Majesty

by Katharine McGee

  That was the thing about secrets. You could trade them over and over again.

  Her phone vibrated in her quilted purse. Daphne reached to silence it, hoping it wouldn’t startle the gossiping women—but when she saw the name on the caller ID, her mouth went dry.

  Himari Mariko couldn’t be calling, because Himari had been in a coma for almost a year. She’d fallen down the palace’s back staircase the night of the twins’ graduation party, in what everyone thought was a tragic accident.

  Though Daphne knew it was her fault.

  Her skin crawling with trepidation, she accepted the call. “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  Hearing Himari’s voice in her ear was like communing with a ghost.

  Daphne took a step back, bracing her hand on a table of folded silk shorts. “You woke up.”

  “Just this morning,” Himari said. “And starting tomorrow I can have visitors. Will you come?”

  There was something wet on her face; Daphne reached up to wipe it away, surprised to find that she was crying. That a real emotion had awoken beneath the countless false ones that she wore so beautifully. The sheer force of it hit her like a blow.

  “Of course,” she whispered, already halfway out the door.

  After all this time, Himari was back. Her best friend, her confidante, her partner in crime—and maybe her downfall.

  * * *

  The next morning, Daphne strode down the long-term care ward of St. Stephen’s Hospital, a gift basket clutched in her arms. She nodded at various doctors and nurses as she passed, but beneath her usual demure smile, her mind was whirling.

  She had no idea what to do now that Himari was awake. Should she walk in the room and beg for forgiveness, or go instantly on the attack? Maybe she could offer Himari a sort of bargain: give her something she wanted, in exchange for keeping the secret of what had really sent her into a coma that night.

  It had all started last spring. Himari had caught Daphne and Ethan together, and threatened to tell Jefferson what she knew. Daphne had pleaded with her to calm down, but her friend refused to listen. She clearly wanted to break up Daphne and Jefferson, then make a play for the prince herself.

  Cornered and desperate, Daphne had slipped a couple of ground-up sleeping pills into Himari’s drink. She’d meant to scare her a little, convince her to let the whole thing go. Never in a million lifetimes had Daphne anticipated that her friend would climb a staircase in her dazed, disoriented state—only to fall right back down.

  Daphne wished she could take it all back. The next morning, she’d almost marched down to the police station and confessed, just so she’d be able to talk about it with someone. As it was, there was only one person she could discuss it with, who knew the sordid truth of what she’d done. And that was Ethan.

  All year, while Himari was in a coma, Daphne had kept on visiting her. Not because it made her look good—her usual motivation for doing things—but because she wanted to, desperately. Seeing Himari was the only way to stave off the guilt that threatened to consume her.

  Daphne paused at the door marked with a laminated name card: HIMARI MARIKO. Gathering the frayed strands of her courage, she knocked. When she heard a muffled “Come in,” she pushed open the door.

  And there was Himari, propped up against a pillow in her narrow hospital bed. Her cheekbones jutted out more sharply than before, and a tube still snaked under the blankets to clamp the skin of her forearm, but her bright brown eyes were open at last.

  Time seemed to stretch and snap back over itself, like the cherry-flavored gum the two of them used to chew between classes at school.

  “Himari. It’s so good to see you. Awake, I mean,” Daphne said clumsily. She held her breath: waiting for a string of invectives, for Himari to throw something at her, or maybe scream for a nurse.

  Nothing happened.

  “I would say that I’ve missed you, except I feel like I saw you last week.” Himari’s voice sounded lower than it used to, a little scratchy from months of disuse, but there was nothing cold or distant about it. She nodded at Daphne’s outfit and, unbelievably, smiled. “You look great, as usual. Are high-waisted jeans really back? I need a pair.”

  For a moment Daphne just stood there in dazed shock. Himari was talking the way she used to: before Jefferson, and Daphne and Ethan’s secret, had come between them.

  “Here, this is for you.” Daphne recovered enough to hold out the gift basket. She’d spent all of yesterday filling it with Himari’s favorite things: flowers and tea, the new fantasy novel by her favorite author, the macarons she loved from that bakery all the way in Georgetown. Himari reached for it and began sorting through its contents with her usual charming greed.

  “Let me help,” Daphne offered as Himari pressed her face into the flowers and inhaled. There was an empty vase on a table; she carried it to the bathroom and filled it with water before arranging the bouquet inside.

  The hospital room felt different from all the times Daphne had visited. Now its sterile surfaces were cluttered with personal items, stuffed animals and foil balloons on sticks and a stack of magazines. Daphne smiled when she saw that Himari was drinking water out of the cartoon-printed thermos she used to sip her morning green juice from. The room even sounded better, the medical equipment emitting a cheerful erratic beep, rather than the soulless refrain of someone unconscious.

  Daphne set the flowers on a nearby table, then pulled a chair forward.

  “What are you doing?” Himari scooted over, creating space on the bed. “Head wounds aren’t contagious, I promise.”

  Daphne couldn’t see an easy way out. She climbed up next to her friend, the way she used to back when they would hang out in Himari’s room, trading stories and secrets and laughing until their chests hurt.

