “I’d say it was the minister you hired, guys. Or was he a minister?”
“Non-denominational minister. Hard to find around here,” I say.
Mal laughs and puts her hand to her belly. “And possibly more accepting of this kind of thing?”
“We’re just a modern family, Mal.”
She laughs again, and Emilie rolls her eyes, taking a seat by the window to keep watch. Both of them seem nervous, rattled. I haven’t had a chance to ask who they saw, but it scared them enough to get away from the apartment.
The minister knocks at the door, and I show him in. He’s a short, angry-looking man—who looks like he might well have been a disapproving minister in a former life. He looks between the two of us suspiciously and shrugs. “This is the wedding party?”
“You’re looking at it,” I say. Mallory shrinks back, pressing her hips into the dining room table that takes up most of the space next to the kitchen.
A friend at city hall assured me this guy’s a type who’s easily convinced with a fistful of euros, so I give him a nice stack of bills. He glances at Mallory’s growing belly, but he doesn’t say a word. Instead, he slides the cash in his jacket pocket and puts the marriage certificate on the elaborate dining room table.
“Is anyone else joining us?” He speaks in heavily accented, halting English.
Emilie answers from her spot by the window, glancing down to the street as she speaks. “I certainly hope not. We’ve got some relatives in town we’d rather only see at the reception.” She looks over at Mallory and smiles.
“Thank you,” I say to her, looking back to the minister. He puts the rings down on the table and starts the ceremony with no preamble.
It’s not how I would have wanted it. I wish I could give Mallory the time to write her vows, and I’d love to take her somewhere tropical and warm for our honeymoon. Instead, we’re standing in the gray light of a Parisian apartment that doesn’t mean anything to either of us. As the minister recites a few brief verses about the sanctity of marriage, I take her hand and pull her close to me. The heat rises in her cheeks, and she leans against me softly. Emilie stands just behind us, silent. The whole ceremony feels ominous, like there might be someone lurking behind the closed door that leads into the foyer.
There might be. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.
“Do you, Matthias Albring, take this woman to be your wife?” The words echo through the room.
“Yes, I do.” I say it without hesitation. Danger or no, Mal is the one I want standing next to me.
“Do you, Mallory Matthews, take this man to be your husband?”
Mal nods, and then looks up to me. “I do.” There’s a quaver in her voice, but it’s not about the words she’s saying. It’s about everything that comes along with that—the dangers I’ve shared with her. I’m not sure that she really believes the depths of my country’s xenophobia or its casual fascism. But once she
meets my parents, she’ll understand each and every one of my warnings.
“You may exchange the rings, and kiss the bride,” the minister says, beginning to pack up his bag, presumably for the next shotgun wedding he’s attending on this dreary Saturday.
“Isn’t there—isn’t there supposed to be more?” Mal stutters, looking around the room anxiously, like someone else might show up.
“I can say the whole thing for fifty more euros. But you got the short version.”
I nod to Mal, and she picks the plain gold ring up from the table, and she slips it onto my ring finger.
“The short version is okay by me, Mal,” I say, taking the platinum ring I had made for her, and putting it on her long, elegant finger. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, it looks like she had time to paint her nails a pale pink. The platinum looks elegant against her pale skin, and it feels right that I’m doing this—in this apartment, in this place.
She looks at the ring and then glances back up to me. Her gaze, once unreadable, seems wiser now, reflecting the woman she’s becoming. “It works for me too, I think. I like the ring.”
“You may kiss the bride,” the minister reminds us. I need to be at Montmartre at noon, and I need a coffee before I get there.
I slip my arm around Mallory’s waist, drawing her close to me and bringing my lips to hers. Her lips are tender and sweet, the hint of berries lingering on her lips from her gloss. It’s a quick kiss, not intense like the kisses we share in private. But the meaning is clear—it’s a promise. That I’ll protect her and our baby, that she’ll stand by me as we navigate the uncharted waters of my family, that someday soon, we’ll be able to leave this behind us and become the people we were meant to be, standing side by side.
The four of us sign the simple document that binds us legally—the minister’s signature, followed by mine and Mallory’s. Emilie is the last to sign, and she leans over the table, pausing to look back at me. Her eyes are dry, and she furrows her brows in my direction, like she does each time she sees me. “I’d think this was all very romantic if you weren’t putting my friend in danger or taking her away to your weird little country.”
“I’ll take care of her.”
“I’ll be ferry-boating my ass over there if you don’t,” Emilie says, finally signing her name in large, winding loops. “And I’ll end you.”
“Em, it’s okay. I know what I’m getting into,” Mallory says, putting a hand on Emilie’s shoulder as she stands up.
The minister awkwardly leans over and grabs the marriage certificate, handing me and Mal our copies before taking his. “The one you signed last week is at city hall. I’ll get this entered into the records on Monday—”
“It needs to be today,” I say, handing him an extra hundred Euros. He scowls at me, and I give him another fifty. “And I’ll call your cab just to make sure you’re stopping at the hall of records before you get coffee.”
“Wonderful,” he says, waving a hand at us in annoyance. As Emilie walks him down the stairs to the front door, I call the taxi service and request one for the hall of records. Mallory and I watch through the front window as he climbs into the taxi, our marriage certificate in hand.
We sit, talking and eating ham croissants from the patisserie across the street. The three of us are on edge. But, finally, we get the call that the marriage certificate has been filed in the city of Paris.
Mallory and I are officially married.
And like she said, perhaps our bad luck is gone.
Chapter Twenty
Mallory
I’m fifteen weeks pregnant today.
