Happily Ever After

“No. You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. You like order? Then plan, prepare. Imagine the king, husband, and father you want to be, and do whatever it takes to get there.”

He looked at me, almost with pity. “It’s adorable that you think that’s all it takes.”

I’D NEVER HAD A PHYSICAL before. I realized that if I did become princess, they would probably become a regular part of my life, and that horrified me.

Dr. Mission was kind and patient, but I was still uncomfortable letting a stranger see me naked. He took my blood, did numerous X-rays, and poked at me all over, looking for anything that might be amiss.

I felt exhausted when I left. Of course, I hadn’t slept well, and that didn’t help. Prince Clarkson had left me at my door with a kiss on my hand. And between being elated over the touch and worried about how he was feeling, it took me forever to fall asleep.

I walked into the Women’s Room, a little nervous to look Queen Abby in the eye. I worried that she might have a visible mark on her somewhere. Of course, she could have been the one who hit the king. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

But I was positive I didn’t want anyone else to.

She wasn’t there, so I moved to sit with Madeline and Bianca.

“Hey, Amberly. Where were you this morning?” Bianca asked.

“Sick again?” Madeline followed.

“Yes, but I’m doing much better now.” I wasn’t sure if the physical was a secret or not, but I decided discretion was best for now.

“Good, because you’ve missed everything!” Madeline leaned in and whispered. “There are rumors that Tia slept with Clarkson last night.”

My heart sank. “What?”

“Look at her.” Bianca glanced over her shoulder to where Tia was sitting with Pesha and Marcy by the window. “See how smug she looks.”

“That’s against the rules,” I said. “It’s against the law.”

“Hardly the point,” Bianca whispered. “Would you turn him down?”

I thought about the way he’d looked at me last night, the way his fingers had glided on the surface of the table. Bianca was right; I wouldn’t have said no.

“Is it true, though? Or just a rumor?” After all, he’d been with me for part of the night. Not all of it, though. There were plenty of empty hours between him leaving me and showing up for breakfast.

“She’s being very coy about the whole thing,” Madeline griped.

“Well, it’s really none of our business.” I picked up the playing cards they’d haphazardly slung around the table and started to shuffle.

Bianca threw back her head and sighed loudly, and Madeline placed her hand on mine. “It is our business. It changes the entire game.”

“This isn’t a game,” I answered. “Not to me.”

Madeline was about to say more, but the door flew open. Queen Abby stood in the entrance, looking furious.

If she had a bruise on her, she’d hid it very well.

“Which one of you is Tia?” she demanded. The entire room looked toward the window where Tia sat frozen, as pale as a sheet. “Well?”

Tia slowly raised her hand, and the queen marched back to her, murder in her eyes. I hoped whatever reproach Tia was about to get, the queen would escort her from the room for it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the plan.

“Did you sleep with my son?” she asked, not bothering to be discreet at all.

“Your Majesty, it’s a rumor.” Her voice was barely a squeak, but the room stilled to such a degree that I was aware of Madeline’s breaths.

“That you have done nothing to stop!”

Tia stuttered, starting maybe five different sentences before choosing one. “If you leave rumors be, they die. Vehemently denying something always implies guilt.”

“So do you deny this or not?”

Trapped.

“I didn’t, my queen.”

If she told the truth or if she lied, I didn’t think it mattered. Tia’s fate was sealed before a word was said.

Queen Abby grabbed Tia by a fistful of hair and started pulling her toward the door. “You’re leaving right now.”

Tia screamed in pain and protested. “But only Prince Clarkson can do that, Your Majesty. It’s in the rules.”

“So is not being a whore!” the queen shrieked in return. Tia lost her footing and slipped so that the queen was literally holding her aloft by her hair. She stumbled to keep up as Queen Abby pushed her onto the floor in the hallway. “GET! OUT!”

She slammed the door and immediately turned to the rest of us. She took her time raking her eyes over our faces, making sure we knew her power.

