Page 38 of Reign
“We always have friends coming and going from our place. It’s like a revolving door of people who need to couch-surf.”
That sounded perfect.
“Are we taking the garbage truck?” Sam asked, and Liam chuckled.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Daphne removed her silken headband and set it on her vanity, which was scattered with moisturizers and makeup brushes and a silver eyelash curler that gleamed in the waning light, making it look eerily like a weapon. And really, these thingswereher weapons—the tools she wielded against the world.
Ever since that ominous email, she’d been on edge, jumping at every question from Jefferson or stray camera flash. At least the wedding was still on track. No one even mentioned the ultrasound appointment. The entire so-called pregnancy had been swept under the rug as if it had never happened, as if Daphne and Jefferson reallywereso carried away that they were rushing the wedding for love alone.
The only person who’d brought it up, strangely enough, was Queen Adelaide. When she saw Daphne after the fateful appointment, she had pulled her into a hug and murmured,I’m so sorry. But don’t worry, you’re young; you have lots of time to be a mother!And she must have spoken to the doctors, because now she was constantly trying to feed Daphne, scooping second helpings of potatoes onto her plate or passing her almonds when they were in the car together. It was endearing, actually.
Daphne smiled through it all, but she couldn’t stop thinking about that email.
It had to be from Gabriella. In the middle of the nightDaphne would lie awake scrolling through Gabriella’s social media, past kissy-face selfies and photos of Gabriella flouncing into parties wearing jumpsuits and heels. She studied every picture with furious intensity, searching for some clue as to how she could get Gabriella off her back.
Part of her longed to call her old best friend, Himari, if only to think this through with someone, but Himari had moved to Japan. Fleetingly, Daphne let herself think of Ethan, who’d sent a few cryptic messages over the past few days. Messages she had studiously ignored.
A noise sounded at her window, and Daphne froze. Had the paparazzi broken into her family’syard?
The tapping came from the side window, the one that overlooked the narrow strip of holly trees that ran between the Deightons’ house and their neighbors’. Holding her breath, Daphne ventured over—only to gasp in mingled relief and outrage.
“Ethan!” She fumbled to open the window. “What are youdoing?”
“You haven’t answered any of my calls or texts.” He spoke as if it were completely normal to throw pebbles at her window, like a character from some romantic comedy.
“How did you get in here, anyway?” she hissed.
Ethan ignored the question. They both knew that it wasn’t the first time he’d snuck into or out of her family’s house.
“Can we please just talk?” Ethan took a step closer, vulnerability flashing across his face. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Against her better judgment, Daphne relented. “Fine.”
She shut the window and angrily unzipped the high-waisted dress she’d worn to a charity event with Jefferson earlier. In her frustration she flung her necklace across the room and it broke, scattering pearls over her floor like teardrops.Great. Now she would have to hunt them all down and have the necklace restrung.
When she stepped outside in black leggings and a puffy dark jacket, Ethan was waiting for her. “Let’s go,” he said brusquely, which was when Daphne noticed the motorcycle parked in the alley behind her house.
She retreated a step. “Since when do you have a motorcycle? You can’t seriously expect me to get on that thing!”
Ethan held out a spare helmet. “Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe we should walk back through your side yard and wave at the paparazzi out front?” He nodded at the alley. “There’s no one this way. And even if there was, they wouldn’t recognize you. You look like you plan on robbing a bank,” he added, eyeing her all-black ensemble with a smirk.
Daphne rolled her eyes but tucked her hair into a knot, then buckled the helmet under her chin. “I don’t see why you get to drive and I have to be the passenger.”
“I’m happy for you to drive if you have a motorcycle license,” Ethan said pleasantly. When she didn’t reply, he patted the seat behind him. “Hop on, Daph.”
Her body blazed with tiny flames of anger. It felt shockingly liberating, being so openly furious with him, not having to act polite orsweet.
She climbed onto the back of the bike, looping her arms as lightly as she could around his torso.
“You need to hold on a little tighter if you don’t want to fall off.” There was an unmistakable note of laughter in Ethan’s voice, as if he was tempted to remind her that they had touched in far more intimate ways than this.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she muttered.
The motorcycle leapt forward, and she gritted her teeth in surprise. But as Ethan drove through the familiar streets, turning corners with practiced ease, Daphne felt herself slowlyrelax. She’d never seen the capital from this vantage point before.
There was a cold mist in the air. It smudged golden halos around the streetlights, made Daphne’s eyelashes feel damp and heavy. Ethan’s motorcycle cut past evening buses, past cars full of people who had no idea their future princess was in the next lane, on a motorcycle.
