Sam sent a single red heart emoji in reply. It was all she was capable of, right now.
She’d been in her bedroom when she heard Beatrice’s shouts from the opposite side of the palace: raw, panicked shouts that didn’t at all sound like they had come from her sister’s throat. Sam had stumbled down the stairs, still wearing her red trumpet gown, its skirts spilling around her bare feet like a pool of blood. She’d watched, powerless, as the EMTs loaded her father into the back of a medical van. The ribbons of his uniform fluttered each time the gurney rattled.
The queen stood alongside Samantha. The lights of the ambulance danced luridly over her features, only a slight tightening of her jaw betraying her emotions. Beatrice swayed a bit next to her, as if alcohol—or, more likely, shock—had made her unsteady on her feet.
They had watched, utterly mute, as the van left for the hospital. Its siren echoed around them, an angry streak of sound tearing through the streets.
Moments later they had rushed into a waiting car and followed, to gather here in this anonymous waiting room, where they’d spent the night doing exactly that. Waiting, and hoping.
The doctors had appeared every half hour with a non-update, letting them know that, once again, the king’s condition hadn’t changed. He was still on life support.
They weren’t letting anyone in to see him, not that he was awake anyway. But Sam couldn’t help thinking that it didn’t bode well. She was morbidly reminded of the French court, where members of the royal family were not allowed to visit relatives who were ill, because it was believed that if a king or queen witnessed death, the entire country would be cursed.
Sam shifted, causing her chair cushions to squeak in protest. No one even looked up. Jeff was in the seat next to her, his head hanging in his hands, Daphne on his other side. Sam felt too stunned to even question Daphne’s presence right now. She just kept hold of her mom’s hand, her mind whirling uselessly from one thought to another.
Queen Adelaide had barely spoken since they reached the hospital. Her hand was clasped around her daughter’s, so tight that the nails dug into Sam’s palm. Sam barely felt it.
In the corner knelt the Queen Mother, the white beads of her rosary clicking in her hands as she mouthed her litany of prayers. She hadn’t stirred in hours. If anyone could pray the king back to health, Sam knew, her grandmother could.
Beatrice sat slightly apart from everyone else, perched on the edge of her seat, looking as terrified and fragile as a porcelain doll. Teddy’s hand rested tentatively on her shoulder, though Beatrice seemed oblivious to the contact.
He kept glancing toward Sam, and their eyes would meet in a silent bolt of communication. She knew they were tempting fate, staring at each other across the room, but everyone else was too wrapped up in their own anguish to really notice. Sam wished more than anything that Teddy could sit next to her instead—that she could feel the reassuring warmth of him while everything else was falling apart.
But it had all happened so fast, he and Beatrice hadn’t announced they were calling off their engagement. Which meant that Teddy would have to keep playing the part of Beatrice’s fiancé a little while longer.
Sam tugged absently at the sleeves of her high-necked sweater, wondering which of the staff had picked this out. She and her siblings had been at the hospital only a few minutes, still wearing their ball gowns, when Robert had rushed over with a packed bag of “comfortable clothes.” Sam had been hoping for yoga pants and a sweatshirt, but then, appearances must always be maintained.
She’d pretended not to see the other outfits tucked at the bottom of the bag—a black dress and heels, in case they needed to leave the hospital in mourning.
“I need a minute,” she declared, and gently detangled her hand from her mom’s grip. She had to go somewhere, anywhere, if only to get out of that waiting room and its oppressive silence.
There was a break room down the hall. Someone had brought a delivery of food up here: muffins, bananas, a large bowl of berries. As if the royal family possibly wanted catering right now.
Sam wasn’t hungry, but she needed to do something with her hands. As long as she kept moving, she could scare away the dark thoughts—which were like shadows, multiplying and stretching in her mind. She busied herself making tea, heating hot water in a machine and choosing a tea bag without noticing the flavor.
When she heard footsteps, Sam turned around, half hoping Teddy had followed her. But it was her twin brother.
