Prince of my Panties (Royal Package)

by Lili Valente

  I feel so much more than friendship for Elizabeth Rochat. I think about her every moment I’m awake and dream about her all night. She makes me happy and curious and excited about the future in a way I’ve never been before. Never. Not even when I was a kid, dreaming about growing up to fly planes or run secret spy missions with my brothers. She’s a mystery I want to keep solving for the rest of my life. I want to make love and memories and a family with her.

  Meanwhile, she clearly sees me as a friend with benefits.

  And yes, I love the benefits—I’m hard again just thinking about her in there taking her clothes off to jump into the shower—but I want more than that. I want her heart, but I have no clue how to reach it. She’s still holding me at a distance, and maybe she always will.

  She still thinks she’s going to die in a few months, the voice of reason pipes up as I cross the room to fetch my coffee. Once she knows she’s safe, everything could change.

  It could. She could decide to run back to Rafe, beg him to leave his wife and baby and pick up where they left off.

  The thought fills my head with thunderclouds, even though I know Lizzy wouldn’t do something like that. She wouldn’t try to break up a family, even if she wanted to.

  But the fact that she might want to, the possibility that she’s never gotten over Rafe, the man she gave up to spare him the pain of loving a cursed princess, makes my pastry taste like soap in my mouth. I’m sure it’s a very good pastry—all the food here has been incredible—but nothing tastes right.

  Nothing feels right.

  I should be excited that we might be on the verge of putting Elizabeth’s mind at ease, but an hour later, as I load our bags, groceries from the market, and the camping supplies into the car, my mood is still as gray as the skies overhead.

  We pull out of Rue headed north, and Elizabeth leans forward, gazing up at the ominous sky. “What does a person who’s camping do if it rains?” she asks, her brow furrowed.

  “Hope they set up the tarp over the tent correctly and that everything stays dry inside,” I say. “Or sleep in the car.”

  She hums low in her throat. “And this is an activity you truly enjoy?”

  “Not as much when it rains, no. But camping is fun. It’s nice to get away from all the noise and the hustle and constant connectedness. It’s one of the few times I can get Nick and Andrew off their phones to spend an entire day in real life.”

  Lizzy sits back and collects her tea from the cupholder, pressing the lid down at the edges as she asks, “You know your brothers pretty well, right?”

  “Very well.”

  “So…you think you would know if one of them was keeping a big secret.”

  I shoot a glance her way, but she’s still focused on her cup. “Why?”

  She shrugs. “Just curious. I didn’t think it would be easy to fool Sabrina, but it was. She didn’t doubt me for a second.”

  “Well, you haven’t made a habit of lying to her in the past, have you?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Concealing things, sometimes, but not lying.”

  “So, you’d built trust. She had no reason to suspect you weren’t telling the truth.”

  “And you have that same kind of trust with Andrew and Nick?”

  “I do. We’ve spent almost every minute together since we were children.” My chest tightens as suspicion flickers at back of my mind. “That’s probably why we’ve all been out of sorts lately. Andrew getting married and moving into the king’s wing is a big change.”

  “At least he’ll still be living in the same house,” Lizzy says. “But I know it’s not the same. Change is hard. Especially when it involves losing pieces of someone you love.” She takes a sip of her tea before adding softly, “Sabrina’s already pulling away from me, I can feel it.”

  “I bet she would say the same about you. Every time I ran into her at the castle, she was trying, and failing, to get in touch with you.”

  “I was giving her space to fall in love.” Lizzy sighs. “But you could be right. I should set alarms on my phone to remind me to check in with the people I care about. Maybe I’ll do that…”

  If I live past my twenty-sixth birthday. She doesn’t say it, but I hear it all the same.

  I want to reassure her, again, that she’s going to be fine, but that’s not my role in this quest. I’m here to offer support. I don’t have answers, only questions.