“Let me make something very clear,” she began quietly, gliding slowly past chairs and couches of girls, looking glorious and terrifying at once. “If one of you little brats thinks you can come into my house and take my crown, think again.”

She stopped in front of a cluster of girls near the wall. “And if you think you can act like trash and still end up on the throne, you have another think coming.” She dug her finger into Piper’s face. “I will not stand for it!”

Piper’s face was flung back by the force of the queen’s finger, but she didn’t react to the pain until after Queen Abby had passed.

“I am queen. And I am beloved. If you want to marry my son and live in my home, you will be everything I tell you to be. Obedient. Tasteful. And silent.”

She wove her way through the tables and stopped in front of Bianca, Madeline, and me. “From now on your only job is to show up, be a lady, sit there, and smile.”

Her eyes met with mine as she ended her speech, and, stupidly, I thought that was a command. So I smiled. The queen was not amused, and she pulled back and slapped it off my face.

I let out a grunt and fell into the table. I didn’t dare move.

“You have ten minutes to clear out. You will be receiving the rest of your meals in your rooms today. I don’t want to hear so much as a peep out of any of you.”

I heard the door shut but still had to check. “Is she gone?”

“Yes. Are you okay?” Madeline asked, coming to sit in front of me.

“My face feels like it burst open.” I pulled myself up, but the throb from my cheek pulsed down my body.

“Oh, my goodness!” Bianca cried. “You can see her handprint.”

“Piper?” I called. “Where’s Piper?”

“Here,” she said through tears. I stood up, and she was already walking toward me.

“Is your face all right?” I asked.

“It hurts a little.” She ran her hand over the place where the queen had pushed her, and I could see a half-moon shape from her nail.

“There’s a little mark, but some makeup should cover it.”

She fell into my arms, and we held each other.

“What got into her?” Nova asked, voicing all our thoughts.

“Maybe she’s really protective of her family,” Skye offered.

Cordaye huffed. “It’s not like we haven’t seen the way she drinks. I could smell it on her.”

“She’s always so nice on TV.” Kelsa held herself, confused by the whole thing.

“Listen,” I said, “one of us will know what it feels like to be queen. Even from the outside, the pressure looks unmanageable.” I stopped to rub my cheek. It was burning. “For now, I think we should all avoid the queen as much as possible. And let’s not mention this to Clarkson. I don’t think talking poorly about his mother, no matter what she did, would be good for any of us.”

“We’re supposed to ignore this?” Neema asked outraged.

I shrugged. “I can’t force you. But that’s what I’ll be doing.”

I pulled Piper close again, and we all stood there, silent. I’d hoped maybe I’d form bonds with these girls over music we liked or learning to apply makeup. I never imagined it would be a unanimous fear that would bind us like sisters.

I DECIDED I WOULD NEVER ask him. If Prince Clarkson was intimate with Tia, I didn’t want to know. And if he wasn’t and I asked, it would be like breaking our trust before we even built it. More likely than not it was a rumor, no doubt started by Tia herself to intimidate the rest of us, and look where that landed her.

These things were better off ignored.

What I couldn’t ignore was the throbbing pain in my face. Hours after the queen struck me, my cheek was still red and pulsing with pain.

“Time for new ice,” Emon said, giving me another wrap.

“Thank you.” I handed her the old one.

When I came back to my room begging for something to help with the ache, my maids asked which Selected girl had hit me, vowing they would go immediately to the prince. I’d told them several times it was none of the girls. A servant wouldn’t do it. And as far as they knew, I’d been in the Women’s Room all morning, so that only left one option.

They didn’t ask. They knew.

“I heard while I was fetching ice that the queen will be taking a brief vacation alone next week,” Martha said, sitting on the floor by my bed. I’d sat facing the window, my view equally split between palace wall and open sky.

“You did?”

She smiled. “It seems the number of visitors has taken a toll on her nerves, so the king has asked her to take some time for herself.”

I rolled my eyes. He yells about expensive dresses, then sends her on a holiday. I wouldn’t complain, though. A week without her felt like heaven right now.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked.

I averted my gaze and nodded.

