A Prince on Paper

by Alyssa Cole

  Nya’s giggle mixed with the ping of the PA system, and then the captain’s smooth voice filled the cabin. “We will begin making our descent shortly. Please ensure your seat belts are fastened.”

  When Johan glanced at Nya, the laughter was gone from her eyes. Her frown may as well have been a blaring siren, impossible for him to ignore.

  Merde. Telling stories was one thing, but what he wanted to do now was another.

  He’d already insulted her. He was likely the last person she wanted to share anything with. But something in him itched to bring the smile back to her face, or at least to smooth away the frown.

  He was used to this urgent need to assist; it was his shameful secret. There couldn’t be a distressed person within fifty paces without Johan catching wind of it and that urge to fix it almost overwhelming him. He buried those acts by acting a fool every two weeks or so, and occasionally showing his ass—literally. He couldn’t bury the fact that this desire to help Nya felt different, with roots in something not at all altruistic.

  It’s nothing more than a courtesy.

  He ran a hand through his hair so that a few locks hung before his eyes, giving him a nonthreatening, shaggy-dog appeal.

  “Nya?” She looked at him, and he dropped his shoulders forward, smiled sheepishly, and swept the hair away from his eyes, emphasizing that his attention was entirely on her. He waited, saw the moment when her gaze went a little soft, then spoke. “I didn’t make a great first impression, but if you need to talk, I don’t gossip and you’ll rarely see me again after the wedding, if ever. Perfect, as far as confidants go.”

  She squinted at him as she considered his offer. “First impression? I guess you would make for a good confidant since you forget my existence so easily. That was like the eighth time we’ve met, but I guess I do tend to blend into the background.”

  Oh, she was wrong about that, but it wasn’t his place to correct her. He raised one shoulder, then dropped it. “Yes. I’ll probably forget everything as soon as we step off the plane. I’m careless like that.”

  “I told Portia you were weird,” she said, scrunching her face as she regarded him.

  “I hope Portia defended my honor,” he said, slightly hurt but also oddly pleased. She’d talked about him with her friends—why?

  It doesn’t matter.

  “Of course she did,” Nya said. “And I’m fine. I just have family problems, and returning home means I have to deal with them.”

  Johan liked to wallow in how frustrating his family was, but none of them had tried to kill anyone or foment a coup, to his knowledge.

  She shook her head, as if clearing away bad thoughts. “Are you excited for the wedding?”

  “I’m excited for my friend’s future,” he said, taking her cue to change the subject. He understood complicated families and the aversion to speaking of them, if nothing else. “I don’t particularly enjoy weddings, but I think Thabiso’s will be good.”

  Johan loved weddings, but he didn’t enjoy them. They were an emotional minefield, and not exactly the best place for a man invested in maintaining an air of aloof disinterest.

  She looked at him, and her smile was genuine, though there were still creases of worry around her eyes.

  “It will be great. I’m so happy for them, even though I’ve been selfishly focused on my own problems.” She pressed her hands together. “The goddess has truly blessed them. It is no small thing, two people coming together.”

  The genuine warmth in her words was somehow transmitted physically to Johan. He felt it in his body, how deeply she cared for their mutual friends. This was just vicarious emotion; he wondered what it would be like to be the recipient of that care himself.

  The plane’s descent began in earnest then, and she turned to secure the items on the table in front of her, breaking their eye contact.

  Johan held on to his armrests, white knuckled, and not because of the altitude. For the duration of his time in Thesolo, he would stay away from her. He needed to avoid the warmth her kindness kindled in him. He needed to remember that even the brightest flames could be doused in an instant, and he would never be left alone in the darkness again if he could help it.

  He turned toward his own window and stared down at the patchwork of green and brown.

  Control.

  He would only be in Thesolo for a few days. He could hardly get into much trouble in that time, anyway.

  Chapter 3

  ONE TRUE PRINCE, MESSAGE FROM: HANJO

  Nya, are you there? I’ve got the blue blood blues, but getting to know you makes things a little better. I want to know everything about you, like . . . what are your thoughts on princes? Specifically: would you date one?