  Questions that churn inside me as we wind farther north and Lizzy nods off in the passenger’s seat, falling prey to the anti-nausea pills she took a half hour before we set off. I wonder if she gets as sick on planes or helicopters. If not, we’ll have to fly the next time we go on holiday.

  I want a next time with her, even if it’s as the man keeping her bed warm until the guy she really wants comes along.

  If someone had asked me a month ago if I would tolerate investing in a relationship with a woman who didn’t feel for me what I feel for her, I would have laughed in their face. I thought I was too strong, too confident in what I have to offer to put up with that kind of treatment.

  But it’s like the verse the priests always read at weddings—love is patient.

  I am patient now. I will wait as long as it takes for Lizzy to feel the way I do, and if she never does, I will still love her.

  Probably until the day I die.

  I pull into a parking space in front of the visitor’s center at the Wettingfeld Forest and shut off the engine, taking a moment to watch Lizzy sleep before I bend and kiss her forehead.

  She wakes with a snuffle and a groggy, “We’re here?” that makes me want to kiss her again.

  “We’re here.” I nod toward the cabin of dark, nearly black logs that houses the visitor’s center and camper check-in. “I’m going to go register and pay for the space. You want to come in or stay in the car?”

  “I’ll stay here.” She stretches her arms in front of her. “I need a second to get my sea legs.”

  “I’ll be right back,” I promise, stepping out and shutting the door softly behind me, grateful to be out of the car after the long drive. But as I walk toward the blue door with the native symbols carved into the wood, déjà vu descends with a suddenness that makes my head spin and my stomach ache.

  I fucking hate déjà vu. I hate feeling like I’ve done something before when I know damn well I haven’t.

  I don’t like things I can’t explain, things that nobody can account for—even brain scientists, who have better things to study, more important work to do.

  Nothing to do about déjà vu except to shake it off, pretend that the unsolved mysteries of being human aren’t unnerving.

  As I flatten my palm on the door and push, I am definitely uneasy. Even more so when a freckle-faced girl in braids greets me and I could swear I’ve seen before. When she tells me that the spot I’ve reserved flooded last night in a storm, I’m not the slightest bit surprised.

  “We’ll have to put you at one corner of the group campground, if that’s okay,” she says, and the hairs on my arms stand on end. “There’s a family using the center part, but some of their group left yesterday, and they don’t mind sharing with the people whose spaces are underwater.” She grins wider, oblivious to the dread crawling up the back of my neck on spider feet. “And they’re amazing cooks. If you’re lucky, they’ll invite you over for stew. I ate with them a few nights ago, and it was divine. Best lamb I’ve ever had.”

  The man behind her, busy feeding sheets of paper into an ancient fax machine, mutters something beneath his breath.

  Freckles shoots him an irritated glance before turning back to me. “Does that sound like it will work for you? If not, I can call the private campground closer to Devi. They have some availability, but their prices are higher, and it’s a forty-minute drive.” She laughs. “You can hike there in thirty, but the road has to go around all the protected forest, so…”

  “How can he know if it will work if he doesn’t have all the information?” the man behind her s
ays, louder this time, his focus still on the fax.

  Freckles rolls her eyes. “I’m handling this guest, Peter. Thanks.”

  “Fine.” He grunts. “But if he comes back after he’s seen ‘the family,’ and wants his money back like the last one, don’t ask me to help you cancel the charges.”

  “I didn’t need help,” she says. “The computer was locked up. All you did was restart the system. I could have done that myself.”

  “Excuse me,” I cut in, not wanting to leave Elizabeth in the car for more than a few minutes. “What’s wrong with the family?” I ask, but I already have an inkling.

  Freckles’s mouth tightens around the edges. “They’re travelers,” she says. “Romani.”

  “Gypsies,” Peter, the bigot, supplies.

  “They don’t like to be called that,” Freckles snaps over her shoulder. Turning back to me, she says more softly, “They’re super nice. They’ve been here for a couple weeks, and we haven’t had a bit of trouble. Really, you should feel perfectly safe.”

