by Karina Halle
I nod at Zoya and squeeze her hand. The truth is, I love her and I need her, just as she needs me. I don’t love her in a romantic or sexual way—that stopped a long time ago—but I feel about her the same way I feel about my siblings. As such, I want to protect her. Yeah, she gives my father peace of mind, thinking that the two of us are in love. But without me acting as her front, there’s no way Zoya could continue her relationship with her girlfriend and not raise suspicion.
It’s about as fucked up and complicated as it can be. Whoever thought being royal meant having a simplified life had obviously never met my family before.
“There you are!” Matilde yells at us, Francis right behind her as they walk over. She’s wearing a gown that’s white and draped in a way that wouldn’t look wrong on a Grecian statue, her hair pinned up in a million braids while looking very fresh-faced. Francis looks dapper, as usual.
“No date?” I ask her, as she pulls me into a quick hug. I like to bug her about her perpetually single status, mainly because it pisses her off. It’s nothing new though. She and Francis tend to stick together like glue.
“A date? Here? And how would I entertain him? I don’t feel like babysitting,” she says, and then gestures to the crowd gathered in the casino with us, sipping champagne and gambling. “I’m working.”
“Always working,” Francis says with a roll of his eyes. “Sooner or later, you’re going to find the urge to babysit someone.”
She glares at her twin. “And where is your date? Hmm?”
“He’s over there,” Francis says, taking a sly sip of his champagne while eying someone across the room.
“Well you better take it easy, for Orlando’s sake,” Zoya says to him. “He nearly punched a photographer for asking about you.”
Francis rolls his eyes again. “What happened now?”
I shrug and pluck a champagne glass off a passing waiter. “Just someone that needs to mind his own business.”
“I don’t need you to be a hero,” Francis says, squaring his shoulders.
“That’s what I said,” Zoya tells him.
“You know I’m not hero material,” I say gruffly, as I quickly down the champagne. This was meant to be a fairly easy evening. Put on a tux, come to the casino with Zoya, smile for the cameras, support my sister. Yet, somehow, I’m feeling this immense pressure, more so than normal. That feeling of being trapped in your own life, with no escape.
It must be showing up on my face because later, while Zoya is talking to a Grand Prix racer and Francis is off somewhere, Matilde pulls me aside.
“How many glasses of champagne have you had?” My sister asks accusingly, her bracelets shaking together as she points at the glass I’m currently gulping down.
“Not enough,” I admit, letting the empty glass dangle by the stem.
She studies me for a moment and then purses her lips together. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Orlando,” she repeats. “You’re usually Mr. Devil May Care. Now it’s like the devil is right on your shoulders.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. And what I do know, what I feel, I’m not about to get into here on the night of her fundraiser, surrounded by my future subjects.
“You haven’t been the same since we got back from Scandinavia,” she says. “To be more specific, Denmark.” She squints at me thoughtfully. “What exactly happened between you and Princess Stella?”
I blink at her. Hearing Stella’s name feels like cold water being splashed in my face. Not that I haven’t thought about her. I have. A lot. So maybe that’s why it feels weird to have it voiced like that, not just living in my head.
In my fantasies.
Every night.
“She did a number on you, didn’t she?” Matilde goes on, folding her arms across her chest. “The single mom from Copenhagen got under your skin.”
“Oh fuck off,” I tell her.
She grins at that. “Defensive! I see how it is. Jeez, Orlando, I thought maybe you just screwed her a few times. It’s not like you to give a girl any more thought after that.”
“You make me sound crass.”
“You are crass. Just because the entire world thinks Zoya is the love of your life, doesn’t mean we all buy this version of you.” She pauses. “But judging from how the Princess was acting toward you that last night, I have a feeling you never told her the truth.”
I sigh. “What would the point have been? I won’t see her again. Let her think I’m a cheating, lying bastard if she wants to.”
“She liked you,” she says. “I could tell.”
“She hated me most of the time,” I remind her.
Which is why fucking her was so damn hot. Every time I made her come, every time she gave into me, she was at war with herself. Hating that I could make her feel such a way and yet loving it at the same time. I’d never had my cock so deep inside someone who made me feel like she was a battle I needed to win.
Even though my time with her at the palace was brief and somewhat tumultuous, with my overbearing family and her kiss-kill attitude toward me, I have to say that I hadn’t felt such freedom in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t had one-night stands here and there, but they’ve been so distant and cold. With all of them I have to have the woman sign an NDA so she won’t report to the press that I’m “cheating” on Zoya. In the end, I get off, yeah, and the woman does too. But I’m left with an emptiness that wasn’t there before.
With Stella I didn’t have to do that. Because I knew she wouldn’t tell. Because in so many ways, she was just like me. A royal. And a misunderstood one at that. She’s actually the first woman of nobility I’d ever had the pleasure to screw, and there was something so right about it, like gears clicking into place. She understood me in a way no one else has.
Which is maybe part of the problem.