“Don’t worry, miss. By the end of the day, it’ll all be gone.”

I wanted to tell her the pain wasn’t the real problem. My true worry was that this was one sign of many that life as a princess might be challenging at best. At worst it would be horrific.

I tallied through what I knew. The king and queen loved each other at one point, but now they worked to contain their hatred. The queen was a drunk and consumed with possessing the crown. The king, at the very least, was on the edge of a breakdown. And Clarkson …

Clarkson was doing his best to come across as resigned, calm, controlled. But underneath that, his laugh was childlike. And when he broke, it was a miracle he managed to find all the pieces of himself again.

It wasn’t as if I was a stranger to suffering. At home I worked to the point of exhaustion. I endured sweltering heat. Even though being a Four should offer some level of security, I lived close to poverty.

This would be a new hardship to endure. That was, of course, if Prince Clarkson chose me.

But him choosing me would mean he loved me, right? And wouldn’t that make it all worth it?

“What are you thinking about, miss?” Martha asked.

I smiled and reached for her hand. “The future. Which is pointless, I suppose. What comes will come.”

“You’re a sweet one, miss. He’d be lucky to have you.”

“And I’d be lucky to have him.”

It was true. He was everything I ever wanted. It was all the strings attached to him that frightened me.

Danica slipped into another pair of Bianca’s shoes. “They’re a perfect fit! Okay, I’ll take these, and you take my blue ones.”

“Done.” Bianca shook Danica’s hand and grinned from ear to ear.

No one told us to stay out of the Women’s Room for the rest of the week, but all the girls opted to do just that. Instead, we gathered in groups and hopped from bedroom to bedroom, trying on one another’s clothes and talking the way we always did.

Except it was different. Without the queen around, the girls turned into … well, girls. Everyone seemed a bit lighter now. Instead of worrying about protocol, or being perfectly ladylike, we let ourselves be the people we were before our names were drawn, the girls we were at home.

“Danica, I think we’re close to the same size. I bet I have dresses that would work with those shoes,” I offered.

“I’ll take you up on that. You got one of the good sets. Also, Cordaye. Have you seen the things her maids make?”

I sighed. I didn’t know what they did, but Cordaye’s maids made fabric hang in ways I didn’t see on anyone else. Nova’s dresses were also a notch above everyone else’s. I wondered if whoever won the Selection would have her pick of the maids. I depended on Martha, Cindly, and Emon so much, I couldn’t imagine being here without them.

“Do you know what’s strange to think about?” I said.

“What?” Madeline answered, rummaging through Bianca’s jewelry box.

“One day, it won’t be like this. Eventually, one of us will be here alone.”

Danica sat down with me at Bianca’s table. “I know. Do you think that’s part of why the queen is so angry? Maybe she’s been alone too much.”

Madeline shook her head. “I think that’s by choice. She could have anyone stay as her guest if she wanted. She could move an entire household into the palace if it pleased her.”

“Not if it bothered the king,” Danica replied.

“True.” Madeline went back to the box. “I can’t get a read on the king. He’s kind of detached from everything. You think Clarkson will be like that?”

“No,” I answered, smiling to myself. “Clarkson is his own person.”

No one added to the discussion, and I looked up to find Danica’s devilish grin.

“What?”

“You’ve got it bad,” she said, almost as if she felt sorry for me.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re in love with him. You could find out tomorrow that he kicks puppies for fun, and you’d still be moony-eyed over him.”

I sat up a little straighter. “He might marry me. Shouldn’t I love him?”

Madeline chuckled, and Danica pressed on. “Well, yes, but it’s the way you act, like you’ve been in love with him forever.”

I blushed and tried not to think of the time I stole change from Mama’s purse to buy a stamp with his face on it. I still had it on a piece of rough paper and used it as a bookmark.

“I respect him,” I defended. “He’s the prince.”

“It’s more than that. You’d take a bullet for him if you had to.”

I didn’t answer.

“You would! Oh, my goodness!”

I stood. “I’m going to grab some of those dresses. I’ll be right back.”

