“First thing I’ll be doing when we get there is returning that money.” I slid the lavender dress from its hanger and folded it.
Hannah handed me some tissue paper. “You know, I’m more than happy to take it off your hands,” she said, wagging her brows. “I mean, holy hell, that’s a load of cash, Kat.”
“And you know I would gladly give it to you, if it were mine to give.” I added. “It’s not. It’s dirty money. Trust me, you don’t want it that way.”
She sighed, but then nodded, “Guess not. But seriously, you have all the luck. How come he never came to the photo booth when I worked there?”
“Have you seen how many magazine covers he’s on? Probably has a phobia of cameras.”
“Britannia’s hot bachelor, sick of being photographed?”
“Fully clothed, anyway.” I laughed.
“She rolled her eyes and pointed at me. “Okay, get that out of your system now. Because you know the Royal Rules once we step inside those doors. Not even a disrespectful thought. They can sense these things.”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” I stuffed the gown into the paper bag Hannah had left for me. She wrinkled her nose and snatched it from my hand and proceeded to redo the whole thing her way.
“Why do people believe that, anyway? Those superstitious rumors? The Royals aren’t magikal. They’re just tyrants.”
“Okay, seriously, Kat, come on, mind-dump all of that crap right now. I can’t afford to take any chances at losing this job because you’re too proud to take money from the hot prince. Neither can you.” She handed me the bag, with the dress arranged perfectly inside, and the tissue paper fanning out of the top like feathers.
I swallowed. She was right… my family needed me to get this job. But more than that, I needed to get this job. And that part bothered me more than anything else.
Hannah dusted her hands off. “Right. Now, we need to go over the rules again.”
“Of course we do.” She enjoyed being overly prepared, while I preferred to just blunder my way through things.
“Come on, there’s no such thing as being too prepared, and we cannot afford to screw this up!”
Hannah was applying for a position in the infirmary. She was excellent with herbal remedies and tonics and could whip up tea that would stop the flu in its tracks. She was a shoo-in for that position. In fact, if they were smart, they’d skip the interview entirely, send the other candidate’s home, and just offer her the job. But they wouldn’t, so we practiced some more.
I flipped open my journal and started reading aloud the notes I’d made after Mum had so generously dictated them to me. “Prince Alexander Ethan James Mackenzie. He prefers Ethan to Alexander, which is why no one dares call him Alex.” I flipped to the next page, ignoring the funny way my insides responded to the sound of Ethan’s name. “Born first in line to the throne of Britannia, eldest of two siblings… the other a sister, Princess Charlotte…Charlie…Imogene Mackenzie, eighteen years younger than him.”
“That’s an ooops if I ever heard one,” Hannah snickered with her adorable Irish accent.
“Are you kidding me? I’d stake my life that the Queen of Britannia hasn't had an ooops moment her entire life. She’s calculating, and her every move is like a chess match. Planned with precision and political purpose, up to and including the birth of her children.”
Hannah popped a chunk of cruller into her mouth. “They say she used magik to conceive the little princessa, which explains the massive age gap.”
I noted the way her voice dropped when she said, “Magik.” Like the word itself was taboo.
“Plus, she lost her second son at birth, so his spirit could be haunting the castle at night. Put that in your notes.” She proceeded to make howling ghost sounds.
My head started to pound. “Not really relevant to the current info I have to digest, but thanks.” I went back to my notes. I wasn’t in the mood for her humor. I was stressed, and stress gave me hives…and according to those around me, it also snapped my funny bone. Hannah was right, too much was at stake to mess this up.
Aside from the community playhouse production Hannah and I were running, my life was pretty empty. My family needed more. I needed more. More cash flow…and a lot less donuts. This interview was the only foreseeable way to get both. Money meant freedom, and emancipation was the eternal dream of all who were incarcerated by their own life, wasn’t it?