  “I do,” I lie. “We’ll take the space on the group campground.”

  I don’t feel safe, but it isn’t because we’ll be camping next to a Romani group. It’s the déjà vu and the coincidence. What are the chances a flash flood moves us to the campsite of the very people we’re looking for? The improbability makes my flesh crawl as I sign the paperwork and pay the fee for three nights.

  I suppose there’s a chance that this is a different Romani family, and we’ll still have to go hunting for Kaula Young’s caravan, but I know better. Destiny, the universe, a stroke of good luck—whatever it is, Elizabeth and I are dropping into the laps of the only people who might give us the answers we need.

  This is good news.

  So why do I feel like someone’s walked over my grave?

  I return to the car, and Elizabeth immediately senses that something isn’t right. “Jeffrey? Are you okay? You look sick to your stomach.”

  I relay the details of our relocation and watch her pale face drain of all remaining color.

  By the time she says, “Oh. Well…good,” she’s as white as the snow still clinging to the mountaintops in the distance. She draws a deep breath and lets it out with a determined nod. “Let’s go. The sooner we get answers, the sooner we can enjoy getting rained on while we set up camp.”

  “It’s not going to rain.” I motion to the patches of blue sky beginning to peek through the gray overhead. “I bet we’ll have clear skies by sunset.”

  A smile trembles across her lips. “I hope you’re right. It’s been too long since I just sat and watched a sunset.”

  “Me, too.” I take her hand in mine, holding it tight as I pull out of the parking lot and down the narrow, tree-shaded lane leading to whatever comes next.

  25

  Elizabeth

  When we reach our corner of the campground, I tumble out of the car on shaking legs, bracing myself on the hood as I study the colorful cluster of tents surrounding a fire pit big enough for a grown man to lie down in the center.

  There are big tents, small tents, and even one large covered wagon, the kind that once served as rolling homes for most of the Romani population. Now, the majority of Roma live in one place, but we still see a traditional caravan passing through town every now and then.

  Every time I’ve crossed paths with one in the past, I’ve looked away, not wanting to think about that day at the playground or my curse or all the ways my ancestors rained down pain and suffering onto innocent people.

  Now, I force myself to keep my gaze fixed on the wagon and the dark-haired people gathered in front of it, laughing as they play horseshoes. There are several members of the older generation in foldout chairs on the sidelines, watching the fun, but we’re too far away for me to see their faces or to know if one of them might be Kaula.

  No doubt, she looks different than she did nearly twenty years ago, but my gut tells me I’ll recognize her the instant I see her.

  Across the campsite, a man plays guitar while a gorgeous Roma woman with hair hanging to her waist dances with a baby in her arms and two toddlers by her feet. The little ones are doing the jerky, flailing dance of toddlers everywhere, but the woman’s movements are mesmerizing. She spins and sways, expertly swiveling her hips even as she helps the baby in her arms clap in time to the beat.

  “I couldn’t dance half that well with both arms free,” I say when Jeffrey circles around the car to stand beside me.

  “I’m a terrible dancer.” He puts an arm around my waist. “Every time I step foot on a dance floor Nick and Andrew laugh their asses off.”

  I lean into his chest but keep my gaze on the dancers. “Bastards.”

  “It’s all right. Never stopped me. After a couple of beers, I don’t care what I look like. It just feels good to move.”

  “It does.” I shift to smile up at him, bemused as I try to imagine him dancing.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I just…” I shrug. “I would have pegged you for the strong, silent, stand on the sidelines type.”

  “Sometimes I am. But I don’t see any reason to stop doing something I enjoy simply because I’m bad at it. I’m not hurting anyone. It’s not the same as being bad at team sports or first aid. Or sex.”

  Just the word on his lips is enough to make my blood pump faster. “You’re definitely not bad at the last one.”

  “Yeah?” He smirks.

