Majesty

by Katharine McGee

  When Queen Adelaide saw Robert, she hesitated. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  The chamberlain rose to his feet. “Your Majesty, please join us. We were just discussing the wedding.”

  Adelaide turned to Beatrice, a new warmth in her voice. “Have you and Teddy set a date?”

  “Actually…I’m not sure I’m ready to get married.” Beatrice shot her mom a pleading glance. “It feels too fast. Don’t you think we should wait until we’ve had time to grieve?”

  “Oh, Beatrice.” Her mom sank onto the couch with a heavy sigh. “We’ll never be done grieving. You know that,” she said softly. “It might sting less with time, but that doesn’t mean we’ll ever stop feeling the loss. We’ll just get a little better at carrying it.”

  Across the room, Robert nodded in vigorous agreement. Beatrice tried to ignore him.

  “We could all use a source of joy, of celebration, right now. Not just America, but our family.” Adelaide’s eyes gleamed with yearning. She had loved her husband with every fiber of her being, and now that he was gone, she seemed to have pinned all that emotion onto Beatrice—as if Beatrice and Teddy’s love story was the only source of hope she had left.

  “We need this wedding now more than ever,” Robert chimed in.

  Beatrice glanced helplessly from one of them to the other. “I get that, but—I mean—Teddy and I haven’t known each other very long.”

  Queen Adelaide shifted. “Beatrice. Are you having second thoughts about marrying Teddy?”

  Beatrice looked down at the engagement ring on her left hand. She’d been wearing it all month, out of inertia more than anything. When Teddy had first given it to her, it had felt wrong, but at some point she must have gotten used to it. It proved that you could get used to anything, really, in time.

  The ring was beautiful, a solitaire diamond on a white-gold band. It had originally belonged to Queen Thérèse over a hundred years ago, though it had been polished so expertly that any damage was hidden beneath all the sparkle.

  A little like Beatrice herself.

  She realized that Robert and her mom were both waiting for her reply. “I just…I miss Dad.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. I know.” A tear escaped her mom’s eye, trailing mascara forlornly down her cheek.

  Queen Adelaide never wept—at least, not where anyone could see. Even at the funeral she’d locked her emotions behind a pale, resolute stoicism. She’d always told Beatrice that a queen had to shed her tears in private, so that when it came time to face the nation, she could be a source of strength. The sight of that tear was as startling and surreal as if one of the marble statues in the palace gardens had begun to weep.

  Beatrice hadn’t been able to cry since her father’s death, either.

  She wanted to cry. She knew it was unnatural, yet something in her seemed to have irreparably fractured, and her eyes simply didn’t form tears anymore.

  Adelaide wrapped an arm around her daughter to pull her close. Beatrice instinctively tipped her head onto her mom’s shoulder, the way she had as a child. Yet it didn’t soothe her like it used to.

  Suddenly, all she noticed was how frail her mom’s bones felt beneath her cashmere sweater. Queen Adelaide was trembling with suppressed grief. She seemed fragile—and, for the first time Beatrice could remember, she seemed old.

  It splintered what was left of Beatrice’s resolve.

  She tried, one last time, to imagine being with Connor: telling him that she still loved him, that she wanted to run away from her life and be with him, no matter the consequences. But she simply couldn’t picture it. It was as if the future she’d daydreamed about had died with her father.

  Or maybe it had died with the old Beatrice, the one who’d been a princess, not a queen.

  “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll talk to Teddy.”

  She could do this, for her family, for her country. She could marry Teddy and give America the fairy-tale romance it so desperately needed.

  She could let go of Beatrice the girl, and give herself over to Beatrice the queen.

  Nina Gonzalez tensed as she drew a wooden block from the increasingly precarious tower. Everyone at the table held their breath. With excruciating care, she placed the Jenga piece atop the makeshift structure.

  Somehow, it held.

  “Yes!” Nina lifted her hands, letting out a whoop of victory—just as a pair of blocks slid off the stack and clattered to the table. “Looks like I spoke too soon,” she amended with a laugh.