The interview process was grueling. My sister Tina told me repeatedly how intense their scrutiny was. I had to know everything about the Royal family, inside and out. And yet not appear as though I knew too much, as though I favored the gossip. A delicate balance, and a royal pain in the ass, to be honest. But it was an escape, the potential to make more money than I ever had before. Certainly, more than I’d make teaching at a public school. My entire body was suffocating in the donut shoppe, in this house, in this carnival town. I was ready for a change. I needed it, before I disappeared entirely in a vat of hot oil.
My arm ached, and I pulled up my sleeve, checking it instinctively, almost afraid it would spontaneously ignite all over again. The scar marring my right arm from wrist to elbow was still red and angry looking, but not actually on fire, despite the way it burned.
“You forgot to write hawt. Put that in there.” She jabbed at my book. “Hellishly hawt Prince Ethan.”
Ignoring her, I rolled down my sleeve and straightened, doubling my resolve. “Okay, let’s continue. Ethan is the first-born son of Queen Zara Ophelia DeMedici and King Malcolm Richard Mackenzie.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember what info came next.
Those were the facts. The stuff everyone knew. The stuff I knew ran deeper. I knew Ethan preferred milk to cream in his coffee and drank it black when he'd had too much to drink the night before. And about the night before, his drink of choice was gin and tonic, and he could hold his own. He had a birthmark on his left hip bone... mark of the devil, he’d called it. It matched mine, but I never told him that. His abs were as rock hard as they appeared on all the tabloids, and he was funny as hell. What else? He was an amazing lover, with incredibly gifted hands, and he snored lightly when he slept.
Of course, he had no idea I knew these things. And while it made me sound like a serial creeper, most of that intel came from that one strange night. A night he’d spent with someone who wasn’t me. Technically, I hadn’t even been there, aside from the part I watched in the hall, but it felt like I had. It was like I knew those things because I had been the one he was with, instead of the blonde. Which sounded as crazy as it was. As if two relative strangers could be linked in such a way. But for the duration of that night and the next morning, it felt like we’d been together, intimately. The idea of it was ten-parts stupid and one-part wishful thinking—but that was how I felt.
I rolled my eyes and slammed my journal shut. This was getting me nowhere.
“Wait,” Hannah protested, tucking her shoulder-length red hair behind her ear. “What about the rules of magik? You should go over those.”
I groaned. “Hannah, there’s no such thing as magik.” I’d been living with the shadow of ridiculous warnings against conducting magik for as long as I could walk and talk. Within the borders of Britannia, it was illegal, strictly forbidden, and hadn’t been in existence for hundreds, if not thousands of years, if it had ever existed at all. Yet somehow, even all these centuries later, it was still number one in the book of Royal Rules.
“Don’t make light of it, Kat. They’ve sacked people for not answering that one correctly.”
No surprise there. They sacked people for breathing too hard, according to my sister. She had the misfortune of that fate just before her son Lincoln was born. There were a lot of rules to remember, and the rules of magik weren’t ones I needed to worry about. But Hannah was serious. So, I placed a hand over my heart and gave her a solemn look.
“All right then, I swear to my king and country that I, Katriana Ivy Stark, shall never perform magik, again.” I stuck
my tongue out at her, ducking as she tossed a cushion at my head.
“You go ahead and joke. I’ll be the only one crying at your hanging after they execute you for being a witch.”
“Funny. As long as I don’t accidentally lose the princessa or lay a finger on the prince, I think I’m good. Assuming I get the job, that is.”
I flipped my phone over, checking it quickly. But not quickly enough.
Hannah licked icing from her fingers, one by one, then pinned me with a pointed look. “Who's the guy?”
“What?”
“The guy whose call you're waiting for. Hoping for. Expecting. Is it Jeremy? It’s Jeremey, isn’t it?” She smiled with certainty.
“Sorry. No guy.” I pocketed the phone. “Just... I was waiting to hear what's going on with the set at the theater.”
