A Prince on Paper

by Alyssa Cole

  “I’d prepared to lie to you,” he said. “And tell you that we have to go out and be seen by the citizens to churn up some goodwill for the referendum. But.”

  “But?” Nya’s expectations leapt past should.

  “But I want to take a walk with you. That’s all. I want to show you where I’m from.”

  His expression was so earnest, so vulnerable—and she saw the precise moment when he slipped his careless rogue mask back on.

  “We can put on disguises to avoid the press if you want,” he said, grinning. “I have lots of them. My favorite is a sea captain’s hat and a pipe. I also have a merman tail and—”

  “Phoko.” She said the word quietly, but he stopped speaking because he always seemed to be listening for her voice. She thought about the advice Ledi and Portia had given her. She thought about what she wanted, and the role she had assigned herself in this live action dating role play.

  Nya took her hands from her pockets and lightly grasped his tie. She slid her fingers up toward the knot, adjusting it because he had left it slightly askew. “You don’t have to pretend with me, you know. Even if we pretend with everyone else, even if this ring is only on my finger temporarily, you can be yourself with me. You’re not the only one capable of being a confidant.”

  Johan stared at her, and she patted the knot, her fingertips grazing his throat as she pulled her hands away.

  “Hrim,” he said again.

  “Hrim?” she replied.

  He made another guttural sound, one she couldn’t replicate if she tried. It sounded like a wounded animal. “I’m not sure I know how to do that. Be myself.”

  Nya took a deep breath, because bravery required oxygen. “I like you, Phoko. I like you very much. I don’t expect you to feel the same way, but I think it only fair to tell you if we’re going to be ourselves.”

  She smiled up at him, despite her pounding heart, despite her father’s voice telling her she was a wanton fool who deserved whatever the fallout of her forwardness would be.

  Johan’s face was contorted by complete and utter horror before it snapped back into something resembling normal.

  Ooookay. Maybe she should’ve kept her feelings to herself. Sorry was on the tip of her tongue, but Johan had told her not to apologize without reason and he’d been right.

  “It’s that easy for you?” There was wonder in his voice as he reached out and stroked her cheek. He leaned in close and examined her face, her eyes. “Being open like that? Revealing your softest parts without fear I’ll skewer you?”

  “Your people really need to find some nonpointy-metal ways of expressing your emotions,” she said, laughing from sheer relief. “Of course I’m afraid. But I’ve always been afraid. Why not be afraid and maybe enjoy myself, too?”

  His hand cupped her cheek and then he leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Do you want the captain’s hat or the mermaid tail?” he asked.

  “Neither,” she said. I want you, she didn’t say. “I want to go see your country and meet your people.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” he reminded her. “If you want to just hang out in the palace and not help with the referendum, that’s fine.”

  “I know. But you forget I have my own goals. My father thinks we are engaged. People are giving him information about me. I want him to see me in the newspapers, on the arm of a handsome man that I like very much, and I want him to suffer.”

  Johan tipped her head back and looked at her, his brow creased. “He hurt you more than you’ve let anyone know,” he said quietly. “Because for you to want someone to suffer . . .” He shook his head, and when he looked at her again he was as charming as ever. “If making you happy will hurt him, then he’s in for a world of pain.”

  Something warm and soft, and yet more dangerous than the blades the Liechtienbourgers were obsessed with, unfurled in her chest. Johan hadn’t said he liked her. But he was holding her close and brushing his thumb tenderly across her cheek. Even if he was pretending, as long as he didn’t break the spell, she would keep living like her dreams were attainable.

  And when their charade ended and it was time to let this dream go? Who knew? Maybe she would find even loftier ones.

  Chapter 14

  LIECHTIENBOURG FREEDOM ALLIANCE FORUM

  Jo-Jo’s surprise fiancée seems to be sweet as quetschentaart, but her father is a bad apple. The man is currently imprisoned for crimes against their kingdom. Is Bad Boy Jo-Jo’s whirlwind love affair another Jerami family coup? Does he care enough about his own kingdom to find out? I think we all know the answer to that.

