Chapter Three

@thaddeusaparkLiving it up like royalty at Windsor Castle tonight. Huge thanks to Their Majesties King Alexander and Queen Helene, Her Royal Highness Princess Mary, and my very special new expat friend…

—Instagram user @thaddeusapark, below a selfie of Thaddeus Park in a tuxedo, the background dark and indistinct, and his left thumb and pointer finger pressed together to make a finger heart, 18 December 2023

"THADDEUS IS USING YOU, YOU know," says Tibby as we cross an empty state room with red fabric walls. Though it isn't dusty, it looks like it hasn't been used in years, and our footsteps sound hollow against the thin carpet.

"I sort of worked that out for myself," I say as she pulls on the frame of a giant ornate mirror, which swings open to reveal another lavish state room—this one with green walls, gilded furniture, and massive portraits hanging in gold frames. "Thanks for jumping in back there. I wasn't sure what he was going to do."

"He wouldn't have tried anything," she says, even though she can't possibly be certain. "He's the son of the American president, and surely someone's taught him manners. But you have ten times the number of followers he does, and he clearly wanted a candid photo to boost his own profile. May I have my mobile back now?"

I hand it over, even though I'm still hopeful Kit might call again. "Is it always going to be like this? Is everyone I meet going to want something from me?"

"Yes," says Tibby, and the word sinks to the pit of my stomach like a brick. "You might get lucky and meet the rare individual who's interested in you as a person, or who believes you can't offer them anything they don't already have, but most people are always going to want something from you. You simply have to be careful who you trust."

I sigh inwardly. A year ago, no one knew who I was, and only a handful of my classmates even bothered to talk to me on a semi-regular basis. Now millions of people follow an Instagram account I don't even personally use, and based on the endless sea of comments I saw the one and only time I explored Tibby's handiwork, a disconcerting number seem to think this means they know exactly who I am. And the thought of so many strangers having a fully formed opinion of me still makes me break out in a cold sweat.

We step into an area I recognize now—the antechamber to the Windsor throne room. I can hear the faint murmur of voices filtering in from the Waterloo Chamber beyond, and I stop beside a bust of one of the Georges. "Do I have to go back to the party? I have a headache, and I lost my shoes hours ago."

"Your shoes are on their way to the royal cobbler, where they'll either be fixed or burned to ash. I haven't decided yet. But you've done your time tonight," adds Tibby, angling away from the crowded ballroom and instead leading me toward the secret passageway into the throne room. "As long as you sit still long enough for a picture while the jeweler removes your tiara, we can return to your apartment now."

The throne room isn't completely empty, but I only have to smile and say a few words before we escape into the Grand Reception Room and the more restricted areas of Windsor Castle beyond. It's a relief to be away from all those curious stares, and I drop my aching shoulders as we head back toward the private apartments.

"Are you coming to Sandringham for Christmas?" I say, hiking up the hem of my gown so it doesn't drag on the floor. My bare feet are freezing, but I'm too worn-out to care.

"Sandringham?" says Tibby. "Why on earth would I spend Christmas there?"

"Queen Victoria's your ancestor, isn't she? Doesn't that make you family?"

"If anything more distant than first cousins was still considered family, half of England's aristocratic marriages wouldn't exist," she says. "I'm spending Christmas at our country home in Kent, and for the New Year, I'll be in the Seychelles."

"Oh." I don't expect her to work during the holidays, of course, but the thought of Tibby not being there to cram my schedule full of lessons and fittings and appearances for three whole weeks is both daunting and exhilarating. "I'll miss you."

She gives me a strange look, though there's a softness to it that's almost foreign on her sharp features. "I'll be back before you know it. And in the meantime, you'll get to learn how to hunt and ski, and you'll have plenty of empty hours to spend with Maisie."

"Absolutely none of those things sounds appealing," I say as we approach my apartment. "Kit's coming, though."

"Is he? Should I make sure certain necessities are added to your luggage?"

It takes me a beat to realize what she means, and my cheeks instantly grow hot. "No," I say firmly. "We're not—no."

"Better safe than sorry," she hums, pushing open the door. And while my face still burns, the fact that Tibby isn't treating me like I'm about to break—especially when everyone else in my life, Kit included, avoids the topic completely—almost makes up for the humiliating breach of privacy. Almost.

The royal jeweler appears in record time to take possession of the Queen Florence tiara, but Tibby makes him wait a solid ten minutes while she figures out the perfect angle for Instagram. Even though the tiara is technically mine—Queen Florence, my great-grandmother, willed it to me when I was a baby—it's kept in a vault somewhere, or maybe the Tower of London, where the Crown Jewels are guarded. Either way, I won't see it again until the next state banquet, or whatever future event requires me to wear a tiara, and despite my tender scalp, I'm sorry to see it go.