  “My nurses said you visited every week,” Himari went on. “Thanks for doing that. You’re such a loyal friend.”

  Did those last two words have a sarcastic bite? Daphne couldn’t really tell. It was still so surreal, hearing Himari speak at all.

  “We were all worried about you, Himari. That fall…”

  “Did you see it?”

  “I—what?”

  “Did you see me fall?”

  The air seemed to drain from the room. Daphne looked over, meeting her friend’s gaze. “I was at the party, but no. I didn’t see you fall.”

  Himari tugged absently at her sheets. “The doctors said there was a low dosage of narcotics in my system. As if I’d mixed vodka and NyQuil, or something.”

  “Really?” Daphne replied, with admirable calm. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I don’t get it either,” Himari insisted. “And what was I going upstairs for?”

  Was this a trap, or did Himari truly not know? Daphne didn’t dare answer with the truth. She decided her only option was to answer a question with a question.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Some of the tension seemed to drain from Himari’s body. “No. It’s so bizarre. I remember everything else: god, I remember the name and title of every last person at court. But the days leading up to the accident are a complete blank.”

  A complete blank. Relief swept through Daphne. If Himari didn’t remember, it would be like none of it had ever happened: Daphne sleeping with Ethan, the blackmail, the night of the fall.

  Or—what if Himari was only pretending to have forgotten? She might be acting like this to draw Daphne close, and carry out some greater revenge scheme.

  “I’m not surprised you remember everyone at court,” Daphne said carefully. “You and I spent weeks combing through McCall’s Peerage before our first royal function.”

  Himari smiled at that. To Daphne, at least, it looked genuine. “I still can’t believe we made note cards for that. We were such dorks.”

  Back then, neither of
them had mattered in the vast hierarchy of court. Himari’s parents possessed an earldom, so they ranked higher than Daphne’s, who were a second-generation baronet and lady. But Himari’s older brother would inherit their title, while Daphne, at least, was an only child.

  Both girls had been nobodies, and each wanted desperately to be somebody. It was what had initially drawn them to each other—their shared impulse to climb.

  Daphne hadn’t realized at the time what that kind of wanting could do to someone, how dangerous it could make them.

  “If you don’t remember falling,” she asked, “what do you remember?”

  “The last thing I remember is our French exam! When I woke up, my first thought was that I had a calculus final today, and I needed to make sure I brought my calculator to school.”

  Daphne listened hard, searching for any hint of hesitation or falsehood in Himari’s words, but she didn’t hear any.

  “Our French exam? That was at least a week before the graduation party.” And before Himari’s birthday: when Daphne ended up with Ethan, and Himari saw them in bed together.

  Before Himari threatened Daphne with the secret, and Daphne decided to fight fire with fire, and everything escalated so horribly out of control.

  “It could be worse. I could’ve lost months instead of days,” Himari pointed out. “Though I guess I have lost months, given that a year of my life has disappeared.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Daphne replied, because there was nothing else to say.

  “I didn’t believe my parents, you know.” Himari was still holding the gift basket, fiddling with the cellophane wrapper around a soy candle. “When I woke up and heard the date, when they told me that the king had died, I didn’t believe it.”

  Daphne swallowed. “A lot happened while you were in the hospital.”

  “I know, you’re about to graduate! Next year, I’ll have to be a senior all alone.” Himari sighed dramatically, looking so utterly like her old self that Daphne almost smiled.

  Suddenly, she remembered a time back in freshman year—before she was dating Jefferson, because no one would dare do something like this now—when a junior named Mary Blythe started a rumor that Daphne had gotten plastic surgery. On her nose, her boobs, everything.

  Daphne had forced herself not to acknowledge the rumor. She knew that the more vocally she protested, the more people would believe it was true.

  Himari, however, had created a fake email address and reached out to Mary, posing as a recruiter for a reality dating show. She’d convinced Mary to record an embarrassing audition video—which Himari then played during a school assembly.

  “What?” she’d exclaimed, in answer to Daphne’s stunned look. “No one gets to mess with you.”

  Himari was a little scary that way. There was no one as fiercely loyal to her friends—or as utterly merciless to her enemies.

  If only Daphne knew which category she fell into now.

  “So what have I missed?” Himari pulled her legs up beneath the blankets. “Catch me up on everything that’s happened in the past year.”

  “Beatrice is queen,” Daphne began, but Himari interrupted.

  “I know that! Tell me about you and Jeff,” she pleaded. “Why does everyone keep saying you might get back together? When did you break up in the first place?”

  “He broke up with me last summer,” Daphne said cautiously. “For a while he dated Nina Gonzalez. Samantha’s friend.”

  Himari’s eyes widened in recognition, and she barked out a laugh. “That girl? Seriously?”

  This time, Daphne couldn’t hold back her smile.

  She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed having someone to confide in. For years, Himari had been the first person Daphne went to with any sort of news—good news, bad news, news that didn’t really matter at all.

  But ever since the accident, Daphne had been holding these sorts of conversations with Himari in her head: asking her questions, guessing how Himari might have replied. This was precisely the reaction she had imagined, when she’d wondered what Himari would’ve said about Nina.