  It’s cold!” Nya slipped her arm through Johan’s as they stepped out of the castle’s secret exit, which opened into a mews between some of the city’s oldest buildings. The exit wasn’t entirely secret—the media and the street’s inhabitants just all mutually agreed to pretend not to see Johan or Lukas when they suddenly appeared from the door in the wall. Johan had thought it exciting when he’d first seen it, like the entryways to fairy worlds in his books. But like most worlds you accessed through a secret door, the price of entry had been higher than expected.

  Nya pressed against him, and though he knew her coat was of the finest, thickest wool, he was sure he could feel her body heat through the fabric. Either that, or just being near her made him warm.

  Scheisse, he was pathetic. And she liked him despite that.

  They walked out into the darkening afternoon, the low heels of her boots clicking on the cobblestones. The castle was on the highest level of the tiered capital city, with the old towne spreading out below like a quilt of quaint old European houses.

  “It’s not so different from Lek Hemane, but looks like something from a movie,” Nya said. “Like small, furry creatures should live in these houses.”

  “I’m sure furry creatures live in at least some of the houses,” he said drily, and tried not to sigh when she laughed and tightened her hold on his arm.

  “What was it like growing up here?” she asked as they turned onto the main street, full of people heading home from work or school. He’d tucked his telltale red hair up into a blue knit hat, but still drew gazes. Some people stared and a few of them suddenly had urgent business to take care of on their phones—which were conveniently pointed in Johan and Nya’s direction—but no one approached them.

  He wondered if he shouldn’t have gotten them a security escort. Photos were fine, but what if someone tried something? He rarely used one when he was alone, but he wasn’t alone anymore. Not for the next few days at least. And if anything happened to Nya . . . his scalp suddenly pricked with sweat, despite the cold and he stood taller, gazing around at the crowd for possible threats. Liechtienbourg was one of the safest countries in Europe, and had been for ages, but he still held Nya closer to him.

  “Growing up here? It was okay,” he said, leaning forward to peer around a parked van. “I wandered around this area alone a lot while Mamm was working for Linus.”

  “I bet you got into a lot of trouble back then,” she said, grinning up at him, clearly trying to lift his mood. He could have spun her a tale of himself as a mischievous, free-spirited scamp, but that would’ve been a lie.

  “No. I was a quiet child. I spent all my time reading. Lots of it in here.” He jutted his chin toward the compact medieval building they were passing. “Sommetstaad Library. I didn’t have many friends. Or I guess I did, if you counted the books.”

  He’d tried to make friends outside of the pages, but young boys could be cruel to one another. Once they’d learned how easy it was to make Johan cry, it’d become their hobby. The friends he’d had slowly drifted away, not wanting to be targeted. Johan had told no one, not even his mother. He hadn’t wanted to worry her, and eventually he’d decided she was the only friend he needed.

  He waited for Nya to say how hard that was to believe, to brush off his childhood woes because it had all turned out fine for him now that he was a strapping playboy.

  “I can imagine that,”
she said quietly. “Little Phoko with his big pile of books. There’s a solitude beneath all of . . . this.” She waved her hand around to encompass his body. “You are shy, I think.”

  Johan scoffed. “Hardly. We can stop by the newsstand and the tabloids will tell you otherwise.”

  “But that’s not you. I’ve read all about this Prince Jo-Jo.” She looked up at him, somehow both timid and defiant. “I told you that I liked you. Well, I have for some time. I would read about you in the papers and on the blogs, and imagine you as a wild bachelor, with no worries, free to do whatever his heart desired. And I wished I could live like that. But—I watched you, when you came to visit Thabiso, too.”

  Johan’s throat went tight as they approached the esplanade that looked out over the lower levels of Sommetstaad and out toward the rural towns.

  “You watched me,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  I watched you, too.

