Page 94 of The Midnight Princess
The Cold War is back on.
Karl and Caroline speak only when spoken to. Mr. Tumwater clicks his tongue and shakes his head, doing the final fitting on my tuxedo. Alma gives up on trying to persuade, blasting me instead with an arctic wind. I retreat into a shell of silence and manly pride. I can’t understand her, and she won’t understand me.
That’s it, then. A bastard prince of Vorburg and a princess of Sondmark were always going to be a hard sell.
My father sends an itinerary via Karl. Mom chats via video message as she cycles from the market, showing off her cancer-fighting greens, and reminding me to represent Blackberry well.
“Are you getting sleep?” she asks.
“I’m getting sleep,” I say.
I’m not getting any sleep. Everything hurts.
I stare hard at the door of my suite, memorizing the lines as well as I’ve memorized Alma’s face. I text Ella, gaming with her when I need to get out of my head. Every night.
“You’re coming back, though,” Ella says, her pixelated avatar carrying a pixelated brick to a pixelated castle wall and slotting it into position.
The game isn’t destructive enough, and I distract myself by looking around the room. Ella’s space has a lot of color and patterns. “When did you all move into your own suites?” I ask, fighting off a sneaker—one of the pixelated marauders who crop up occasionally to tear down the buildings. His pieces spring apart and absorb into the ground as mulch.
“As soon as we moved on to college or the military academy. Mama gave Noah and Alma adjoining suites so they’d feel more independent. They got a kitchen. I got a hotpot.” I laugh. “Noah moved to Lily Cottage a few years ago. He has a dog.”
“Did she let you decorate?” I’ve glimpsed enough of the other rooms to know they’re all stamped with a personal style. Freja’s has the look of a stately English home, Clara’s is a mix of antique pieces and ultra-modern accents—pastels and gold. Ella’s is three fandoms in a trench coat.
Ella rubs her nose and pushes up her glasses. “She tried to steer us but used words like ‘appropriate’ and ‘classic’. I don’t speak that language.”
I glance at the stuffed raccoons piled on her bed. “You don’t say.”
She elbows me hard, and I chase down a sneaker, axing it in the back.
“If we had let her get her way, I’d have brocade wallpaper and Aubusson rugs, matching pillows with no tassels whatsoever.”
“You’re describing Alma’s room.”
Ella’s mouth drops open. “She actually let you in?”
“Just a peek,” I lie. No need to tell her about taking her sister’s hair down, of standing in her doorway and having her do my tie, of reading paperbacks late into the night. “It looks like a build-your-own palace bedroom kit.”
That’s not entirely true. The top of a console table is stuffed with family photos over the years—candid pictures instead of the carefully posed portraits of a royal family or press images from tiara events. These pictures include muddy hands and sandcastles. Rabbit ears and zits. My grandparents have one of those shelves.
“She has plenty of her own personality. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she doesn’t,” Ella warns. “People are always calling her this perfect princess, but there’s no such thing.”
Ella sounds like she stands next to her sister, armed with a gaming controller, prepared to fend off all attackers.
“She is perfect,” I murmur, the controls going slack in my hands. “No one is more terrifyingly prepared than your sister. If I walk into a room without reading the briefing materials ahead of time, she makes me regret it. She’s sharp and relentless. If she makes a mistake, she owns up to it. She’s smart and funny. I was—”
“Dude. Sneakers wiped out my north wing while you were monologuing.”
“Sorry,” I say, tapping a few buttons and upgrading my weapon. “I’ll clear the area.”
I’m creating a pixel-bath of dismembered attackers when Ella clears her throat.
“Alma isn’t the kind to bawl her eyes out about a break-up. Is something going on I don’t know about?”
My answer comes fast. “Nope.”
Yep.
I’m in love with Alma. The truth of it has settled on me during the last months like sawdust falling over my wrist—unnoticed while I worked on other things. But unlike sawdust, these feelings can’t be brushed off.
