Chapter 32

C HAPTER 32

DAYS UNTIL THE CORONATION: THREE

Right now, Richard Graves is my least favorite person in all of England. No, Great Britain. Scratch that, Theo's press secretary is my least favorite person in the entire United Kingdom. (And I'm definitely not confused about the difference between those three places… just don't quiz me on it.)

"What are you doing here?" I ask as the car door shuts behind Naomi. I turn to look out the rear window and see my mom and Brooke getting into the second car. Great. Maybe Naomi and I are about to be Taken, and the reason Theo is getting such negative press is because his secretary has been busy plotting our deaths instead of feeding puff pieces to the tabloids.

"I am always in service to the Crown," Graves says, and I'm reminded that the Crown and the monarch aren't necessarily the same thing. He could be here for a dozen different reasons, and Theo might not even know about it.

"Where are we going?"

"Don't worry about it. Everything has been arranged," Graves says.

"What if you're trying to kidnap us?" I ask dramatically, and I feel somewhat better when Graves scowls.

"Why would I want to do that?" he asks.

"Because you hate me!"

"I don't think we have to worry about our safety," Naomi says as her eyes grow wide.

"Why not?"

She nods out the window. I look up and see the gates of Buckingham Palace. "Because everything the light touches is your kingdom."

I elbow her in the stomach.

"I'm serious. Look." She points to the mounds of flowers and stuffed animals leaning against the wrought-iron gates. The piles are so deep and sprawling that they nearly spill into the street. I assume they're for the late queen, but then I see several posters with faces on them. Theo, Victoria, and Henry, obviously, but I'm not prepared to see posters with my face, at least one of which features a hand-drawn tiara on top of my senior yearbook photo.

"What the hell?" I blurt without thinking. They couldn't have used a better picture?

I crane my neck as the car cruises past the palace. Either I actually died on the island, or I'm trapped in a surreal daydream.

I press my palm to my forehead to check if my fever has returned. "How did I go from being called a gold digger and a crazy stalker to… this?" I direct Naomi's attention to a poster with my and Theo's faces superimposed over a picture of London. It reads MY KING AND QUEEN .

"People love a love story! Especially one with a wedding and a happy ending!" Naomi squeals.

Butterflies fill my stomach. I turn to Graves, who is still glaring at me. "Are Theo and I really married?"

"No," he says quickly, but before I can sort out how I feel about that, he adds, "Probably not."

"You don't know yet?" I gape at him.

"We've been a bit busy," he says tightly.

Naomi leans forward in her seat to get a better look at him. "But if they are married, she's about to become the queen consort."

"We are figuring it out, and you will stay in London until we do," he says.

"When can I see Theo?" I ask.

"The King does what he wants," Graves says acidly.

I flinch. So, it's entirely Theo's choice not to see me. Cool. Cool cool cool. That's fine.

The ring in my pocket digs uncomfortably into my hip.

We pull to a stop, and a set of solid black gates opens, allowing the car to pass through the throngs of reporters waiting on the street.

"We've arrived." Graves steps out of the car on the driver's side, and the door swings shut behind him. When Naomi's door opens, she yells "One minute!" and closes it firmly.

She turns to me. "Don't listen to him. I'm sure there's a reason why Theo hasn't seen you yet."

"Like what?" I ask doubtfully.

"Maybe there's some sort of national emergency we don't know about?"

I flop back into my seat, a nagging feeling eating at my stomach. "Isn't it weird that the press is writing negative stuff about the King just a couple of days after he came back from the dead and less than a week before his coronation? He should be untouchable!"

"I'm telling you, the press here is bizarre."

"Okay, but like, why does Henry get a ten-minute news segment about playing soccer—sorry, ‘football'—with orphans, while Theo gets dragged for missing a phone call from the queen of Norway?"

"The press always goes easy on Henry."

"Because of the dimple?" I ask.

Naomi laughs. "What else could it be?"

"The curls?"

"The combination of the two is lethal," she confirms as the car door swings open. She looks at me over her shoulder before climbing out. "Don't tell Levi I said that."

"I would never."

I follow Naomi out of the car and into the gray humidity. I can practically feel my red-orange hair frizz around me as my eyes lift to a three-story white stucco Regency-style town house. It's not quite a palace, but it is stunning.

"No way," Naomi says in a hushed voice.

"Where are we?"

Graves clears his throat. "Welcome to Clarence House. This is where you'll be staying."

Clarence House is a property owned by the Crown Estate that sits empty eleven months of the year and is only used for guided tours in the month of August. It is beautiful, full of history, and, as far as I can tell, a massive waste of resources.

It's also my temporary home, so I can't complain too much.

I hold my breath as the four of us walk through the columned entrance of the house and into the ground floor and its maze of formal rooms. Knickknacks on every surface have been swept to the side to make room for gift baskets and bouquets. I open the first few Get Well Soon cards I see and don't recognize any of the names, so I stop reading the messages and instead pick out nuts and chocolate as I pass through rooms full of fancy antique furniture. There are golden candelabras on the walls, a dizzying number of clocks, heavy busts on side tables, lamps everywhere, moody paintings of trees and geese, and shelves filled with books whose pages have probably never seen the light of day.

"I bet Theo wants you to move in permanently," Naomi whispers as we climb the steps to the second floor.

I feel a brief shock to my system. "I doubt he even knows I'm here."

"Don't pretend like you haven't thought about what it'd be like," she continues after my mom claims a small room on the second floor and closes the door behind her, announcing that she needs a nap.

Ignoring my best friend, I poke my head into another small room, at the end of the hall. I'm about to call dibs on it when Brooke hollers down to us from the third floor. "Wren, your room is up here!"

Naomi and I race up the stairs, and I stop short at a closed door with a piece of paper taped to it. Written on the paper is my name in familiar script: Wren Wheeler.

After months of staring at my marriage certificate, this handwriting is seared into my brain.

At the very least, Theo knows where to find me.