  He didn’t tell her, though. Simply kept walking. It was bad enough that she felt anything for him. If she knew that like was not enough to describe what she meant to him, his reputation would be forever ruined.

  Johan wanted to be ruined by her. He wanted to know how it felt to stop pretending, to stop guarding his emotions like a dragon watching over its hoard. But treasures were guarded for a reason—the world took and took, and he wouldn’t gain something so precious as Nya only to lose her.

  “What did you see?” he asked. “When you watched.”

  “It was hard to see you sometimes. You’re kind of like the sun, you know.” She laughed and shook her head.

  “Red, fiery, et gaseous?” he drawled.

  “No. Incredibly hot.” She reached up to tap her gloved finger against the tip of his nose, and Johan’s face mottled with heat. “You made me sweat and feel dizzy if I was in your presence for too long.”

  “Hmm.” Johan’s heart was beating fast. “You might want to get that looked at.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “But sometimes, when everyone else was talking, you would look so happy to be there. You looked how I felt, now that I think about it, so pleased for these friends when I’d never had them before. So maybe I should’ve known we were the same in this way. I was a lonely child, too. And I was a lonely adult. Naledi was the first person who made me feel not lonely.”

  “But you only met her two years ago,” he said before he could stop himself. “Were you lonely all that time?”

  “I had my father,” she said softly. “And he told me that I should be happy to have him, since I’d taken my mother from him. He told me I must stay home, like a good girl at first, and then like a good woman—like my mother was. Because if I left I would have taken everything from him.”

  Anger and pity crashed together in Johan’s chest, and disgust—with her father and with himself for understanding exactly how and why the man had done such things. It was simple manipulation really, but taken to an extreme and abusive level. It was what he feared he was capable of, made manifest.

  “Nya.”

  “It’s okay. I didn’t really understand how bad it was until I met Naledi. It seemed normal, and no one else told me that it wasn’t.” She inhaled deeply, her gaze still darting around and landing on things that caught her interest as they walked. “People think my father poisoned her because he wanted to hurt Thabiso politically, or he wanted me to be Thabiso’s bride, but I think he saw something dangerous in the way she’d befriended me. It scared him. But people think he would never hurt me. They know he did terrible things to everyone else, but they still think the way he treated me was love. Oh! Look at this view!”

  Johan didn’t need to look at the view. He had seen it for years, at every time of day, in every season. At this time of year, the late afternoon sky would be darkening to a frosty midnight blue, with streaks of orange and pink huddled at the horizon like a comfortable blanket before being turned down to reveal the starry pattern beneath.

  He looked at Nya instead. At her bright eyes and wide smile, and the joy that should have been crushed in her so long ago. It wasn’t just that Nya wasn’t soft—she was strong. Stronger than Johan had imagined. Resilient. She didn’t flinch away from her pain, and she didn’t even wait to receive the proper amount of pity before she was moving on to pure bliss at something so simple as a sunset.

  Sunsets happened every day. Nya Jeramis did not.

  His chest hurt from the beauty of her smile, the sudden upward curve of her mouth sharply cutting away the revelation of her painful past.

  “How do you do this?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked, brows raised.

  “How do you not let your pain take away your joy?”

  Her brow scrunched and her mouth pursed as she thought of a reply. “Well, what would be the use of that? I’m angry at my father. I’m not sure I ever want to see him again. But he kept me caged for most of my life, in a way. If I spent all my time being angry, I would just be in a new cage of my own making. That would be silly, no?”

  Johan stepped forward and pulled her into his arms. It wasn’t desire he felt for her in that moment—it was admiration. It was . . . devotion. It was the resounding crack as every one of the rules he’d constructed to keep people away broke beneath the weight of his feelings.

  Basically, it was his downfall.

  This was temporary, however deeply the emotion coursed in him. It would end, and Johan didn’t handle endings very well. He avoided them at all costs. He was already dealing with Lukas, the person he loved most in the world, pushing him away—he wouldn’t be able to take another loss.

