Page 37 of The Impossible Princess
I remember this morning, hopping down from that rock wall and turning my face up to Max, unable to look away as the cool morning air swirled between us. The soft atmosphere had been one of expectation. An unresolved chord.
“This” he had said, and I hadn’t needed to guess what he meant. I knew. Though I drew a line for us days ago—a bright, friendly line—it has blurred since then. I’m conscious of how often I want to push my hand across it, erasing its presence altogether.
The thought of Max and me being fodder for laughing, back-channel family gossip—each conversation weighing his suitability in Mama’s eyes and finding him wanting—makes me feel a knotting aversion. I don’t want to turn our soft summer nights, and one sparkling morning, into one more thing my family has the right to have an opinion over. I can’t have that, not when I’m not even sure what I want.
I hear the gentle click of a door shutting along the upper hallway. I’m not going to chase Ella down, I decide. If I deserve some privacy, Noah, despite being gripped by some inexplicable, beige-curious madness, deserves his. And I bet Caroline would be horrified if she knew the crown prince was having amorous thoughts about her figure.
So I wind up alone in my suite, reading quickly over the text of the speech Caroline has written. It’s correct, just as everything she does is correct.
“…innovative technologies…” “…providing support to critical infrastructure…” “…owe it to these scientists to provide…”
This is all Mama thinks I am capable of—something short and rote. Two brisk paragraphs, complete with stage cues. Raise glass. Pause. Nod left and right. Take my seat.
I scrub my face with my hands and try to remember my mother’s prescription for getting more meaningful assignments. Serving the Crown is not about what I want for me. It’s about doing what needs to be done. I know it. I set the text on a music stand and position myself in front of a full-length mirror. “I am delighted to be here with scientists and innovators in the field of renewable energy…”
I go over it again and again, until the delivery is smooth.
When my throat needs a rest, I ring for a snack. When it arrives, I wander down the hall to knock on Freja’s suite. There’s no answer, but I follow the music into her office. This is one of my favorite places in the palace. Instead of the bright, Scandinavian atmosphere found elsewhere, Freja’s office has been fitted out like a dark, cozy British library. Rich, subdued jewel tones thread the carpet, finely aged leather covers deep chairs, stacks of books and paper litter every surface, and she’s got too-loud Italian opera playing as she works. I switch off her sound system and she gives a startled, “Oh.”
“I could have murdered you and you’d never have known it,” I say, offering her a roast beef sandwich. Within the family, we’ve nicknamed Freja “The Lone Wolffe.” She would have starved until dinner if I hadn’t come, bearing protein and carbohydrates to sustain her through her studies.
She eyes the food with delight. “What an upsetting thought.”
Tipping back in her chair, she tears the crust off and places it neatly to the side. “What brings you to my lair?”
I’m chewing away at my sandwich, remembering fresh-caught fish and dark rye bread—the man who made them for me. “What did you think of the meeting today?”
“Père leaving as he did?”
I nod. During my years at Stanford, the subject of royal marriage did not concern me overmuch, but I am older now, far closer to the time when Mama will introduce me to the heir of some ancient, hyphenated duchy and expect me to do my duty for Sondmark. Other royal houses have love matches, but not ours, not yet, and realities must be faced.
“No one’s screaming and none of the heirloom china is being smashed, so that’s good,” I say. I can’t even imagine such a thing happening within these walls. Mama and Père are in a cold war.
Freja wipes her mouth, and I’m always impressed by her ability to look like a magical woodland creature even while consuming a roast beef sandwich. “It might help to remember that, historically speaking, their marriage isn’t at all bad. Frederich the Wary chopped his queen’s head off while she was sleeping.”
I give her a dry smile. “Her head might have led a coup against him. One has to be sure.” If there’s one thing our bloodline has taught me, it’s that there are few acts so gruesome that five hundred years can’t turn it into a joke.
“King Victor,” she moves forward several centuries, “had fifteen illegitimate children…that we know about. His poor wife hardly got a look in. It was three decades of violence and war until the succession was settled.”
She has me laughing and then we catch each other’s eyes and subside into twin sighs. Beheadings and war. These disasters are what we’re comparing our parents’ marriage to. “Were there any good marriages?”
“A few,” she says. “Queen Magda—”
“No, no, no. We’re not counting the marriage with the prince consort who had a love nest inhabited by a string of actresses for fifty years. That’s not good.”
“He kept it secret,” she chuckles.
“How gallant.” I feel an exhausted wave roll through my shoulders, down to the tips of my toes. It was an early morning, I could say, but this exhaustion is more spiritual than physical. “So what do we do about it?”
She lifts her shoulder. “They have to work it out in their own way.”
That’s Freja. Giving other people space. Quietly, calmly in command of her own. The girl may look like a fairy princess, but she holds her boundaries better than any walled city under siege.
I nod and pluck up her serviette, depositing the crumbs in the trash.
“Anything else you wanted to talk about?” she asks, her eyes tracking me around the room.
I thought there was. Père is on my side, but I don’t want to seek out more overt help in case it makes things worse between him and Mama. I was looking for an ally in Freja, but she’s already given me what I needed to hear. Just like my parents, I have to work this out in my own way. This. I’m not sure if I mean the patronage or the secret trips I’m making to the edge of a lake, a little north, to spend time with a man I’m not supposed to care about.
