Page 4 of Royal Rising

It doesn’t help, and only brings Ernie, my cat, off the bed to weave between my legs. I like to think it’s his way of showing support, but he probably only wants to be fed.

“I am dating aprince,” I tell Ernie, who heads to his food bowl in the kitchen.

It took me three days to agree to go for dinner with him.

It’s not like there is a lack of princes in Battle Harbour—we’ve got four, and one of those is my boss at The King’s Hat. Kalle, the prince in question, likes to call me his partner when there’s a nasty task that he doesn’t want to do, like filling the lady basket in the women’s room or cutting up limes for the bar.

He says the juice squirts in his eyes, but that’s because he’s never bothered to learn to cut them up properly.

Kalle is not the prince I’m going on a date with.

It still seems surreal. That I, Edie England, born and bred in Battle Harbour, Laandia, daughter of Bob and Martha and second eldest of four daughters, have accepted an invitation to dine with a prince. I shake my hair out of my customary ponytail, apply makeup to highlight my brown eyes—my best feature—and try to decrease the size of my nose—my worst.

I look okay. Good enough for dinner with a prince? I have no idea.

I’m still critiquing my reflection when the chime of FaceTime interrupts my playlist. I expect the call is from one of my sisters but my smile widens when the face of Stella Laz fills the screen.

“You’re dating a prince,” she greets me, speaking loudly over the barking of dogs.

“So are you,” I counter.

The flash of her smile is instant but quickly vanishes as a series of texts light up my screen.

“Is everything okay?” she asks.

My shoulders slump. “Sisters. I’ll deal with it later. What’s new with your Prince Charming?”

Stella and Prince Gunnar are a new thing, still trundling along on wobbly legs like a newborn calf. My friendship with Stella is also quite new, but already more secure, brought about by the shared experience of being bridesmaids in the first royal wedding of Laandia. Lady Camille of Saint Pierre married Prince Odin, and since Camille didn’t have a wide circle of friends able to make up the wedding party, Stella and I were recruited.

Actually, Stella’s stepsister was supposed to go with Prince Gunnar, but she bailed at the last minute and Stella stepped in.

It’s a long story.

Stella’s always had a reputation as being difficult. She’s sharp-tongued and bad-tempered, but when you get past the crusty surface, there’s a soft, squishy centre right there waiting for you.

Unlike inCinderella, in this reality, Prince Charming fell for the wicked stepsister instead of the boring blonde. Not that Cinderella is boring— Okay, maybe she’s a little boring. In my opinion, there are better fairy-tale princesses out there.

“We’re not talking about me and Gunnar,” Stella points out, her sharp tone softening more every day.

“And we shouldn’t say I’m dating a prince because it’s adate,” I counter. “One date, not plural. I’m going ononedate with a prince. Prince Mathias.”

And then what?

But I don’t say that out loud.

Prince Mathias is the nephew of King Magnus of Laandia. Beside the four princes and the princess, there is another royalfamily living on the side of Laandia by the Quebec border, and I met them at Odin’s wedding.

I suspect I would have gotten an invitation to Prince Odin’s wedding even without Kalle bringing me as a date, but I definitely wouldn’t have been a member of the wedding party.

Along with Mathias’s interest, it still blows my mind that I, daughter of the former groundskeeper of the king of Laandia’s castle, got to be a bridesmaid for the new Princess Camille, soon to be prefect of Saint Pierre.

And if I hadn’t been one of the bridesmaids, I doubt Prince Mathias would have asked me to dance. And then invited me to have coffee with him the next day.

And now dinner.

I’m going to dinner with a prince.

It sounds strange, even to me. Yes, I work with Prince Kalle every day and we have shared plenty of meals together, he isKalle,notPrince.There’s a difference.

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