“You’d better not let Grandma see you with that,” Jeff joked, nodding at her mug. His heart clearly wasn’t in it, but Sam appreciated the effort all the same.
“I know, I know. A princess drinking tea—it’s the end of the monarchy.” Though America hadn’t been at war with Britain for two hundred years, everyone still acted as though drinking tea were a deeply unpatriotic act. The palace refused to even serve tea at any of its events, only coffee. Which wasn’t even grown in America.
“You okay?” Jeff asked softly.
“Not really.”
At the choking sound of her sob, he came forward and threw his arms around her. They stayed like that, hugging, for what felt like a long time.
Sam didn’t bother with words. There were some feelings that words couldn’t express; and anyway, this was Jeff, who understood her on an elemental level. Who had once shared the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Finally they broke apart. Blinking back tears, Sam grabbed a miniature jar of honey and spooned some into her tea. “I know this is ridiculous, given everything else that’s going on, but I have to ask.” Because she was curious, and because she needed to distract herself, if only for a second. “Why is Daphne here instead of Nina?”
Jeff gave a strange laugh, acknowledging the banality of her question. “I assumed that you knew. Nina broke up with me last night.”
“Seriously?” Sam sank into one of the plastic chairs. Jeff pulled out the one next to her and slumped forward, elbows on the table.
“She told me she wanted no part of this,” he said helplessly. “The media, the scrutiny. It was too much for her.”
“But …”
But you both looked so happy last night, Sam wanted to protest. And the day before, in the Dress Closet, Nina had been beaming and blushing at the mention of Jeff. What could have possibly happened to change her friend’s mind?
She looked again at Jeff’s face, and the questions died on her lips. Her brother was suffering enough without having to relive every detail of their breakup.
“Jeff … I’m so sorry.”
He nodded morosely. “When Daphne came to the hospital this morning, I couldn’t turn her away.”
Now Sam understood Nina’s text. When she first read it, she’d been too numb with grief to question why Nina wasn’t coming. It was because Nina didn’t want to face her ex-boyfriend the very day after they broke up. Sam didn’t especially blame her.
“I’m sorry I made things awkward with your best friend,” Jeff added, as if reading her mind.
“It won’t be awkward,” Sam assured him, though she worried he was right. Her friendship with Nina might not be the same after this, because there would always be the ghost of Jeff between them. A space where he should have been.
Jeff picked up a muffin, then set it down again. “This all happened too fast,” he said quietly. “Everything is changing, and I don’t know how to stop it. I just want it all to go back to the way it was.”
“I know,” Sam agreed.
And yet … after the events of the past few months, things would never go back to normal. Jeff was right. Everything had changed. Or perhaps she was the one who had changed. Because Sam was no longer content to let the days skip idly by.
For so much of her life, she and Jeff had been aligned on nearly everything. They posed for a joint press portrait each year on their birthday, attended the same soccer camps, were raised by the same nanny. They communicated in truncated twin-speak—this; sure now?; okay time. Even as they grew older, they attended
the same parties, hung out with the same group of friends. They kept no secrets from each other.
They had always felt like two sides of a coin: the pair of court jesters, the frothy fun twins. The emotional cannon that their family sent out whenever they needed to distract America.
Sam wasn’t sure when that had shifted. Perhaps it was her father’s illness, or Teddy’s words, which had percolated in her mind ever since Telluride.
All she knew was that Jeff no longer felt like her second self. That for the first time in her life, she felt closer to her older sister than to her twin brother.
Maybe this was what it felt like to finally grow up.
DAPHNE
Daphne should never have doubted her abilities.
When she’d arrived this morning with a bouquet of lilies and asked the hospital staff to admit her, Daphne hadn’t been certain they would let her through to the royal wing.
She’d been startled when Jefferson came down the hallway himself and threw his arms around her with surprising emotion. “Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me,” he’d said roughly. “Will you stay?”
“Of course.”