  Rachel Greenbaum, who lived down the hall from Nina, swept the fallen blocks toward her. “Look, you got FIND A HAT and CELL BLOCK TANGO!”

  They were playing with King’s College’s famous “Party Jenga” set, covered in red Sharpie. It was the same as regular Jenga, except each block was inscribed with a different command—SHOTSKI, KARAOKE, BUTTERFINGERS—and everyone had to follow the rules of whatever blocks they knocked down. When Nina had asked how old the Jenga set was, no one knew.

  It was the last weekend of spring break, and Nina’s friends were hanging out in Ogden, the café and lounge area beneath the fine arts building. Because of its location, Ogden mostly attracted the theater kids, which had always surprised Nina, since it served cookies for free.

  “FIND A HAT is easy. You just wear some object as if it’s a hat,” explained their other friend Leila Taghdisi. Nina obediently folded a paper napkin into a triangle before setting it on her head.

  “And for CELL BLOCK TANGO, you have to leave your phone out for the rest of the game so we can all read your texts.” Leila shot Nina an apologetic glance. Her friends knew how private Nina was about her personal life—and her relationship with the royal family.

  But Nina had resolved that this semester she would be normal. So, like any normal college student, she pulled out her phone and set it on the table.

  Rachel sighed. “I can’t believe our first day of spring quarter is on Monday. I’m nowhere near ready for the start of classes.”

  “I don’t know, I’m kind of glad to be back.” Nina was actually excited about school again, now that she could walk around campus without being tailed by paparazzi. She still garnered a whisper here or there—still occasionally saw her fellow students looking at her for a beat too long, their brows furrowed in confusion, as if they thought they’d met her but couldn’t remember where.

  But it was a massive improvement over the nightmare she’d been living earlier this year, when she was dating Prince Jefferson.

  People had remarkably short memories for this sort of thing. And after the earth-shattering, world-altering news of the king’s death, Nina’s brief relationship with Jeff was the last thing on anyone’s mind. The world had clearly forgotten her and moved on, to Nina’s immense relief.

  “Not me. I never wanted to leave Virginia Beach,” Leila chimed in. “If we were still there, we’d be out on the sand right now, watching the sunset and eating Nina’s addictive guacamole.”

  “It’s my mamá’s recipe. The secret is in the garlic,” Nina explained.

  She was so grateful that Rachel had dragged her on that trip. It was nothing like the vacations Nina had gone on as a guest of the Washingtons: the rental house had been run-down, with no air-conditioning, and she’d had to sleep on a sofa in the living room. Yet she’d loved it. Sitting there with the other girls on her hall, drinking cheap beer and telling stories over a beach bonfire, had felt infinitely more satisfying than all the five-star royal travel.

  “Sadly, I can’t offer you guacamole.” Jayne, another of their friends, emerged from the café’s kitchen, balancing a tray in her oven mitts. “But these might help.”

  The three girls immediately tore into the cookies. “Have I mentioned how glad I am that you work here?” Nina asked.

  “Instead of at the library with you?” Jayne and Nina were part of t
he same work-study program, which required them to get jobs on campus in exchange for the funding of their scholarships.

  “Your baking talents would be wasted at the library. These are delicious,” Nina replied through a mouthful of cookie. Her mamá would have scolded her for talking with her mouth full, but she wasn’t at home right now—or at a stuffy royal reception, either.

  Jayne set the cookies on the counter before pulling up a chair. She didn’t bother taking off her school-issued apron, which was printed with the mascot of King’s College: a knight in a shining silver helmet. “That’s me, the gourmet chef of slice-and-bake.”

  Nina’s phone, still at the center of the table, flashed with a new text. Rachel eagerly snatched at it, then slid the phone over. “So far, your texts are boring.”

  It was Nina’s mom. Are you coming over for dinner sometime soon? I’ll make paella!