  “Oh, yeah. But we’ll put you to the test later. Just to make sure your skills aren’t starting to slip.”

  “Clever girl,” he says, arm tightening around me. “But fair warning, sound carries from a tent. Unless we want the entire campground to know what we’re up to, we’ll have to celebrate in silence.”

  At the reminder of how close we are to solving the mystery that’s haunted me most of my life, I turn my attention back to the Roma camp. “Hopefully we’ll have something to celebrate,” I murmur.

  “We will.” But he doesn’t sound nearly as confident as usual. The General is gone, replaced by a human man who’s no longer sure what’s real and what’s fantasy.

  But while I have great affection for The General, it’s Jeffrey the Man that I love.

  I love him so much I’ve done my best to ignore the feeling of foreboding that’s burdened my shoulders since the moment I woke up in the visitor’s center parking lot. But by the time we’ve set up the tent and unloaded our supplies, the prickling, restless worry claws at my stomach, making it impossible to eat more than a bite or two of the large sandwich Jeffrey makes for us to share.

  It’s a lovely sandwich—brie cheese, fig jam, and apple slices providing bursts of flavor with every bite—but each morsel lands in my belly like a faulty bomb, primed to explode when I least expect it.

  Finally, I set my remaining sandwich on his napkin. “I can’t.”

  “I know,” he says, setting his largely uneaten section next to mine and wrapping them both up. “Maybe later. It’s cool. The cheese shouldn’t go bad.”

  I stand, untangling my legs from the weathered picnic table at our site.

  Jeffrey glances toward the Romani camp, where the last of the family members seated at the long picnic table by the largest tent are rising to take their plates to the dishwashing station and then drifting toward the fire-in-progress. “I thought we could bring them some wine. Wine always makes introductions easier.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I press a hand to my roiling stomach, breath rushing out. “Let’s do it.”

  “Are you sure?” He swings his legs over the bench and stands. “We can wait until later. Or tomorrow morning. They don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “No,” I say, my fingers curling and uncurling at my sides. “It’s time. Putting it off isn’t going to make things any easier.”

  “All right.” Jeffrey opens the cooler on the ground by the table and pulls out a bottle of white wine, wiping the water off with the edge of his dark blue tee shirt before wrappi
ng his fingers around the neck and holding it up between us. “Think this will do?”

  I nod. “That’s perfect.”

  The wine is a white blend from a winery called The Fairy Queen, and fireflies and fairies dance together on the label. As we start across the grass toward the Roma camp, in a moment of skin-tingling synchronicity, fireflies begin to flash in the shadows beneath the trees.

  I haven’t seen this many at once since I was a girl. They aren’t so common in the south anymore, but in my childhood, my sisters and I would run through hundreds of flashing lights on our way back to the castle after a movie night at Chamomile’s cottage.

  Sometime between that memory and last summer, when Sabrina had lamented how much she missed our summer bug friends, they all but disappeared.

  Vanished.

  Like an act of dark magic.

  It isn’t magic, of course. Sabrina says it’s likely a mixture of light pollution, habitat destruction as the village expands, and chemicals used in agriculture and lawn maintenance that are killing the larvae before they can hatch.

  Killed before they can hatch…

  The thought echoes in my head as we near the edge of the camp.

  How much of me was killed before it could hatch, and who would I have been if Kaula Young hadn’t taken me from that playground? I haven’t been angry with her for a long time, and I’m not angry now, I’m just…full and getting more so with every step.

  By the time one of the men arranging wood in the fire pit turns to greet us, it feels like my chest is going to explode, like I’m about to burst from the confines of my skin and fly off into the pink and purple-streaked sky like one of the fairies on the bottle.

  For years, I’ve been so torn, uncertain what was real and what a product of my imagination. But now, looking past the man with the friendly smile crinkling the edges of his eyes, I finally know the truth.

  My gaze locks on a slim older woman sitting in a lawn chair with a blanket over her legs on the other side of the pit, and I know.