Matthias’s family and their henchmen are biding their time—or they haven’t found us yet. His guess is that they know exactly where we are. Last week, we stopped hiding. And the next, we’re bound for the North Islands.
Best to face the problem head on.
It’s just past the beginning of my second trimester, and I have a small, round bump to show for it. Every once in a while, I feel something that could be a flutter, deep inside, behind the walls of flesh and muscle.
The semester at Studio Berçot is over, and the shoddy work I handed in somehow got me passing marks for the first—and last—term. It was a school I went to, I remind myself, because my friend had an apartment. And my sister told me that my future lay in going to Europe.
It turns out that she was right, but neither of us could have predicted what’s happened here, not in our wildest fantasies. I’m sitting in Emilie’s apartment, toying with the phone that Matthias got me from whatever weird underground friend he has in Paris.
It seems strange that a prince has gotten away with this kind of life for so long. And unfortunately, I was the one who made it catch up with him in the end. It wasn’t any of his gambling, or the debts he incurred in Italy or Spain, or the piles of cash sitting behind the door of a heavy safe back in Amsterdam. Something far more mundane got him caught.
Knocking up an American girl and perhaps, as he says, falling in love.
On good days, I believe it.
On days like this, I wonder why I agreed to the things he’s asked me to do, the life he’s asked me to leave. I put my hand to my belly, and I know that this was one of the reasons I said yes. This child will grow up, knowing his father. And I’ll be there to make sure he’s never in any trouble. It’s odd—I’d never thought much of being pregnant or getting married before, not in any real way.
Here I am. Here we both are.
I toy with the phone again and finally press call.
“Studio Berçot?” A chipper, Parisian voice answers.
“This is Mallory Matthews.” Or is my name Mallory Albring? It’s one more thing we haven’t discussed. “I’ll be unregistering for next term. Please cancel my tuition payments and my classes.”
There’s clicking at the other end of the line, and the lady on the phone assures me it’s taken care of.
Not for the first time, my heart races when I think about my future. The palace—which Matthias describes as cold and white—might be my home. And now that I’ve hung up the phone on the Studio, it feels like I’ve sealed my life, shut it down, like I’ve finally decided to become the thing I’ve avoided—tied down, shut in, and obligated to someone else.
Two someones. And Matthias’s family, too.
Lying back on the purple sofa in the apartment I used to rent with Emilie—it won’t be ours for much longer—I close my eyes and think of Matthias. Is love enough to warrant this change in both of our lives?
And more importantly, will it last?
He’s supposed to be coming over with lunch soon, and we’ll start packing for our extended visit to the North Islands, where Matthias’s family rules with an iron fist.
“It’s not the type of princess I wanted to be,” I mumble to myself. I sink further into the sofa and doze off. It’s unseasonably warm for the winter in Paris, and the windows are open. I hear cars on the street, zipping past. I’ll miss this. I’ll miss being in a place where my only responsibility is school.
And what would Kim think of all of this? It’s definitely more than a brief affair.
When sleep takes over, it’s a half-sleep. I’m aware of the apartment around me, the breeze blowing gently against my face, the warmth of the boiler below our hardwood floors. I feel what I think might be movement in the deep interior of my belly—a butterfly wing crossing over smooth muscle. Perhaps I dreamed it, but it feels like he’s there. In my dream, he’s a boy, small and tough, running along the street outside of my apartment, over to the park across the street. Matthias is there too, but he’s a man I met at a bar, or at school, not on the street in Amsterdam. He’s normal, and his family is too. There are no decrees, no hidden secrets within generations of families, ruling their children with harshness and royal requirements.
There’s a sound at the bottom of the stairs, and I wake slowly, coming to consciousness, piece by piece. My dream—or was it a vision of a shared future I won’t have? —fa
des around me like mist. I sit up straight.
“Matthias?” I call out his name, hoping he can hear me from the front door. Steps ring out, loud and clear, on the creaky old stairs that lead to our apartment.
“We haven’t seen anyone strange for more than a week,” I whisper to myself. “Not since the wedding. That means—”
That means precisely nothing.
The steps come closer, and I realize that there are two sets of feet falling on the wood. The sounds are heavy and ominous, nothing like Matthias and his quick, nearly silent footsteps.
“She’s in here,” comes a voice, speaking in French.
I shoot up from my seat on the couch, grabbing my purse and searching in it for the pepper spray Matthias gave me after the wedding last week. I’d joked it was my only wedding present, and hands shaking, I had shoved it into my purse. Matthias was serious when he gave it to me, even though I had every hope that I’d never use it.
“Are you sure?” There’s a woman’s voice, ringing from the bottom of the stairs. “This isn’t the type of place Matthias would go. Not the type of girl he should be seeing. But maybe he’s slumming with these low-life girls simply because he knows it frustrates me—” Her voice drips with disdain, and my blood runs cold.
Stepping slowly, holding the pepper spray in one hand, I inch towards my bedroom. The fire escape sits at the edge of my window. If I can just get over there—
There’s a knock on the door, and I hear one of the men fumbling with the lock. My heart pounds in my chest, blood sizzling in my veins, like there’s a fire deep within me. I tiptoe to my window and try to lift it, still holding the pepper spray. The damn thing is jammed, and it only raises about six inches before it sticks completely. On the street below, I see Matthias, his muscular form walking down the street with its usual swagger. He’s holding a small bag with the two sandwiches he always brings.
“Matthias!” I shout from the window. “Someone’s here! On the stairs!”
He looks around wildly, dropping the sandwiches once he finds the source of my voice, running for the building and pushing open the front door. I hear the scuffle of feet outside, and a click that sounds like the lock giving way. I lean the full force of my body into the window, pushing it up one more inch.