  Nya’s stomach ached and her back hurt and her body felt heavy with fatigue—even floating in the royal spa’s oversized hot tub couldn’t rid her of the panic that had weighed her down since she’d stepped off of the plane.

  Being back home made her feel awful, and feeling awful made the anxious thoughts cycle through her mind even faster.

  Could she trust the things she ate and drank? Would someone else try to make her sick, or hurt her? What if her father had been right, and her constitution was just weak? What if her father managed to escape from prison, and she had to see him unprepared?

  Everything will be fine.

  She could feel Portia and Ledi staring at her from where they perched on the underwater benches around the hot tub’s perimeter, and their gazes were an additional weight. This was supposed to be a time for jubilant celebration, but her friends couldn’t have fun because they were worried about her. She’d thought she wanted people to worry over her well-being, but now she felt frustrated, like when her father had fawned over her in the name of keeping her safe.

  Everything just felt weird and she didn’t know how to navigate being in a homeland that no longer felt like home.

  When she’d arrived at the palace that morning, her grandparents had greeted her first, pulling her in for tight, bone-cracking hugs with their thin arms. They’d complimented her on her weight gain, with her grandfather going so far as to say that she was as fit as a prize heifer, and she’d felt that unfamiliar anger flare in her. Her grandparents had been the best part of her life, always, but she’d wanted to ask them why they hadn’t noticed when she’d looked like a gaunt, sickly heifer. Why they’d made her return to her father after visits with them, even when she had cried and begged to stay. Instead she’d kissed their soft cheeks and told them she’d missed them.

  They’d hovered like polite, worried flies too afraid to land on the dung that was her father’s current situation. Then Ledi and Thabiso had appeared, also hovering, and then Portia had shown up and been the first to bluntly ask, “Are you okay? About your dad?” Portia’s fiancé, Tavish, had given her a quelling nudge with his elbow, and if Nya hadn’t already liked the Duke of Edinburgh she would have started to just then.

  “I’m fine,” Nya had said, because what else could she say the day before the wedding festivities began? The truth—that she felt like goat hide brushed in the wrong direction, and she couldn’t pinpoint why—was not happy-celebration appropriate. She’d forced a smile, and kept that forced smile, and now just wanted to float in warm fragrant water and discuss things like dresses and makeup, not the fact that her father was locked up a few kilometers away while she was receiving the royal spa treatment.

  “How was the flight with Johan?” Portia asked loudly, her voice traveling through the water surrounding Nya’s ears. “Did you guys talk? He’s really good at making people feel better.”

  Nya flailed and began to sink, so she flipped with a splash that sprayed water over Portia, accidentally of course, and took a seat between her two friends on the bench.

  “We talked a bit. After I ended up in bed with him,” she said, pushing her waterlogged braids behind her ears. She wanted to shock them, and she only felt a little guilty when both of them flailed.

  Portia let out a laugh
that was caught somewhere between scandalized and impressed. “Nya!”

  “Want to run that by us again?” Ledi asked, cupping a hand over her ear.

  “Not like that. I didn’t know he was on board the jet, in the bedroom, because someone sent vague texts instead of just telling me he was going to be traveling with me.” She shot a disapproving look at Portia.

  “Sorry. But also not sorry because how did you manage not to see him? It’s an airplane.”

  “The jet isn’t that big,” Ledi agreed. “We’re a wealthy kingdom, but my in-laws aren’t wasteful enough to buy a jet people can get lost in.”

  “He might have been keeping a low profile.” Portia tilted her head thoughtfully. “Yesterday was . . . you know.”

  “Oh. Right.” Ledi nodded somberly.

  Nya didn’t understand, but since they didn’t share their insider knowledge with her, she continued.

  “I went into the bedroom, it was dark, and well, he was there. In the bed. Nothing happened, besides him being weird.” She shook her head.