He’d led her to the waiting room, where they sat in a pulsing, anxious silence. Jefferson kept reaching for Daphne’s hand, as if seeking the simple reassurance of human contact.
She hadn’t realized that it would be so easy. That after months of careful plotting and maneuvering, months of calculation, all it had taken was a single act of tragedy for Daphne to work her way back in.
But then, events like this had a way of changing people; or rather, of revealing their true selves. It whittled parts of them away, until they emerged honed and clean like a sharply fletched arrow.
Daphne, certainly, had been forever changed by what she did to Himari.
She kept stealing glances at the prince, wondering what he was thinking. Did this mean that they were back together? At the end of their conversation last night, they had agreed simply to be friends again—but surely friends didn’t sit here all day, holding hands in a hospital waiting room?
A small, shrill voice in Daphne’s head reminded her that she had woken up this morning with Ethan. She had gone straight from Jefferson to his best friend, again; and the fact that she’d slept with Ethan sent her mind tumbling down a dark tunnel of memories, of all the terrible things that had happened after the first time she hooked up with him.
She didn’t like thinking about it. Daphne had a readily adaptable moral code, but even she couldn’t come to terms with what she’d done. Her best option was to compartmentalize it: tuck it into a dark box and leave it alone. Most of the time that worked.
But after what Ethan had said—after waiting here all morning for good news that never came, just as she’d waited the day Himari fell—the box was open, and now all the memories came rushing back.
Daphne felt an overwhelming need to talk to someone, to unburden herself. Even to someone who couldn’t hear.
“Do you mind if I step out for a second?” she asked, giving Jefferson’s hand a squeeze.
“Of course not,” he assured her.
Daphne stood with a nod, smoothing her hair carefully over her shoulders. When she reached the elevators, instead of heading down, she went up, toward the long-term care ward. She’d walked these steps to Himari’s room so many times, she could have navigated them blindfolded.
“Hey. It’s me,” she said, just like always, as she took the chair by Himari’s bed. Her gaze traveled instinctively to the medical monitors, where Himari’s life was reduced to a series of numbers and squiggly green lines.
“I was thinking about the time we met. Do you remember when we were partners for that ninth-grade project?” They’d been assigned to research an era of history. Himari had immediately insisted that they focus on the Roaring Twenties. We can wear boas for our presentation, she’d pointed out, in a duh sort of tone, as if the very mention of boas negated any other argument.
Daphne had laughed. You had me at boas.
That afternoon, Daphne went over to Himari’s house to try on the costumes in her family’s attic. As they stood there facing the mirror—both of them giggling and preening, their eyes sparkling above the mound of feathers—their friendship had been sealed.
Daphne slumped her elbows onto her knees in a distinctly unladylike position, and sighed. “I wish you could answer. Every time I come, I wonder what you would say to me if you could reply. I wonder if you even like my coming.”
Daphne wasn’t sure why she visited Himari so often. Keep your enemies close, as the saying went—except that Daphne still had trouble thinking of Himari as an enemy. Even after everything.
“Maybe you hate me,” she went on. “You have every right to.”
She didn’t usually talk this much on her visits, not anymore. These days she mostly sat in silence, brushing her friend’s hair, watching the beat of her pulse on those glowing monitors. But today Daphne felt a strange impulse to voice her secrets. Today she could practically see them—they were here in the room with her, lurking in the corners, flapping about on great leathery wings.
“You probably don’t care, but I’m about to get Jefferson back. He was seeing this new girl, Nina, but she ended it. Well, I made her end it.” Daphne reached to take her friend’s hand, closing her other palm over Himari’s fingers. “Also, not that you would approve, but I slept with Ethan again.”
Daphne hadn’t dared acknowledge what had happened between her and Ethan at Himari’s birthday party.
She’d woken in the middle of the night and slipped away before anyone could see her, while Ethan was still snoring in that fold-out bed. If she never spoke it aloud, she told herself, it would be as if the whole thing had never happened.