  Himari reached into the gift basket for a box of chocolate truffles and popped one into her mouth, then passed Daphne the box. “Tell me the whole story, from the beginning.”

  Samantha walked down the palace hallway with willfully slow steps. She trailed her fingers over every tapestry, scuffed her feet on the carpets, the way she’d seen children do when their parents dragged them on a palace tour. She felt maddeningly like a child right now, receiving a summons to meet with Lord Robert Standish.

  She’d only been to Robert’s office twice before. Once a few years ago, when that paparazzo got the infamous photo of her skirt riding up. And then last spring she’d been called there with Jeff, after Himari Mariko fell down the stairs at their graduation party.

  Neither occasion had been especially pleasant.

  The Lord Chamberlain worked on the second floor, just outside Beatrice’s study—so that he could monitor the queen’s visitors, a bright-eyed Cerberus guarding her time. Sam was grateful to see that her sister’s door was firmly shut. She’d done a fantastic job avoiding Beatrice for the past couple of weeks, and had no intention of stopping now.

  She knocked at the chamberlain’s door, then reluctantly slipped inside to take a seat.

  Robert was seated at his desk, dressed as usual in a charcoal-colored suit. It was the only thing Sam had ever seen him wear. She’d occasionally caught herself wondering whether he ever took it off, or maybe his closet was simply full of them, dozens of matching gray pants and jackets lined up in tidy little rows.

  She made an impatient noise, but Robert didn’t look up. He kept on typing, as if to punish her for her tardiness.

  Perched on his desk was an arrangement of red roses, along with golden daylilies and blue delphiniums. The whole thing was disgustingly patriotic. Sam reached up to pluck one of the flowers, rolling it back and forth. It was as dusky blue as a midsummer sky, as Teddy’s eyes.

  She crushed it between her fingers, then let it fall to the floor.

  “You’re nineteen minutes late,” Robert said at last. Sam found it strangely irritating that he’d said nineteen instead of twenty. He shook his head with a resigned sigh. “Your Royal Highness, I set this meeting so that we could discuss your new responsibilities as first in line for the throne.”

  “There’s no need for me to go through all the training that Beatrice did,” Sam said automatically. “It’s not like I’m ever going to rule.”

  This—being first in line for the throne—was the highest Sam would ever rank. Once Beatrice had children, the entire family would engage in a silent game of musical chairs, bumping everyone down a spot in the order of succession. The more kids Beatrice had, the more obsolete Sam would become.

  Even Teddy had upgraded to Beatrice, the instant he’d gotten a chance.

  “I’m certainly not suggesting that you prepare to be queen. Beatrice isn’t going anywhere.” Robert was clearly so appalled by the suggestion that he was startled into omitting her title, for once.

  “Good, then we agree.” Sam rose to her feet. “There’s no need to waste your time preparing me for a role I will never fill. Especially when neither of us wants to be here.”

  “Sit down,” Robert snapped, and Sam sank sullenly back into her chair. “We aren’t here to train you as a future monarch. Besides, the only person qualified for that sort of preparation is Her Majesty herself.” Robert was the type of person who said Your Majesty as if the title belonged to him, or at least as if it lent him a secondhand glamour.

  “Then why are we here?” Sam demanded.

  “Our discussion today will focus on your new role as heir to the throne. You are a representative of the Crown now.”

  “But…wasn’t I always?”

  Robert’s sneer deepened at
her ignorance. “As princess, you were a representative of your family. But now you are the heir apparent—the queen’s next in line, should anything go wrong. You have level-one security clearance.” He gestured to the alarm on the wall. It was one of many scattered throughout the palace, all of them protected by biosecurity, so only a handful of people could activate them. A handful of people that now included Sam.

  “I’ll expect you to carry out the same schedule of social engagements that Her Majesty used to fulfill as the heir,” Robert went on. “Including the Royal Derby, the queen’s garden parties, the US Open—tennis and golf—the Baltimore Flower Show, the Chelsea Art Fair, the Fourth of July celebrations, hospital benefits, and, of course, anything related to the military.”

  At first Sam thought he’d merely paused, that he would keep on listing events until either she interrupted or he went hoarse. But the chamberlain only looked at her in unmistakable challenge.

  “Well, if that’s all,” she said, with forced lightness.

  “It’s a hundred and eighty events per year.” When he saw her eyes widen, Robert nodded. “Which is why we have a great deal of work to do to make you into a princess.”

  Sam’s face went hot. “I am a princess,” she reminded him.

  Robert spoke slowly. He clearly relished this opportunity to show how little he thought of her. “My apologies, Your Royal Highness. I meant that you need to start behaving like one.”

  Sam hid the sting of hurt she felt at his words. She thought of all those hours she and her siblings had spent in the downstairs drawing room with their etiquette master. He’d droned on about how to greet visiting dignitaries, and the varying depths of a curtsy, and the order of precedence in every aristocratic house, because god forbid she insult someone by addressing a junior family member before a senior one. Beatrice, of course, had nodded with childish seriousness and taken notes. Even Jeff had paid halfhearted attention. While Sam had spent the entire time staring out the window, daydreaming.