  Neither of them had to know that, for the briefest moment, she’d considered his proposition, and that when he’d left the room she’d been unable to stop thinking about what could have happened if he’d been genuine and she’d been fearless. What-ifs only led to trouble, though.

  What if Father isn’t truly doing anything wrong? Surely it is my imagination. He couldn’t do something so awful. I’ll give Ledi these pills just in case, instead of causing alarm for no reason.

  Ledi held up both her hands. “Wait. Back up. You were in bed with Johan. Johan of the wild parties and public nudity. Weirdness could encompass a lot of things in that situation.”

  “He thought I was a pillow. I jumped out of the bed, surprised. He . . . offered something lewd, I think, and then asked if I wanted to cuddle. I kicked him out.” She didn’t add how she’d cried in front of him, and how she’d gripped his handkerchief in her fist afterward and tried to ignore the lemon-and-lavender scent of him. “But the flight attendant probably thought we were up to something. Fictional me will have had quite the tryst by the time the gossip makes the rounds.”

  Portia’s expression was serious, her lighthearted curiosity gone. When she spoke, her voice held the concern and willingness to destroy for her friends that had made Nya love her.

  “He said something lewd? I know he can be flip, but I don’t care how upset he was, he shouldn’t have—”

  “I handled it,” Nya said. She let her arms float in front of her, focusing on how they bobbed in the water instead of her friends’ concern, and how it both soothed and aggravated her. “People say things like that sometimes because they think it’s entertaining to tease me. You know that. He was just doing what people always do, and once he understood I didn’t think it was funny, he stopped. People don’t always stop.”

  “Are you sure you’re o—” Ledi began, but Nya gripped the bench with her toes and pushed off, swimming away from the question people kept asking but didn’t want the answer to.

  When she got to the other end of the hot tub she hoisted herself up and then plastered on her fake smile before turning toward her friends. She pointed down the hall toward the sauna, gave a thumbs-up, and when they hesitantly returned it, she slap-splashed her way to the dark wooden door.

  She grabbed a towel along the way, squeezing the moisture from her braids as she walked, feeling like a sulking child who was ruining everything.

  She knew her friends cared, and she felt terrible for the odd resentment that they didn’t care in the way she needed them to. They loved her, they were trying their best, but she didn’t even know what she needed—how could anyone else?

  She’d always kept her emotions in check—calm, reasonable Nya, quietly taking care of things while everyone assumed she couldn’t even take care of herself—if she’d screamed and acted out maybe that would have gotten people’s attention. Maybe then they would have seen what her quiet deference really was, and what her father’s bombastic nature really hid—a locked birdcage.

  She wrapped the towel around herself and kneaded the small of her back with the knuckles of her left hand. Ledi had told her to visit the masseuse, but even the thought of it made her feel like she was taking too much. It was like this every time she visited the palace—she’d grown up under her father’s strange and confusing doctrine, which stated she had to be a good girl to get nice things, but whenever nice things were within her reach she’d been told that no good girl would want them.

  It was a hard lesson to unlearn even if she knew it wasn’t true. Ledi and Portia told her all the time that she deserved anything her heart desired. Maybe one day she would believe it.

  As she pulled the door to the sauna open and was hit by a wall of steam, she somehow knew that he was in the small, dimly lit room. One of those flashes of déjà vu that the priestesses called Ingoka’s foresight and Naledi explained—something about patterns and synapses.

  Again, with the small spaces. Again, with the too-damn-handsome-and-he-knew-it Liechtienbourgian. He was some kind of mythical creature, popping up whenever she was in distress to mess with her even more. Her fairy fuckboy.

  Still, she was a bit shocked to find the long, pale expanse of him seated on the upper bench of the sauna, hunched forward and arms stretched so that his fingertips reached toward the bench below.

  His head was dropped down, a mass of wild auburn, but it jerked up as the wooden door creakily announced her entry. She was met with ruddy cheeks and a sharp gaze that resonated within her private hollowness, like the sad moan of wind over the mouths of empty glass bottles.

