Of Princes and Promises

by Sandhya Menon

  CATERINA

  It was the first time she’d really looked at Alaric in weeks. She’d been made aware of his presence in the dining hall and hallway by Ava, Heather, and her other friends, of course, but she’d pointedly looked away in those moments. Now she had no choice but to take him in fully.

  He was beautiful; there was no denying that. His tall, lean physique, his shiny blond hair, and those plump pink lips were all picture-perfect. He had better lips than hers, even when she overlined. It wasn’t fair.

  Alaric batted his long blond eyelashes at her and sighed petulantly. “You’re looking well.” His eyes ran over her hair, her nails, her skin.

  So that’s what was bothering him. Caterina pulled herself to her full height and looked him square in the eye. “Yes. I am. Better than I’ve been in years, in fact.”

  He scowled, a mannerism that had always greatly annoyed her. “Are you going to the Hindman Foundation Gala in two weeks?”

  Her head spun at the sudden change in topic, but she kept herself poised as always. “Yes, of course I am. I never miss it.” The gala was an annual event, and all the usual socialites would be there. The major lifestyle and fashion papers and magazines would be filled with pictures from the event for a few issues afterward. It was a good place to go after a breakup, too: Caterina’s friends called it the “Find Man” Gala because of the number of hookups that happened there.

  Alaric smirked as a group of juniors walked by, talking about skiing in Aspen over the weekend. “Well, then you should know I will be there as well. And for my date, I’m bringing Lizel Falk.”

  The name sounded familiar. Caterina frowned, trying to place it before it came to her. She jerked her gaze back to Alaric. “Lizel Falk? As in, the Australian model?”

  Alaric’s eyes sparked with delight, knowing he had her. “Supermodel, actually.” He gave her a complacent smile; he’d had his teeth whitened over the break. “That won’t be a problem for you, will it?” He put on a faux air of concern and leaned in to graze her chin with one smooth finger. “Being all alone while I’m with her?”

  Fury, loud and hot and powerful, washed over Caterina. Before she could think twice, she heard herself saying, “Who says I’m going to be alone?”

  It was worth it just to see Alaric’s smile fade. “What? Who will you be going with?”

  Caterina’s pulse raced. The only thing worse than her trite little lie would be for Alaric to figure out she was lying. She’d looked completely pathetic and weak, eager for his approval, actually caring what he thought of her. Tucking a lock of hair behind one ear, she shrugged in what she hoped was a gracefully insouciant manner. “Oh, just someone from a very well-connected family. I don’t think he’s ever been near disgusting assorted animal byproducts in his entire life. Not all of us can say the same now, can we, Alaric?” She was purposely hitting him where it hurt. The Konigs were very sensitive about the fact that they made their fortune from commercializing rarely used cow parts. “So you can go Falk yourself. And I’ll bring my own prince.”

  He drew himself up, ugly splotches of red appearing on his cheeks. “Fine. I suppose I’ll see you then.” He turned and stalked off. Caterina could practically see the steam emanating from his ears.

  She smiled to herself for a long moment until reality came seeping back in. Now what? She had to somehow come up with a well-placed boy to take to this thing. There were plenty of options at the school, of course, but…

  But what, Caterina? she asked herself, annoyed. There shouldn’t be any “but.” Just ask one of them to go. She knew no one would deny her.

  Caterina stood there as dozens of eligible boys walked past her, guffawing at jokes their friends were telling, showing off pictures of the new Ferraris they’d gotten for Christmas or Hanukkah, so shiny and perfectly Alaric-like in the uniforms their maids had pressed for them back home. The idea of approaching a single one, let alone allowing him to be her date for an entire evening in the spotlight, exhausted her to the bone. She was tired of the Alaricbots, fresh off the line, each one just like the other, and each one just like his father before him. What she wanted, she realized, her gaze bouncing off each one and going on to the next, was someone… completely… real.

