Page 4 of American Royals
“Should we look through the candidates before I meet them tomorrow?” she said at last, and opened the folder to its first page.
NINA
Nina Gonzalez clattered up the stairs at the back of the lecture hall, headed toward her usual seat in the mezzanine. Below her stretched hundreds of red auditorium chairs, each affixed with a wooden desk. Almost every seat was occupied. This was Intro to World History, a required class for all freshmen at King’s College: King Edward I had decreed as much when he founded the university back in 1828.
She rolled up the sleeves of her flannel shirt, and a tattoo flashed on her wrist, its angular lines inscribed on her burnished sienna skin. It was the Chinese character for friendship. Samantha had insisted that they get the tattoo together, to commemorate their eighteenth birthdays. Of course, Sam couldn’t very well be seen with a tattoo, so hers was somewhere decidedly more private.
“You’re coming tonight, right?” Nina’s friend Rachel Greenbaum leaned over from the next chair.
“Tonight?” Nina reached up to tuck her dark hair behind one ear. A cute boy at the end of the row was glancing her way, but she ignored him. He looked too much like the one she was still trying to get over.
“We’re meeting in the common room to watch the coverage of the Queen’s Ball. I made cherry tarts using the official recipe, the one from the Washington cookbook. I even bought cherries from the palace gift shop, to make it authentic,” Rachel said eagerly.
“That sounds delicious.” Those cherry tarts were famous worldwide: the palace had served them at every garden party or reception for generations. Nina wondered what Rachel would say if she found out how much the Washingtons secretly hated those tarts.
Honestly, it would have been more authentic if she’d cooked barbecue instead. Or breakfast tacos. Both of which the royal family ate with shocking frequency.
“So you’re coming, right?” Rachel pressed.
Nina did her best to look regretful. “I can’t. I actually have a shift tonight.” She worked at the university library shelving books, as part of the work-study program that funded her scholarship. But even if she hadn’t been busy, Nina had no desire to watch the coverage of the Queen’s Ball. She’d attended that ball several years in a row, and it was pretty much the same every time.
“I didn’t know the library was open on Friday nights.”
“Maybe you should come with me. Some of the seniors still have finals; you might meet an older guy,” Nina teased.
“Only you would daydream about a library meet-cute.” Rachel shook her head, then let out a wistful sigh. “I wonder what Princess Beatrice will wear tonight. Do you remember the gown she wore last year, with the illusion neckline? It was so elegant.”
Nina didn’t want to talk about the royal family, especially not with Rachel, who was a little too obsessed with them. She’d once told Nina that she’d named her pet goldfish Jefferson—all ten of them in succession. But a deep-seated loyalty to Samantha made Nina speak up. “What about Samantha? She always looks beautiful too.”
Rachel made a vague noise of disagreement, ignoring the question. It was an all-too-typical reaction. The nation adored Beatrice, their future sovereign—or at least most people adored her, except the sexist, reactionary groups that still protested the Act of Succession to the Crown. Those people hated Beatrice, simply for having the temerity to be a woman who would inherit a throne that had always belonged to men. They were a minority, but they were still vicious and vocal, always trolling online photos of Beatrice, booing her at political rallies.
But if most of the nation loved Beatrice, they positively swooned over Jefferson, with what sometimes felt like a single collective sigh. He was the only boy, and the world seemed willing to forgive him anything, even if Nina wasn’t.
As for Samantha … at best people were entertained by her. At worst, which was relatively often, they actively disapproved of her. The problem was that they didn’t know Sam. Not the way Nina did.
She was saved from answering by Professor Urquhart, who started up to the podium with ponderous steps. There was a flurry of activity as all seven hundred students broke off their murmured conversations and arranged their laptops before them. Nina—who was probably the last person still taking notes by hand, in a spiral notebook—poised her pencil on a fresh page and glanced up expectantly. Dust motes hung suspended in the bars of sunlight that sliced through the windows.
“As we’ve covered all semester, political alliances through the turn of the century were typically bilateral and easily broken—which is why so many of them were sealed through marriage,” Professor Urquhart began. “Things changed with the formation of the League of Kings: a treaty among multiple nations, meant to assure collective security and peace. The League was founded in 1895 at the Concord of Paris, hosted by—”
Louis, Nina silently finished. That was the easiest part of French history: their kings were consistently named Louis, all the way up to the current Louis XXIII. Honestly, the French were even worse about Louis than the Washingtons were about George.
She copied the professor’s words into her spiral notebook, wishing that she could stop thinking about the Washingtons. College was supposed to be her fresh start, a chance to figure out who she really was, free from the influence of the royal family.
Nina had been Princess Samantha’s best friend since they were children. They had met twelve years ago, when Nina’s mother, Isabella, interviewed at the palace. The former king—Edward III, Samantha’s grandfather—had just passed away, and the new king needed a chamberlain. Isabella had been working in the Chamber of Commerce, and somehow, miraculously, her boss recommended her to His Majesty. For there was no “applying” to jobs in the palace. The palace made a list of candidates, and if you were one of the lucky few, they reached out to you.
The afternoon of the interview, Nina’s mom Julie was out of town and Nina’s usual babysitter canceled at the last minute, leaving her mamá Isabella no choice but to bring Nina with her. “Stay right here,” she admonished, leading her daughter to a bench in the downstairs corridor.
Nina had found it surprising that her mamá was interviewing in the actual palace, but as she would later learn, Washington Palace wasn’t just the royal family’s home in the capital. It was also the administrative center of the Crown. By far the majority of the palace’s six hundred rooms were offices or public spaces. The private apartments on the second floor were all marked by oval door handles, rather than the round ones downstairs.
Nina tucked her feet beneath her and quietly opened the book she’d brought.
“What are you reading?”
A face topped by a mountain of chestnut hair peered around the corner. Nina instantly recognized Princess Samantha—though she didn’t look much like a princess in her zebra-print leggings and sequined dress. Her fingernails were painted in a rainbow, each one a different primary color.
“Um …” Nina hid the cover in her lap. The book was about a princess, albeit a fantasy one, but it still felt strange to confess that to a real princess.
“My little brother and I are reading a dragon series right now,” Samantha declared, and tipped her head to one side. “Have you seen him? I can’t find him.”