I tried not to be afraid of the thoughts in my head. Because if it was a choice between him or me, I didn’t think I’d be able not to put him first. He was the prince, and his life was invaluable to the country. But more than that, it was invaluable to me.

I shrugged the thought away.

Besides, it wasn’t as if it would ever happen.

THE BLINDING LIGHTS IN THE studio always took some adjusting to. Adding the weight of the jeweled dresses my maids insisted I wear for the Report made the hour almost unbearable.

The new reporter was interviewing the girls. There were still enough of us left that it was easy to be skipped over, and, for the moment, that was my goal. But, if I had to be asked a question, it wouldn’t be so bad to have it come from Gavril Fadaye.

The previous royal announcer, Barton Allory, retired the night the new Selection candidates were revealed, sharing the moment with his hand-chosen replacement. Twenty-two years old, from a respectable line of Twos and sparkling with personality, Gavril was easy to like. I was sad to see Barton go … but not that sad.

“Lady Piper, what do you think the primary role of the princess should be?” Gavril asked, the bright flash of his teeth making Madeline nudge me in the arm.

Piper gave him a winning smile and took a breath. Then another. Then the silence got uncomfortable.

It was then that I realized that we should all be slightly terrified of this question. I darted my eyes toward the queen, who would leave on a flight immediately after the cameras turned off. She was watching Piper, daring her to speak after she’d warned us to be silent.

I checked the monitor, and the fear in her face was painful to watch.

“Piper?” Pesha whispered beside her.

Piper finally shook her head.

Gavril’s eyes said he was searching for a way to save this, to save her. Barton would have known what to do, for sure. Gavril was just too new.

I raised my hand, and Gavril looked up at me, grateful.

“We had such a long conversation about this the other day, I’m guessing Piper just doesn’t know where to start.” I laughed, and some of the other girls followed. “We all agree our first duty is to the prince. Serving him is serving Illéa—and that might seem like a strange job description, but us doing our part allows the prince to do his.”

“Well said, Lady Amberly.” Gavril smiled and moved on to another question.

I didn’t look at the queen. Instead, I focused on sitting upright as the stab of another headache started in. Maybe they were caused by stress? But if that was the case, then why did I get them for no reason at all sometimes?

I noted on the monitors that the cameras were not focused on me or even my row, so I allowed myself a tentative brush of my forehead. Of all the things, I could tell my hands were getting softer. I wanted to prop my head up on my arm completely, but that wasn’t possible. Even if the rudeness would have been forgiven, the dress wouldn’t allow me to bend that way.

I pulled myself up, focusing my breathing. The steady ache was growing, but I willed myself to stay upright. I’d worked through feeling sick before, and under much worse conditions. This is nothing, I told myself. All I have to do is sit.

The questions seemed to last forever, though I didn’t think Gavril had spoken to all the girls. Eventually, the cameras stopped rolling. I remembered then that I wasn’t quite finished. There was still dinner before I could go back to my room, and that usually lasted about an hour.

“Are you all right?” Madeline asked.

I nodded. “Tired probably.”

We turned our heads to the sound of laughter. Prince Clarkson was talking to some of the girls in the front row.

“I like his hair tonight,” Madeline commented.

He held up a finger to the ladies he had been speaking to and circled around the crowd, his eyes on me. I made a small curtsy when he approached, and as I stood, I felt his hand go around my back, binding us together and keeping our faces from the others.

“Are you sick?”

I sighed. “I tried to hide it. My head is throbbing. I just need to lie down.”

“Take my arm.” He held out his elbow for me, and I wrapped my hand around it. “Smile.”

I lifted my lips. Despite the discomfort, it was easier with him there.

“Very generous of you to grace me with your presence,” he said, just loud enough so the girls we were standing by could hear. “I’m trying to remember what dessert it is you like best.”

I didn’t answer but continued to look happy as we exited the studio. I let my smile drop once we were out the doorway, and when we reached the end of the hallway, Clarkson scooped me up.

“Let’s get you to the doctor.”