Tibby sticks around only long enough to make sure my dress is hung up properly, and as soon as she leaves, I wrap myself in a fuzzy blanket, flop onto the antique sofa, and open my laptop. Rather than scour British news sites—and possibly, by now, CNN and various popular celebrity blogs—for commentary about my supposed flirtation with Thaddeus, I open VidChat and click my mother's icon.

Two rings echo throughout my sitting room, which is surprisingly cozy tonight as a fire crackles beneath the elaborate mantelpiece, and suddenly my mother's smiling face appears on-screen. Her auburn curls are loose, a sure sign she's not in her studio for once, and I notice a large abstract landscape behind her—the one that hangs in her dining room.

"Evie! How did it go?" she says, and while sometimes she's distracted and agitated, especially when her doctors are adjusting her medication, tonight she's clear-eyed and fully focused on me. "I saw the photos online—you looked stunning."

I grimace. "It was fine, I guess. If you've seen the pictures, then you already know what happened."

"You mean when the president's son grabbed you?" she says. "What happened there?"

I explain everything, from my broken shoe to how late Tibby and I were, to my encounter with Thaddeus in the library, and by the time I'm through, my mother sighs.

"Missteps happen, Evie," she says. "Especially when you're in the public eye so often. You're all right, though? Your ankle is okay, and he didn't…?"

I shake my head. "He didn't touch me, except to stop me from falling on my face. My ankle's a little sore, but it'll be fine. I just…" It's not easy, is it? Having to be two people at once. "I'm not good at being perfect all the time."

"No one is, sweetheart," she says. "And you haven't had much of a chance to practice, either. You'll get better at the details as you go."

I'm not sure I want to, though. But while my mother broke up with Alexander, the love of her life, to avoid becoming queen, she seems to derive no end of pride and pleasure from watching me take my place as his daughter, no matter how bad I am at it.

"You haven't seen anyone lurking near the house, have you?" I say after a beat, eager to change the subject. "Alexander said the palace is still getting daily questions about you from that reporter."

"The one who's writing a biography of me?" she says. "No, security hasn't seen anything suspicious, and neither have I. But a friend said she received a strange phone call asking about the family, so it's likely only a matter of time before he figures out where I am."

I scowl. "If anything happens—"

"I'll be sure to let your father know immediately," she says. "Though honestly, Evie, sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be in my best interest to work with…what's his name?"

"Ryan," I say bitterly. "Ryan Crewes."

"Ryan Crewes," she echoes. "If he's going to write my story, I might as well have some say in it."

While she has a point, the events of my childhood don't exactly paint her in a positive light. I have no memory of it, but my mother was arrested for trying to drown me in a bathtub when I was four, in the midst of a psychotic break due to undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. In her own unwell mind, she was trying to protect me from my stepmother, Helene—who, as far as I know, hadn't actually threatened me. But my mother's mental illness lied to her constantly. It still does, on her bad days, even with medication and treatment. While I know the public will draw their own conclusions with or without the real story, I don't want to see her words twisted into something monstrous in order to sell more books. And I wouldn't put anything past Ryan Crewes or the other so-called royal biographers who've been circling us for months.

"Maybe you can work with someone you've handpicked," I suggest. In a few years, once the sensational headlines that ran for weeks over the summer have faded in public memory. "But for now—"

The sharp rap of knuckles on wood ricochets through my sitting room, and I jump, twisting around to glare at the offending door. My mother leans toward the camera, her frown deepening.

"Do you need to get that?" she says, and I shake my head.

"Whoever it is will go awa—"

The urgent knocks quickly turn into demanding thuds, and I hear a muffled voice through the wood.

"Evan, you better bloody be in there. I need to talk to you."

I groan inwardly. "Mom, it's Maisie," I say. Out of all the people in Windsor tonight, she's one of the few I can't ignore. "Could I—"

"Of course, sweetheart. I need to start dinner anyway," she says. "Call me back when you can."

After closing my laptop, I mutter a few deeply unkind things about my half sister as I throw off my blanket and climb to my feet. The fire crackles cheerfully, its warmth fighting the castle chill, and I yank open the door that leads into the hallway. "Whatever this is about, it better be—"

"The head of palace security cornered Daddy after dinner," says my sister as she sweeps into the room, the hem of her sapphire gown billowing behind her. "One of the protection officers stationed on the reserve in Kenya called. Benedict is missing."

It takes me a beat to fully absorb what she's saying, and I stare at her, stunned. "Wait—what?"