I felt the vibration against my hip as my phone buzzed. She narrowed her green eyes. “Okay, that was freakishly weird. It’s as if you knew the call was coming or something.”
“Yeah, there’s a word for that…it’s called a coincidence.”
“For something so coincidental, it happens to you a lot. Almost as if by—”
I held the pillow up like a weapon. “If you say Magik, I’m stuffing this pillow in your mouth.”
My phone buzzed again, this time I flipped it over and actually opened my messages. Twelve missed texts and four missed calls. All from the theater. “Crap. It’s the set. They want us to redo the backdrop for the home scene.”
I picked up my journal and shoved it into my bag.
“Ugg!” She flopped backward on her mattress. “Guess we better get there before we lose our only job reference.”
***
The Idylwylde Theater was a tiny playhouse, part of the entertainment district where my family’s donut cart had been parked since my parents first bought it. The whole place was more like a community than a place of commerce. Everyone knew everyone and their business. Many had opened and shut down over the years, but the theater remained the sole district sanctioned by the Royal Family, who proudly boasted of former Kings and Royals who were either patrons of the theatre or, performed on stage themselves in eras past.
It had history, not only evident in its state of disrepair, but in the continued support of the palace for productions. I’d volunteered to assist in one way or another ever since secondary school, and, since finishing my teaching degree, I’d taken on more prominent roles.
This fall we were producing a rendition of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was considered a bit scandalous, given the rules pertaining to magik. Of course, everyone knew magik wasn't real, and hadn’t existed for centuries, and yet, the laws governing witch hunts were alive and well, with the penalty being death, for anyone even rumored to be practicing witchcraft. It had become one of the Idylwylde Fair’s most infamous tourist attractions… The Witch Burnings. A huge boon for an amusement-park town, where nearly everyone’s livelihood came from the year-round fair, either directly or indirectly.
This year’s productions were to raise funds to raise to refurbish the east district, where they used to hold the witch trials. They say the unsightly rust that stains the cobblestones there, comes from the blood of the women and occasional men who were slaughtered there for possessing magik. No one believed that was actually true, but the tourists loved every morbid second of it. Taking turns doing selfies with their heads in the bladeless guillotine, or stuck through the hangman's noose.
“Apparently any funds that remain at the end of the season are to be used to refurbish Shadowland, that amusement park, that fell into disrepair decades ago.
“Well, glad to see they've got their priorities well adjusted, as always.” I muttered. “Not like there’s a job crisis at hand or anything.”
“Opening the Shadowland will create jobs Kat.”
I rolled my eyes. It created more of what they already had…servants. Worker bees all buzzing around to serve and protect their queen. The Royal family was like the mafia, only far more lethal and with more legitimately sanctioned authority. The power to declare war or peace, were under her royal prerogative. It was a matriarchal rule, with the King playing second fiddle. And yet, mothers were still eager fo their daughters to gain a position serving the king. It still held the antiquated status of wealth and power, ensuring their family line for generations to come. Most who'd done so had left he island of Britannia. it was an expensive undertaking. Personally, I would find another way. Any other way.
If I could ever manage to save enough money to apply for the necessary visas and travel expenses to actually get of this bloody island, I'd be gone. In the blink of eye, or as my mother would say, with the wave of my magic wand. Mocking my farfetched dreams were something she did frequently. Mine was never a reach for the stars sort of family. More like, the higher your reach, the greater your fall. That was her motto.
I flicked on the lights, shedding a soft amber glow across the stage. We took one look at the crumbling set and sighed.
Hannah pitched her jacket on the floor and cursed under her breath. “Tell me again why we're doing this ourselves, when we have staff to do it for us? We're the scriptwriter and director, not laborers.”
“Because the laborers screwed things up and we can't afford any mistakes this time.”
“Because of his royal badness, Prince Alexander Ethan, drama king. He is this season’s patron, coming to several of the performances.”