“Well, I’m sure the Princess definitely hates you now,” Matilde muses, a sparkle in her dark eyes. “But there’s no reason why it couldn’t have gone further.”
I give her a pointed look. “Yes. There is.” My eyes flit to Zoya in the crowd and back to her.
Zoya. It’s always Zoya.
Matilde exhales through her nose and gives me a sympathetic smile. “Is this really going to be your future? Are you really going to marry Zoya? Is she going to be the mother of your children? All while the both of you are living a lie, forever? You’ll just both have affairs until you die? That’s no life to live.”
I don’t say anything to that because I don’t know what there is to say.
My sister puts her hand on my arm. “You’re my brother. I care about you a lot. You know that. I just want you to be happy. And honestly . . . I don’t think I’ve ever seen you happy, Orlando.”
I think I know the last time I was happy. But it was a long time ago. Back when I had my mother.
“Then what’s the difference?” I eventually say. I don’t want to talk about any of this anymore. There’re too many layers to unravel, too many ways to fall into the abyss.
“The difference is, it’s never too late. Look, I know what it’s like. I’ve been there. I grew up being your step-sister and somehow feeling illegitimate that way, that my mother wasn’t your mother.”
I shake my head. “Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not being silly,” she says. “I’m being honest. Your mother was sweet and elegant and kind. My mother is . . . well, everyone thought she was a joke. People were so angry that father married her and so soon after your mother died. I know you were angry too.”
I rub my lips together. She’s right. I was only ten when my father remarried and yet I don’t think I ever hated anyone more. I hated the both of them, especially for seeming to forget about my mother so soon.
She goes on. “Then I grappled with knowing that I’d never be up for the throne, because I wasn’t a man. I spent a lot of my life looking for answers, trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. It wasn’t until that trip to Africa that I
realized my purpose in life. To help as many people as I can. Your purpose is out there too. It’s just not what you think it is.”
“And what do I think it is?” I ask, challenging her.
But she just smiles. “What your bloodline is telling you it is. Your purpose isn’t to pretend to be the man that father wants, that the monarchy wants, that history wants. It’s to be the person that you are deep inside.” Her smile fades a little and she frowns. “I’m just worried that you won’t be able to keep up appearances forever. I think both you and Zoya deserve to be free of the bullshit that holds you together, and the sooner that you both realize that, the better you both will be.”
But it’s all easy for my sister to say. Zoya’s parents are famous Russian athletes with ties to the Russian government, a government that might severely punish her for her sexuality. At the very least, she would lose sponsors and the support of the national team. She could lose it all.
As for me, well, my bloodline has me in a chokehold I don’t think I’ll ever escape from.
Chapter 7
Stella
“Can we get a cat?”
I close my eyes for a moment, mid-buttering of bread, and breathe in through my nose.
Anya had just asked me that last night as I tucked her into bed.
She asked me that in the morning too.
And the day before that.
And now, again, after saying no . . .
“Mom?” she says louder, standing behind me in the kitchen. “Did you hear me? Can we get a cat?”
I grip the butter knife and pray for sanity. My patience has been non-existent these days and my temper has been short. To be honest, I’ve felt like shit this last week, just tired and crabby and achy. My breasts hurt like hell, like someone has been using them as punching bags and even the butter I’m attempting to put on her toast is making me feel nauseous.
There’s also the fact that my period is four days late.
I’m trying not to think about it. I really am.
“We could rescue one from the shelter,” Anya adds. “I think it will look good for your public image.”
I nearly snort at that. I slowly turn around and look at my daughter.
She’s wearing her pink, glitter-framed eyeglasses, dressed in a denim apron dress with a pink tee underneath and high-top sneakers. Also pink and glittery, a child’s knockoff of the expensive Golden Goose brand. I’ve been letting Anya dress herself all summer without any input from me and it’s been the season of magenta.
“My public image?” I repeat. “Really?”
She shrugs and grins, showing the gap between her teeth. “You complain about it all the time. So, can we get a cat?”
I roll my eyes and quickly finish up her bread, sliding the plate on the kitchen table next to the herring, cheese and cold cuts. Even though we’ve been living in England for many years at this point, I still haven’t embraced the English breakfast. Instead, we eat the traditional Danish style.
“Sit and eat. And no cat. Okay? I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
She frowns at me and goes over to the chair, slumping down with a face of absolute resignation. “Boy, you sure are grumpy these days.”
“Anya,” I warn her, shaking the butter knife at her. “You know better than to talk back to me.”
“I’m not talking back. I’m making a statement,” she says, before taking an angry bite of her toast. “Why can’t we have a cat?” Crumbs shoot out of her mouth.
Some princess she is. Like mother like daughter, I suppose.
“Eat with your mouth closed,” I remind her. “And it’s because I don’t like cats.”
“You like cats,” she says, covering her mouth with her hand as she chews.
“I’m allergic.”
She swallows. “That doesn’t mean you don’t like them.”
