Page 1 of The Dandelion Princess
Prologue
September
ELLA
I draw my knees up to my chest and hunch over my cell phone in a shapeless hoodie. The pose gives me the appearance of one of the fearsome gargoyles perched along the roof of the Grousehof, but my mind is a storm.
I frown at the screen. Seong has been rocked by a natural disaster, and the rubble is still smoking. It’s the right time to send a message, but Smart Ella is shouting at the top of her lungs that I should go through official channels. I can help in a thousand ways that don’t involve personal contact. I don’t need to pick old scabs. Idiot Ella is half out of her mind with worry. I have to know that Marc is safe.
My thumb hovers over a tiny icon—a tiny photo of him and me, cropped from a larger group picture—and the name underneath reads “My Brother’s Best Friend”.
I release a breath and type quickly.
Marc?
Send.
This is a mistake—such a mistake—and I look up to calculate the time change. Soft morning sunshine glows from the edges of my drapes, but it’s almost midnight in East Asia. He’s probably dead asleep and won’t see the message for hours. Maybe it’s not too late to—
Incoming text bubbles begin to bounce, and I jerk upright.
Ells. Still breaking hearts in Sondmark?
My scabs feel the sharp sting of fresh air and I screw my eyes shut. This hurts in the exact way I knew it would.
No. I shake my head. I’m going to be fine. I lean against my headboard and take a slow drag of air. I am a princess of Sondmark, not a teenager with a crush, and I am definitely, for sure this time, going to fall out of love with Marc van Heyden. It has been 287 days since I sent him a cat meme. I deserve a sobriety pin.
There are no support groups for falling out of love with your brother’s best friend. I’ve known him as long as I’ve been alive, and his little sister is my bestie. Disentangling my life from his feels as impossible and painful as shrugging out of my own skin. Still I try. When our paths cross at royal engagements, I maintain a friendly distance. If he closes the distance, I try to drive him off by being as boring as possible. This is a Herculean task, but it is also how I found out I can talk about historic cufflinks for twenty-three uninterrupted minutes.
For the last year, I have kept myself busy, fulfilling royal assignments and fighting with my mother over her narrow interpretation of “appropriate footwear”. I wrap myself in the cozy sanctuary of online fandoms. Still, the effort ofnotthinking about Marc every minute of every day feels like holding one of those impossible yoga positions—the kind my twin, Freja, manages so easily. I am aware of every passing second,breathing a prayer that in another month, or the one after that, this pathetic, one-sided crush will wither and die.
I enable voice-to-text.
I’ve been praying for you,I tell him, my throat stiff with emotion.I want to do something for Seong. What do you want? A boatload of bottled water? Someone screaming at the NGOs to get busy? Can I throw money at your problems?
Since early reports of the disaster reached Sondmark, I’ve spent every spare minute glued to the screen, absorbing the photos and video feed pouring out of East Asia. Marc and his mother, a Seongan native, were on the ground in less than twenty-four hours, providing key aid in the aftermath of an earthquake, a tsunami, countless landslides, and the suspicious rumblings of a nuclear reactor.
My life in Sondmark stands in sharp contrast. I’ve worn a succession of ball gowns, trotted from museums to embassies like a royal show pony, and smiled at dozens of cameras. All the while, Marc has been in hell.
“Trust me,” I whisper, frowning at the text bubbles hopping on the screen. “I can help you.”
His answer to my string of questions comes as a pat on the head.That’s sweet, Ella. You’ve got enough on your plate.
He adds a finger heart emoji to soften the blow, and I pass my thumb across the tiny graphic, forcing myself to stop reading something into it that isn’t there and won’t ever be.
I type out a message.
Be safe. *heart-hands emoji*
I toss my phone onto the bed and reach for my laptop, a stubborn tilt to my chin as I begin to type. “Nearest mainland port to Seong.”
Marc is getting help whether he wants it or not.
1
Respawn
April