  Nina’s parents, Julie and Isabella, lived in a redbrick townhome a few miles away. It was a grace-and-favor house: a property that belonged to the royal family and was leased rent-free to those who served them—in this case, Nina’s mamá Isabella, who had once worked as the late king’s chamberlain and was now Minister of the Treasury. Nina tried not to be bothered by the fact that Sam’s family, Jeff’s family, owned the house she’d grown up in.

  In the aftermath of her breakup with Jeff, Nina had spent a lot of time at home. It was just so comforting, eating her parents’ cooking and sleeping in her childhood bed. Avoiding the curious glances of her college classmates.

  But she had more friends now, had carved out a place for herself. She no longer felt a desperate need to escape.

  Thanks, Mom, but I’ll stay on campus for now, she typed in reply. Love you!

  Rachel crumbled the remains of her cookie over a napkin. “Next time we should sneak in a bottle of wine, make this a drinking game.”

  “You know I can’t drink on the job,” Jayne protested.

  “You can’t get caught drinking on the job. There’s a difference,” Rachel said cheekily, and everyone laughed.

  They kept on playing, the Jenga tower growing increasingly, dangerously high. Rachel knocked over a tile labeled FOREIGN AUDITION, which apparently meant that for the rest of the game, she needed to speak in an accent. Undeterred, she launched into a story about a guy she’d recently met, her accent veering wildly between Eastern European and French.

  Nina stretched her arms overhead. She felt tired, but in a lazy, contented way.

  “Anyway, he just texted to ask me out,” Rachel was saying.

  “Accent!” Jayne scolded.

  “My apologies,” Rachel corrected, in the most atrocious Cockney voice Nina had ever heard. “So, do you guys think I should say yes?”

  She held out her phone, its plastic case covered in cartoon pineapples. The other girls obediently leaned forward to study the profile picture: an artsy black-and-white shot of a guy whose lip was pierced in at least six places.

  “He seems pretty different from Logan,” Nina ventured, naming Rachel’s ex-boyfriend.

  “Exactly!” Rachel had dropped the accent, but this time no one admonished her. “Different is what I’m looking for right now. You should know the feeling, after what happened with you and Jeff.”

  Nina stiffened, though some reluctant part of her acknowledged the truth in Rachel’s words.

  She’d met the royal twins over a decade ago, when her mamá began working as the king’s chamberlain. She and Princess Samantha had been best friends ever since, as close as sisters.

  Then, last year, Nina had started secretly dating Sam’s brother. It had worked so well when it was just the two of them—but once the rest of the world found out, she’d become the target of nationwide abuse.

  That was the thing about royalty: it was as polarizing as a magnet. For years Nina had watched people pass judgment on Sam without even knowing her, instantly deciding that they either hated or adored her, that they wanted nothing to do with her, or that they would use her for their own ends.

  Once Nina dated Jeff, the same thing had happened to her.

  She’d tried to ignore the ugly online comments and paparazzi’s catcalls. She’d told herself that she could handle it all, that Jeff was worth it. Until his ex-girlfriend Daphne had confronted her, revealing that she had orchestrated the abuse: she’d planted a photographer outside Nina’s dorm room and sold their relationship to the tabloids.

  When Nina tried to talk to Jeff about it, he’d taken Daphne’s side.

  She’d seen him only once since the breakup, from across the room at his father’s funeral. Then the Washingtons had left for Sulgrave, and Nina had finished out her winter quarter and gone to Virginia Beach, trying valiantly to wipe Jeff from her memory. Though it was pretty hard to forget your ex-boyfriend when he was your best friend’s brother—and the most famous man in the country.

  “I’m sorry, Nina,” Rachel went on. “But we both need to branch out from that frat-boy crowd. Just think of all the types of guys we haven’t even begun to explore! Musicians, upperclassmen…” She cast a pleading glance at the other girls, who hurried to chime in.

  “Those cute TAs who bike here from the grad quad,” Leila offered.

  “Or artistic writer guys,” Jayne exclaimed. “Like the ones you’ll meet in your journalism class!”

  “I’m not taking journalism so that I can meet guys,” Nina reminded them.

  “Of course not,” Rachel said easily. “You’re taking journalism so that I can meet guys.”