“I’m allergic,” I repeat, heading over to the fridge. I haven’t felt like eating anything lately, but my stomach right now is churning in a big queasy mess.
“Do you die?”
Feel a bit like dying right now, I think to myself as another wave hits. I rest my head against the door of the fridge, my hand on the handle. “No,” I say slowly, breathing in and out. “I just sneeze a lot.”
“What if you were allergic to me? What would you do?”
I’m used to Anya’s way of questioning, but I’m not sure I can handle this right now. The room feels like it’s filling up with water, making everything seem swimmy.
“I’d take a pill,” I finally manage to say.
“Then you can take a pill for the cat. I mean, why do Freja and Clara get a pig and I can’t get a cat?”
“Anya, please,” I say, my voice breaking. Oh god, I’m going to be sick, aren’t I?
There’s a long pause and then she asks, “Are you okay?”
Before I can even answer her, come up with some lie, tell her I’m fine, the contents of last night’s dinner come rushing up through me. I barely make it to the sink before I’m puking Chinese food everywhere.
“Ew! Gross! Gross!” Anya yells. “Now I’m going to throw up!”
Right. As I’m vomiting my guts out, my face red and hot, tears streaming down my face, I remember that Anya always throws up when she sees someone else do the same. I can’t even yell at her to make it to the washroom. Instead I hear her throwing up all over the kitchen table, followed by wailing, since the poor girl always cries after she gets sick.
Somehow I manage to pull myself together, splash water on my face, and then proceed to clean up Anya and the kitchen table. Of course, during the ordeal, as I’m leading her to her bathroom so she can shower the puke out of her hair, she manages to ask between sobs if she can have a cat.
The answer is still no.
But Anya’s cat obsession is the very least of my problems right now.
The fact that I was sick means that the thing I’ve been trying so hard to ignore is rearing its ugly head. I told myself it was impossible, that it couldn’t be true. Even now, I’m convinced it could just be a giant coincidence. After all, maybe I caught a flu from somewhere. A stomach bug. Those are always going around, right?
I mean, just because my period is late doesn’t necessarily mean the worst, right? Periods are often late because of stress, and if I’ve been sick then that could stress me out, right?
I can’t possibly be pregnant.
I’m on the pill, for one, to help my endometriosis.
For two, that very same endometriosis makes getting pregnant extremely hard, so I’m told. Anya took forever to conceive.
And for three . . . well, normally, I would have to chalk this up to immaculate conception but since I did have sex about a month ago, then I guess I know who could be to blame.
Shit.
Please, please, please let this all be a huge coincidence.
I can’t be pregnant, and Prince Orlando, that sex-on-a-stick rat bastard, can’t be the father.
But I know what I have to do.
I need to be responsible. I need peace of mind.
Yet I can’t just pop into the chemist and pick up a home pregnancy test, because lord knows some paparazzi is going to catch me doing that. So I make an appointment with my doctor and then the next day, while I get Margaret, the nanny, to watch over Anya, I head on over to the clinic.
I’m still feeling sick, though I think my nausea is increased because of how nervous I am. Thankfully the clinic I go to in Cobham is very hush-hush and used to dealing with wealthy, famous and even royal clients such as myself, so I go in the backdoor and I don’t have to wait in the waiting room.
“What can I do for you, Your Highness?” Doctor Bradshaw says to me, smiling his dorky grin. Doctor Bradshaw is old, with nose hair that’s long enough to braid. He enjoys calling me Your Highness, as well as princess. I used to think it was charming but now, considering the severity of the situation, I don’t think it’s cute at all.
“I think I might be pregnant.”
> He raises his brows and seems to think about his reaction. “Oh? Are you back together with your ex-husband?”
That thought also makes me sick. I shake my head, grimacing.
“Oh,” he says again. “I see. Well it’s none of my business who it is. But when was the last time you had sex?”
“About a month ago.”
“And how many times did you have sex?”
Even though it shouldn’t, a small thrill runs through me at the thought. I try and think. “Probably ten times. In three or four days.
His eyes widen. “I see. And your period?”
“Should have been here five days ago.”
“You’re still on the pill?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t missed any?”
“Missed? No.” Have I been taking it at the exact same time every single day? No. But then again, I didn’t see all that sex in my future. How could I have?
“No condom?”
I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind that we didn’t use one. “No,” I say, feeling ashamed, like I’m sixteen again and about to get lectured. I should be better than this.
“Are you feeling sick? Sore?” he asks.
“I want to vomit right now.”
“Well then,” he says briskly. “Let’s get you tested.”
He brings me into the washroom and gives me a similar test to the one I’d taken when I was pregnant with Anya. Everything was so different back then. Back then, I was deeply in love with my husband, I was hoping that I’d get pregnant, I felt scared of course but also hopeful and secure. It was all I wanted.
Now, it’s just pure fear.
I pee into a cup and slide it through to a technician.
I don’t have to wait long before the doctor comes back out to see me, holding a dressing gown in his hands.