  Her eyes came to rest on Rahul as she thought the last word. He was still standing where she’d left him, simply because she’d asked him to wait and he was someone who was good for his word. His thumbs were moving quickly along his phone screen, and his glasses had slipped to the tip of his nose. He was biting his lower lip so hard, it was a wonder it wasn’t bleeding. His uniform was terribly ill-fitting; it must be at least three years old. One of the buttons on his shirt was hanging on by a thread, but he didn’t seem to have noticed.

  He was, to put it quite bluntly, a mess. Rahul Chopra was not the kind of boy you took to the Hindman Foundation Gala, not if you wanted to reestablish yourself as Queen Cat, not if you wanted to pick up that crown, polish it, and set it back atop your head. Rahul Chopra was all wrong, as ill-fitting as his uniform.

  Caterina found herself walking up to him. “Rahul.”

  His attention snapped to her immediately.

  She took a breath. “I have a proposition for you.”

  CHAPTER 5

  RAHUL

  “Come with me,” Caterina said, heading in the opposite direction of where Rahul needed to go. The wooden double doors leading outside lay a couple of yards ahead of them, beyond a cluster of juniors.

  “What… what about class?” he asked, his feet already picking themselves up and following her across the maroon-and-white checker-tiled floor, even if his brain wasn’t sure yet.

  Caterina smirked at him over her shoulder. “I think you can afford to miss one class. You already have over a 4.0 GPA, don’t you? You’ll get caught back up soon enough.”

  “That’s true,” Rahul mused, pushing his glasses up as he and Caterina neared the end of the hallway. “But what about you?”

  Caterina laughed a little as she circumvented the juniors, pushed the doors open, and headed outside, toward a little picnic bench and table in the distance. It was cold but not snowy, the grass stiff with crystal flakes. “I’ll be okay. Italian is sort of my first language.”

  “Oh.” Rahul glanced at her in the sudden quiet, away from the bustle of the other students. He heard the bell ping softly inside the building as they walked quickly toward the table, signaling the start of the next class, but he already felt far away, removed from it all.

  They sat on the wooden bench, the cold seeping through his uniform pants and into his skin as he watched Caterina curiously. She perched beside him, her skirt swept under her. Setting her textbooks on the table, she took a deep breath, not looking at him.

  All around them the Rosetta campus sat peacefully, still not fully adjusted to being overrun with students again. It felt more like home to Rahul than his own family’s house: the Rocky Mountains in the distance, always signaling west. The stately buildings around campus, including the ballroom with its domed roof where he’d danced with Caterina. The sprawling dorms, closer, that had been his home for most of his life. And here, in front of him on this chilly picnic bench, the only girl he’d ever loved, looking right at him now, as if she were evaluating something.

  Rahul sat up straighter, adjusting his glasses surreptitiously, smoothing his hair back just a touch, wishing it looked more like Alaric’s or Grey’s or really anyone else’s than his own.

  “Do you know what the Hindman Foundation Gala is?” Caterina’s voice was as crisp and cool as the air. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold, and Rahul wanted to immediately give her his blazer too. But he stopped himself. Intuitively he knew Caterina didn’t like to be seen as weak, and him offering her his blazer would definitely be misconstrued as a judgment on her strength.

  “Um, is that like a dance?”

  Caterina winced a bit, and Rahul was sure he’d said the wrong thing. “Yes, but it’s much more than a dance. It’s a society
affair, where all the most influential people come together to celebrate the Hindmans and give their foundation a lot of money and basically parade around their wealth.”

  Rahul knew he shouldn’t ask the next question on his lips, but he couldn’t help it. He was a collector of data, if nothing else, and he had to know. Adjusting his position a bit on the cold wooden bench, he said, “Right. Um… who are the Hindmans, exactly?”

  Caterina stared at him silently, unmovingly, for a long minute. The chill wind picked up a strand of her hair, but she didn’t smooth it back down. Finally, she closed her eyes for just a moment. “This is going to be a lot more challenging than I had thought,” she mumbled, as if she were talking to herself.

  “What is?” Rahul asked, frowning.