  Still, he held her close, as the wintry air whipped around them and the last traces of sunlight faded away. Other people walked by, tourists and locals enjoying the view; he was supposed to be out shaking hands and smiling and hoping people would vote to keep his brat of a brother in the castle, but he kept his gaze fixed out over the railing at the cliff’s edge.

  “Why is the city on two levels?” she asked, turning her head and resting her cheek on his chest as she looked out over the late afternoon lights of the rows of houses below, broken up with patches of darker forest green. She didn’t move away from him; in fact, she settled in quite comfortably.

  Johan had held a lover before, but not like this. Or maybe he had, and they just hadn’t fit so perfectly against him.

  “We are a kingdom built on a natural fortress,” he said. “Invaders would come from all over, they could swarm and lay ruin to the towns below, but here, the heart of the city and the country is . . .” He forgot the word in English, so he shrugged and pulled her closer. “They couldn’t get up the sheer rock walls. It is how we survived changing boundaries and war, and then more war.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Beautiful but insurmountable.”

  “Ah, that’s the word. Insurmountable.” He sighed and rubbed his hand over her back.

  “It’s nice, being here with you like this,” she said. “I like the kissing, but I like this, too.”

  It was so easy to forget that this was new to her. She was not naive, but she was inexperienced.

  He should never have slipped that ring on her finger. He would have to take it back from her soon, send her on her way. Some other man would put a ring on her finger, not as an impulsive gesture but after having thought long and hard about wanting to spend his life with her. Nya would accept, and move on, and Johan would still be alone in his fortress city.

  He really hated living in a fairy-tale metaphor sometimes.

  “Is it called spooning if we hug while we’re standing?” she asked suddenly, her voice playful again. “Or forking?”

  She started to chuckle and then gasped as her gaze jumped up to meet his. “No, I didn’t mean, that is—”

  He leaned closer, cleared his suddenly dry throat. “Sporking. It’s called sporking.”

  She grinned. He didn’t know why, since what he’d said made no sense really, but he was grinning, too, now.

  �
�Isn’t that your brother?” someone said in Liechtienbourgish, and Johan shifted his head just enough to catch a flash of bright pink. Lukas, walking toward them with a teenage boy that Johan didn’t know. The boy’s hair was brown and his clothing trendy, unlike the aristocratic boys Lukas usually hung out with. Johan knew all of Lukas’s friends, and this one, who coincided with his brother’s descent into rebellion, was not one of them.

  “Jah, I’m his brother,” Johan said, relaxing his hold on Nya. “Who are you?”

  “This is my drug dealer, Lars,” Lukas said, expression perfectly serene. He even smiled a bit, as if he truly enjoyed tormenting Johan.

  Lars elbowed him. “Not funny, Luk.”

  “Lukas,” Johan bit out. “Please. Can we talk somewhere?”

  “No. You’re busy with your fiancée and I have royal duties to attend to,” Lukas said. “Come on.”

  He tugged at his friend’s sleeve, and Lars adjusted his hold on his backpack and looked back over his shoulder apologetically as Lukas strutted away.

  “Where is your bodyguard?” Johan called after him.

  “Probably wherever yours is,” Lukas shouted without looking back.

  “Lukas!”

  Lukas raised one fist in the air, unfurled his pinkie, and twisted his wrist. Johan let out a string of curses.

  “What was that?” Nya asked, replicating the movement. Johan cupped his hands around hers to stop her.

  “It is the most offensive gesture in our culture,” he explained through his teeth. “It means ‘sit on a short blade and spin.’”

  “Oh dear,” Nya exclaimed, then let out a peal of laughter. Johan didn’t see what was funny. “Your people are so violent! Honestly! Knife legs and blade sitting and all of this. Don’t you have any nice, nonweapons-oriented phrases?”

  She blinked a few times, and he could almost feel it physically—her willing him to calm down.