“He prefers Ethan.” I smiled, remembering the way I'd called out his name in the middle of... That wasn’t me, it was her. She’d called out his name. I cleared my throat. “It's for charity which I think it's noble. No jokes.” I pointed at her. “But seriously, he's pretty special, considering.”
“Considering?” She narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing me. “Hmmm…”
I could see the wheels turning in her razor-sharp mind. She didn’t miss a detail, which was what made her an amazing set designer and such an annoying best friend. Especially when I was trying to hide something from her. She could sniff it out like those drug dogs the cops used. Pick up the scent with just one lie.
“Look at you, it’s like you're becoming a Royalist now.”
“Ha-ha. As if I had time for that, even if I wanted to.” I made a mental note to delete all of the files stuffed with articles, photos, and info from my laptop before Hannah sniffed those out, too.
She metaphorically set down her ‘inquisitor’s gaze’ and picked up a hammer. “So, he's a prince and a philanthropist.”
“And a patron of the arts.” I followed her to the crumbling wall. Not something we could have happening when the Crowned Prince was on stage making his speech about the importance of Dementia research and the need for the world’s largest Ferris wheel to operate again. We'd permanently be out of work, and I’d have zero chance of working at the palace. If you wanted something done right...
She hammered the supports back in place. “Interesting combo,” she said between blows. When I frowned, she added, “the prince?”
Right. I picked up a chunk of plaster and tossed it into the bin. “It is. But, he's so much more.”
With that, the hammer fell. Literally.
“Oh, now I smell a story. What are you not telling me, and what's behind the little smile that came with, he's so much more?” She mocked my voice, sounding nothing like me, and more like a Disney princess.
Keep working, Kat. She can smell fear. I kept my head down and pounded in more nails than were needed. “What? You're crazy, I'm just saying, those aren’t the only things that define him is all.”
“Yeah. Yeah. And your eyes, they are saying something else entirely.”
“What are my eyes saying?”
“Something more like, he's much better in bed than most philanthropic art patron princes I've slept with.”
“Hannah!” I glanced over my shoulder because even the insinuation picked up by the wrong ears would be trouble.
“Well, I'm just listening to your eye
s, luv. And they're not as interested in his well-defined accomplishments, as they are in his well-defined abs.”
I felt my face heat up but didn’t have time to look away before she caught it.
She sucked in a gasp. “There. Right there. The truth is written all over that blush. So, you have seen his abs.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to, apparently my body was telling her everything she needed to know. Time for me to shut it up. I wasn't even supposed to be discussing any of this with her. With anyone.
“Listen, it's not what you're thinking. This isn't a cheesy Hollywood film. It's real life and there's nothing going on in mine. So, can we drop it, please?”
“Who are you trying to convince here?”
I set down my tools and sat on my knees. “Hannah, you know as much about the prince as I do. And as for his abs, well..." I pointed to the pile of magazines from the break room. My stomach clenched a bit as I looked at the closeup of his insanely gorgeous face. His bare torso was plastered all over the covers, since apparently, his trip to a private beach in the Greek Isles was considered as newsworthy as the reports of his secret affair. “There's your proof. I mean, they're hard to miss, considering they're everywhere.”
They didn’t even come close to doing them justice. I inwardly rolled my eyes. Get over it, Kat. It wasn't real. And it won't be happening again.
Hannah's gaze drank in an eyeful of the covers, before turning back to me. “And there's nothing going on? I mean, you did get home pretty late the other night.”
I shook my head. I didn’t trust my voice not to waver and betray me like my eyes had.
“And you'd tell me if something was going on with the two of you?”
My phone buzzed. I glanced at it quickly and nearly swallowed my tongue when I saw the name. “Of course,” I sputtered. The flush that crept over my face would be impossible to hide. “You'll be the first to know. Well, technically, you'd be the third, but yeah, I'd tell you. You’re my best friend, Hannah, you know that. Now, can we get back to the subject at hand?”
Of Royal Blood: Part One (Courting Magik Series Book 1) Page 4