  Caterina opened those luminescent brown eyes he’d spent ten minutes and a lifetime staring into that morning. Propping one elbow on the table, she said, “Rahul… the Hindmans are the most connected, most powerful family in the US, and probably among the top five most powerful in the world. People like us always want to know the Hindmans. Surely you’ve heard of them. Paul and Amelia? They have two daughters and a son who go to boarding school in Switzerland? One of their daughters recently launched a fashion line partnering with Chanel, and it’s become iconic. There are memes on the internet about the Hindmans.”

  Rahul wanted to say yes, of course he knew exactly who they were. If he could say the names of the children, that would be extra impressive. This was why he’d told Grey and Leo he thought tiny computers embedded in people’s brains would be a good thing, the technological advance we all didn’t know we needed. Instead, he shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Caterina exhaled slowly. “Okay. Well, never mind that. You’re a quick learner, right? You have a photographic memory?”

  “Eidetic,” Rahul said automatically. “ ‘Eidetic’ is the correct term for exceptional visual recall. But I can also remember other things that aren’t visual for much longer than most people can, yes.”

  Caterina narrowed her eyes. “Right.” Then she straightened her shoulders. “I mentioned a proposition, before.” She nodded her head toward the building they’d left.

  “Yeah.” He’d almost forgotten that, swept up in the trance of being led away by Caterina LaValle, like he’d been in his dreams a million times before. (In his dreams they always ended up playing chess on the green, Caterina laughing as she castled him while he was in check. Which wasn’t even a valid chess move.) “Okay, yes.”

  She frowned. In the distance, a lone winter bird cawed. “ ‘Yes’ what?”

  “Yes to your proposition.”

  A brief look of amusement flickered on her perfect face. “You don’t even know what I’m asking yet.”

  He could see, from her perspective, why she’d find it amusing that he wanted in without more information. But Caterina couldn’t see into his heart. He’d seen her without her mask on. He’d seen the real her no one else knew. And he’d follow that Caterina anywhere, no questions asked.

  Now Rahul leaned forward to rest his elbows on the wooden slats of the picnic table. “Unless you’re going to ask me to murder someone—which I am 99.87 percent sure you’re not, as I don’t think it aligns with your previous actions, which are the most consistent predictors of future behavior—I’m going to say yes.”

  The amusement morphed into a faint smile. If Rahul were a painter, he would spend eons in his room, painting it to get it right. “But don’t you want to hold back a little? Maybe think about something you might want from me in return?”

  She was talking about social bartering, something Rahul would never, ever understand. “But why would I do that?” he found himself saying, instead of keeping it to himself like he’d learned to do with most people. “I want to spend time with you. I want to give you whatever you want. To pretend anything else is the truth would be disingenuous.”

  Caterina studied him, a look between alarm and intrigue on her face. There was a sudden break in the clouds, and a thin, weak beam of winter sunlight hit her brown hair, dappling it with gold. “You’re quite possibly the oddest person I’ve ever met.”

  Rahul nodded. The way she said it, as a matter of fact rather than judgment, didn’t embarrass him. “I’ve heard that sentiment expressed in much meaner ways.”

  Caterina leaned forward. “But wait, what you said just before. You don’t hold back the truth… ever? You just say what you mean. You never lie.”

  “Well… I would like to lie to preserve people’s feelings. To protect people I care about. But things don’t always work out like that.” Rahul shrugged and polished his glasses with his tie before popping them back on his nose.

  He’d barely finished speaking when Caterina said, “Go to the Hindman Foundation Gala with me.”

  And his eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

  CATERINA

  He sat there with his eyebrows invisible for a long time. Finally, Caterina reached forward and touched his hand. He reacted as if she’d pressed a live wire into his skin.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, frowning. “What’s the matter?” He looked ill.

  “It’s—I’m—so, you’re saying you want me to be your date. To the biggest event in socialite land.”

  Caterina shook her head and tapped her fingernails on the hard cover of her Italian textbook. “No. Not my date. My… escort, or companion, I suppose. I’m trying to prove a point to someone.”

  “Alaric,” Rahul said. “I saw him talking to you. He got that look on his face he always gets when he’s trying to make someone feel inferior.”

  Caterina went still. “What look?”