Maisie rolls her eyes. "Benedict," she says slowly, "our traitorous swine of a cousin, is gone. Absent. In the wind. Vanished—"

"I know what ‘missing' means," I say in a strangled voice. "How did he slip past his protection officers? Wasn't the whole point of Alexander sending him to the reserve to keep an eye on him?" And to keep him away from Maisie and me. But five months and thousands of miles aren't enough to erase my memory of the look on Ben's face when he realized he was caught, and a shiver runs through me.

I'm going to destroy you.

His Royal Highness Prince Benedict of York was the first member of the family to treat me with any decency after I arrived in London, but he was also the one who leaked a video of me pushing Jasper Cunningham off a balcony after the sleazy asshole tried to rape me. The footage was edited, of course—Jasper and Ben had drugged my drink, and I couldn't even walk straight, let alone shove an athletic nineteen-year-old hard enough for him to fall to his death. But Ben made the entire world believe it was me, and even after untangling the truth, I still have no idea why.

"Uncle Nicholas is trying to track him down," says Maisie as she begins to pace with the energy of a restless raccoon. "But Benedict has plenty of friends, and he could be anywhere by now."

"We live in the twenty-first century. Someone has to know where he is," I argue, fighting the urge to pace, too.

"I've already scoured the gossip sites and social media," says Maisie. "There's no sign of him."

My hands start to sting, and with vague bewilderment, I realize my nails have dug into my palms, causing eight dark red crescent marks in my pale skin. The color is nearly identical to the ink Ben used for the note he sent me shortly after he was shipped off to the reserve, and even though I haven't looked at it in months, I remember every word.

No matter where I am in the world, I still know your secrets. Enjoy this while it lasts.

"What are the odds he'll disappear for good and leave us alone?" I say, rubbing my hands together to soothe them.

"Exceptionally low, unless we're lucky and he's been eaten by a lion," says Maisie. "Benedict's never been one to take blows to his pride lightly, and I guarantee you he won't go quietly."

From anyone else, I'd take this dramatic proclamation with a grain of salt. But Maisie knows Ben better than anyone, and while she's prone to theatrics—something about being a princess, probably—I saw enough of Ben's dark side over the summer to believe her.

"Do you think he'll tell everyone what really happened?" I say, almost too afraid to suggest it. No use giving the universe any ideas, after all.

For a split second, I see a flicker of very real fear in Maisie's eyes. While there's nothing Ben can do to me that he hasn't already tried, he could still destroy Maisie's life with bone-chilling ease—because while I might not have been the one who pushed Jasper to his death, she was. And even though it was an accident, even though she was acting in self-defense, if the truth gets out—if Ben goes public with what really happened that night, and everything we did to cover it up—there's no telling what the fallout might be. But I do know, without a sliver of doubt, that it would be catastrophic—not just to me and Maisie, but to the entire royal family and the monarchy itself.

"He won't," she says at last, as if her stubbornness alone can make it so. "He has no way of proving it, not after we deleted the video."

"But he's third in line to the throne," I point out, though we're both keenly aware of that nasty little fact. "He has credibility on his side, and even if the palace denies it, some people will still believe him."

"Let them," she says coldly. "There are some who believe I died at birth and was replaced with another baby, you know, but their conspiracy theories are just that."

This is news to me—weird news, but still news—and I blink. "But this is true, Maisie. And if he somehow managed to copy the video—"

A ding echoes from inside her clutch, and without waiting for me to finish, she pulls out her phone. Her pinched expression grows even more haggard at the sight of whatever's on her screen, and she turns toward the door. "I can't stay. I only wanted to warn you."

"Thanks," I say dryly. "I'm sure the thought of Ben peeking through my window will lull me to sleep tonight."

Maisie gives me a withering look, though it's tempered by the way she tugs anxiously on one of her strawberry-blond waves. "Don't be daft. You have curtains."

"That's not—" I begin, but there's no point. I study her. "Are you okay?"

"What do you think?" she says waspishly, dropping her hand. "Not only has Benedict slipped his lead, but he's also got a massive vendetta against both of us, and we have no idea what he's going to try next. How could I possibly be—"

"I'm not talking about Ben," I say, glancing at her phone. "Have you heard from Gia since she got back from Spain?"

Instantly what little warmth lingers between us turns to ice. "I need to go," says Maisie. "If Benedict shows up at your window tonight, do let him know that I don't care if we share blood—I will turn the Tower back into a working prison if he puts even a toe out of line."

"Also a comforting thought," I mutter, but if Maisie hears me, she doesn't react. Instead, she yanks open the door and disappears into the hallway, leaving me on my own with the weight of every terrible thing Ben could do to us hanging over me, and the knowledge that whatever it is, he will relish the carnage.