  She shivered, despite the heat, and despite the fact that it was only her imagination again. This was Prince Jo-Jo. What she’d read as sadness was probably disappointment that she wasn’t some conquest he’d invited for a tryst.

  Then something in his gaze shifted as it traveled in two quick flicks, down to her toes and back up to her face. She’d barely made out the motion through the steam, but it passed over her like a flash of blue fire, burning away the confusion that had driven her from her friends and leaving her feeling stripped. He no longer looked somber, as he drew himself back up to a sitting position, and in fact seemed to be smirking.

  See? Jo-Jo’s gonna Jo-Jo.

  She fought the urge to pull her towel around herself. She’d been raised to be modest, and the hot-pink bikini she’d bought for a trip to Rockaway Beach was anything but—but this was Johan, who frequented nude beaches and wild parties. Her boy-cut bikini bottoms were unlikely to tempt him.

  He reached beside him for the wooden bucket, and she heard the slosh of water as he pulled it closer to him, but her eyes were on his torso. If there was any tempting happening, she was the only one feeling it.

  Much abs. Very six-pack.

  He was all sinewy muscle, and though he moved with a lazy grace as he scooped up a cup of water, she knew that he could move quickly if he wanted to. He had when she’d burst into tears and he’d rushed to offer her his handkerchief.

  She noticed a flash of silver at his neck, but the long chain was nestled in the surprisingly thick auburn hair on his chest, and she looked away instead of following the direction it pulled her gaze.

  “Gudde jour, Nya,” he said.

  “You remember my name now?” she asked, taking a step into the room. She felt like leaving would be giving in to him somehow, and Nya was tired of being controlled by the whims of spoiled men. He was the one who had behaved strangely on the plane. He could leave.

  But it had been kind of fun, after the strangeness, when he’d made her laugh. She hadn’t expected such silliness from him—she hadn’t expected him to acknowledge her at all outside of trying to seduce her. She wouldn’t mind if they could talk like that again.

  She took another step into the room, letting the door close behind her, and then flipped the hourglass nailed to the wall that would let her know when five minutes had passed. “I thought I was easy to forget.”
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br />   “I made a mnemonic device. N-Y-A.” He ladled water onto the heated stones, sending up a billow of steam. The moist heat enveloped her as she looked up at him.

  “What does it stand for?” she asked. “Naughty young . . . antelope?”

  He laughed, the dry, bright sound cutting through the steam, and she moved toward it. She allowed herself the pleasure of knowing she’d shocked him a little.

  She stepped onto the lower bench, then pulled herself up to the top one, where it was hotter and not just because of the annoying man occupying the other half. She’d sweat away this agitation and anxiety that had settled in her, and Johan wouldn’t get in the way of that.

  He sat beneath the dim lightbulb, and when she glanced at him she could see the rivulets of sweat that coursed their way over broad shoulders and that strange muscle some people had at the base of their necks.

  “Antelope? No.” He placed the ladle down and stretched his legs forward, but didn’t volunteer anything else about his memory trick.

  She tugged her towel under her thighs, protecting the skin from the hot wood. “Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t appreciate being called an antelope.”

  “If I was going to give you a nickname it would be Sugar Bubble.” There was mischief in his voice, and in the way he glanced at her sidelong, almost like the name was something shared between them and not her flubbing her words. Inside jokes were intimate, like being cradled against his body had been. She wondered what his arms would feel like around her now, him in his tiny speedos and her in bikini. Luckily for Nya, they were in a room made expressly for awkward sweating.

  “I guess I have to call you Jo-Jo,” she said.

  When he spoke again, his words were stilted. “Please don’t call me that.”

  She could barely keep up with this man, flirting one second and subdued the next, but she remembered the look in his eyes when she’d stepped into the sauna. Whatever had resonated between them then was in his voice now.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t,” he said, suddenly casual. So sudden she might have imagined that vulnerability in his tone just a moment before.