  Rahul waved a hand. “I don’t know how to describe it. There’s a little smirk at one corner of his mouth, and he uses his height in a certain way, looming over the person.” He shrugged and shifted his feet on the stiff grass. “I’m not the best at reading people, in case you haven’t noticed, though, so I’m probably wrong.”

  Caterina shook her head slowly. “Au contraire,” she said, “you might be the only one who’s ever noticed that.” Why hadn’t she ever noticed that? She’d gone out with him for two years. That was plenty of time for her to realize he was manipulating her or others, trying to make them feel less than. Had she been so focused on the superficial—his looks, his well-placed family, the presents he bought her—that she’d forgotten to pay attention to Alaric the person? The idea didn’t make her feel very good about herself, so Caterina quickly changed the subject. “In any case, do you think you could keep Saturday the fourth free? That’s in two weeks.”

  “Well, sure,” Rahul agreed immediately. “But, um, I don’t know how to dance. And you might have noticed that I’m not exactly gala material.”

  “I have noticed,” Caterina replied as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out without looking at it, swiped to silence it, and slipped it back into her pocket. Whoever it was could wait. “And that’s why I need to tell you the condition of my proposition. I’m going to give you a makeover so you’ll fit in better. So Alaric can see I’ve moved onward and upward.” So you won’t embarrass me and completely negate what I’m trying to accomplish, she didn’t add. There was no reason to be cruel.

  Rahul sat up straighter, tugging at his tie. “A makeover? What, like, My Fair Lady or something?”

  “Exactly like that. Hair, fashion, social training, all of it. Now, we only have two weeks, so it won’t be quite as thorough as I’d like, but it’s a start. As long as you leave the talking mostly to me, we’ll be fine. What do you say?”

  He didn’t hesitate even a moment. “Yes. I still say yes.” Then, pausing to look down at himself—his horribly ill-fitting uniform, his messily done tie, his untied shoelaces—he said, “When do we start?”

  RAHUL

  As he watched her walk away, back into the building in time for the next class, Rahul couldn’t help but smile. Caterina LaValle had asked him to the Hindman Foundation Gala. Not as a date, but still. He’d get to
spend time with her, not just at the event in two weeks, but in the intervening time as well.

  Not to mention, her training him could only mean good things. He’d be able to fit into her social circle better—he’d be able to fit into his own social circle better. No more wondering what his friends were talking about, or if he still wondered, maybe he’d know when to speak and when to hold his tongue. He wouldn’t hurt people like he’d hurt DE that morning. She’d forgive him soon enough, he knew—his friends always did—but he didn’t want to be in a position to require their forgiveness anymore. He wanted to be more attuned to their needs, more careful of their feelings.

  With Caterina’s help, he could be more polished. A neater, classier version of himself. Maybe if he fit in really well with all of Caterina’s friends at the gala, she’d want to date him for real. He could be Alaric’s equal. Hell, with his personality, he could be Alaric’s superior. He’d never lie to Caterina or cheat on her like Alaric had done.

  Rahul got up from the bench and walked toward the towering mathematics building in the distance. For the first time since he’d been enrolled at Rosetta Academy, he whistled as he walked.

  CATERINA

  13 Days until the Hindman Gala

  She didn’t like to think of it as spying. Spying was what palace maids did in the old days at the bidding of their mistresses. Spying was what undercover agents did in exchange for a paltry paycheck. Spying was beneath her. Caterina was merely… observing Rahul in his natural habitat. Nothing more, nothing less.

  She sat in the darkened observatory and planetarium at the top of the natural sciences building, not paying the slightest attention to Dr. Patton, the astronomy teacher, prattle on in her monotone about some celestial oddity or other that was playing out on the large domed screen above Caterina and the rest of the students. Normally, she wouldn’t be able to keep her eyes open, staring at the stars and the meteors and other space debris from a million miles away, but that was okay. Tonight she was here under cover of the open invitation issued by the astronomy club—of which Rahul was a part, naturally—for all the Rosetta students to come marvel at “a presentation chronicling the wonders of the heavens above” with them, according to the flyer. There were about two dozen students present, which was perfect. Caterina arrived late, once the lights had been turned out, and took a seat in the back so as not to catch Rahul’s eye.