I clenched my eyes together. I was getting nauseated again, and my whole body was starting to feel clammy. But I felt more comfortable in his arms than I would have on a chair or bed. Even with all the swaying, being curled up with my head on his shoulder felt like the best thing in the world.

A new nurse was in the hospital wing, but she was just as kind as she helped Clarkson get me into a bed, with my legs propped up on a pillow.

“The doctor is sleeping,” she said. “He was up all last night and most of the day with two different maids, helping them deliver. Two boys back-to-back! Only fifteen minutes apart.”

I smiled at the happy news. “There’s no need to disturb him,” I told her. “It’s only a headache, and it’ll pass.”

“Nonsense,” Clarkson replied. “Send for a maid and have our dinners brought here. We’ll wait for Dr. Mission.”

The nurse nodded and headed off.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I whispered. “He’s had a rough night, and I’ll be fine.”

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t make sure you were properly taken care of.”

In my head I tried to turn those words into something romantic, but it sounded more as if he felt obligated. Still, if he had wanted to, he could have gone to eat with the others. Instead, he chose to stay with me.

I picked at my dinner, not wanting to be rude, but my head was still making me feel sick. The nurse brought some medicine for me, and by the time Dr. Mission showed up, his hair slick from a shower, I felt much better. The throbbing was more like a tiny pulse than a ringing bell.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Your Highness,” he said with a bow.

“It’s no problem,” Prince Clarkson replied. “We’ve been enjoying a lovely meal in your absence.”

“How is your head, miss?” Dr. Mission took my wrist in his fingers to check my pulse.

“Much better. The nurse gave me some medicine, and that did a world of good.”

He pulled out a little light and shone it into my eyes. “Maybe you should take something daily. I know you try to fix them once they start, but we might be able to stop them from happening. Nothing for certain, but I’ll see what I can get you.”

“Thank you.” I folded my arms over my lap. “How are the babies?”

The doctor beamed. “Absolutely perfect. Healthy and fat.”

I smiled, thinking of the two new lives that started in the palace today. Would they be best friends, maybe? And grow up telling everyone the story about how they were born so close to each other?

“Speaking of babies, I wanted to discuss some of the results of your physical.”

All humor left my face, left my whole body. I sat up straighter, bracing myself. I could read in his expression that I was about to be sentenced to something.

“Your tests show several different toxins in your bloodstream. If they’re showing up this heavily after weeks of being out of your home province, my guess is that the levels were much higher when you were there. Now, for some people this wouldn’t be an issue. The body responds, adjusts, and can live without any side effects whatsoever. Based on what you told me about your family, I would say two of your siblings are doing just that.

“But one of your sisters gets nosebleeds, correct?”

I nodded.

“And you get constant headaches?”

I nodded again.

“I suspect your body is not taking these toxins in stride. Between the tests and some of the more personal things you’ve told me, I think these bouts of tiredness, nausea, and pain will continue, probably for the rest of your life.”

I sighed. Well, that wasn’t worse than what I was experiencing now. And at least Clarkson didn’t seem bothered by my condition.

“I also have reasons to be concerned about your reproductive health.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed. In my periphery, I noticed Clarkson shift in his seat.

“But … but why? My mother had four children. And she and my father both came from large families. I just get tired, that’s all.”

Dr. Mission remained composed, clinical, as if he wasn’t discussing the most personal parts of my life. “Yes, and while genetics help, based on the tests, it seems that your body would be … an unfavorable habitat for a fetus. And any child you might conceive”—he paused, flitted his eyes toward the prince before looking back at me—“might be unfit for … certain tasks.”

Certain tasks. As in not smart enough, healthy enough, or good enough to be a prince.

My stomach rolled.

“Are you sure?” I asked weakly.

Clarkson’s eyes watched the doctor for confirmation. I supposed this was vital information for him.

“That would be the best case. If you manage to conceive at all.”

“Excuse me.” I leaped from the bed and ran down to the bathroom near the entrance of the hospital wing, flung myself into a stall, and finally heaved up every last thing in my body.