Until the following week at Himari’s house, when Himari confronted her about it.
“So,” Himari said, turning to Daphne in cool disapproval. “When are you going to tell the prince about you and Ethan?”
“Excuse me?” Daphne spluttered.
They were in Himari’s bedroom, trying on their dresses for the next day’s graduation party. A party at the palace, which they had planned to attend together, as best friends.
Himari rolled her eyes at the denial. “Don’t play dumb, Daphne. I saw you and Ethan at my birthday party, in my pool house. How long has that been going on?”
She’d seen them, but said nothing about it until now? Daphne’s eyes flicked guiltily to Himari’s window, to look out at the scene of the crime. The floodlights made the pool house look brighter than ever, as if Himari had highlighted it for just this purpose.
“I kept thinking you would tell Jefferson yourself.” Himari stared levelly at her friend. “Though I guess I wouldn’t say anything either, if I was dating the prince—and supposedly waiting till marriage—and I’d been sleeping with his best friend. Classy move, Daphne.”
“I haven’t been sleeping with Ethan! It was just that one time, and it was a mistake! I want to erase the whole thing and pretend it never happened.”
“You can’t erase something like that.” Himari’s face was spiteful, her dark eyes glittering with condemnation.
“My relationship with Jefferson isn’t any of your business, okay?”
“It’s my business because I saw it! You might be okay with lying, but I’m not.”
“Let me explain,” Daphne attempted, but Himari cut her off.
“Explain? To me?” She gave a hollow, merciless laugh. “The one you owe an explanation to is Jeff. He’s the one whose trust you betrayed. But I’m going to give you one last chance. You tell Jeff by the end of the party tomorrow night, or I will.”
Daphne swallowed. Her throat felt sandpaper dry. “You’re blackmailing me?”
Himari gave a narrow smile. “I prefer to think of it as strongly incentivizing you to do the right thing.”
“Why do you want to hurt me?”
“From where I stand, you’re the one hurting Jefferson. Don’t you think it’s ti
me you took a step back? Let him date someone else for a change?”
Daphne stared at her friend in numb disbelief. She should have known. Himari wanted the prince for herself.
Of course, other girls always wanted Jefferson. Daphne had been fending them off throughout their relationship, at parties and at school and even on the streets. Jefferson literally couldn’t walk in a parade without girls screaming at him, holding signs that said MARRY ME, JEFF! Daphne had long ago resigned herself to watching girls preen and flirt before him, throw themselves at him as if she weren’t standing right there.
But never had she suspected that her best friend was angling for him, too.
She wondered if she and Himari had ever really been friends, or if Himari had been posturing the entire time. Waiting for the moment when Daphne might slip up, and she could swoop in to take her place.
“If you think he’s going to jump from me to you, you’re wrong.”
Himari gave a harsh laugh. “Maybe he will; maybe he won’t. I guess we’ll find out.”
There was a hardness to Himari that Daphne had never seen before. It created an answering hardness within her. She felt like she no longer knew her friend at all.
She told Ethan to meet her outside school the next day, in the alley between their two campuses. He was at least half responsible for the events of that night—and he couldn’t afford for the truth to get out either. Not if he wanted to keep his best friend.
When she told him about Himari’s ultimatum, Ethan frowned. “Maybe we should tell Jeff ourselves. Preempt her. If it comes from us, we can spin it the right way.”
Daphne struggled to keep her voice down. The alley was mercifully empty right now, but you never knew who might turn the corner. “You can’t be serious. There’s no right way to spin this, Ethan! Jefferson can’t find out. It was just a one-off mistake, something we never should have done, and that we both regret.”
“Was it?” he pressed, with a curious, half-watchful look.
“Of course.”
The strangest thing was, Daphne didn’t actually feel guilty. She knew she should, they both should: this was a terrible double betrayal, the girlfriend and the best friend. Yet the only guilt Daphne had managed to muster up was a vague sense of guilt for not feeling any guilt at all.
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