  Nina snorted. “Fine,” she conceded. “I’ll try to branch out, whatever that means.”

  “I’m just saying you should put yourself back out there, go to a party with us every now and then. Come on, Nina,” Rachel pleaded. “Your new look is too good to be wasted on the library.”

  Nina brushed her fingers through the ends of her newly short hair, which now fell to just above her shoulders. Her head felt curiously light without the weight of all those tresses. She’d done it on impulse after the breakup: she had needed, desperately, to change something, and this was as drastic a change as she could make short of getting another tattoo.

  Now when Nina looked in the mirror, she found a new and startling version of herself. The bones of her face had become more prominent, her brown eyes gleaming brighter than before. She looked older, stronger.

  The Nina who’d spent years pining after Jefferson—who’d contorted herself into someone she didn’t recognize, hoping to win acceptance as his girlfriend—was gone. And this new, fiercer Nina knew better than to get her heart broken by anyone. Even a prince.

  When her phone buzzed with an incoming call, Nina assumed it was one of her parents, until she looked over and saw Samantha’s name. She pulled it quickly into her lap.

  Rachel’s eyes cut toward her. “Everything okay?”

  “Sorry, I need to take this.” Nina rose to her feet, shrugging into her denim jacket, and headed out the double doors of the café.

  “Sam. How are you?” She immediately winced at the question. Of course Sam wasn’t doing well; she was grieving.

  “Tired. I’m ready to be home.” The princess’s tone was normal—brave, even—but Nina knew her well enough to hear the emotion behind it. Sam wasn’t nearly as tough as she pretended to be.

  “When do you get back?” Nina asked, tucking her phone into her shoulder.

  “Actually, we’re on the road now.”

  Nina hated how her mind fixed on that we. She imagined Jeff sitting next to his twin sister, hearing Sam’s half of the conversation.

  “Jeff is here, but he’s asleep,” Sam added, guessing her friend’s thoughts. “With headphones on.”

  “I—right. Okay.”

  It hurt to think of Jeff: a dull, lingering sort of pain, as if Nina were pressing on a bruise that hadn’t yet healed. Things between the
m had ended so abruptly. One minute they’d been in the palace ballroom, twined in each other’s arms, and then later that night their relationship was just…over.

  Part of Nina wanted to hate him—for allowing Daphne to push them apart, for letting their relationship crumble instead of fighting for it. But she couldn’t stay that angry with a boy who’d just lost his father. She wished she felt brave enough to ask Sam how Jeff was doing, except she didn’t trust herself to say his name.

  There was a rustling on the other end. “Come on, Nina, tell me everything. What’s happened with you since—” Sam broke off before saying since my dad died. “Since I’ve seen you,” she amended.

  They both knew that this wasn’t the normal dynamic of their relationship. Normally Sam was the one who kept talking: debating and theorizing and telling stories in her winding, roundabout way, which was always more satisfying than if she’d told them start to finish. But today, Sam needed Nina to be the one who filled the silence.

  Nina’s heart ached. When someone was hurting like this, there was nothing you could say to make it better. The only thing you could do was hurt alongside them.

  Still, she cleared her throat and attempted an upbeat tone. “Did I tell you I chopped off my hair?”

  Sam gasped. “How many inches?”

  “I’ll send you a picture,” Nina assured her. “And I just got back from a spring break trip with some friends from my dorm. You would have loved it, Sam. We rowed kayaks down the coast, and found this tiki bar that served half-price frozen drinks…”

  She sank onto a bench as she talked. Various students passed, heading to their dorm rooms or to meet friends for ice cream at the Broken Spoon.

  “Nina,” Sam finally asked, with uncharacteristic hesitation, “I was wondering…would you come to the Royal Potomac Races with me tomorrow?”

  Nina went very still, her heart thudding. Hearing that silence, and knowing exactly what it meant, Sam hurried to explain. “I understand if you can’t be around Jeff. It’s just my first public appearance since—” She broke off, then forged ahead. “Since my dad’s funeral, and it would mean a lot to have you there.”