Page 71 of The Dandelion Princess
I know.With his words, my heart, like a watchful shieldmaiden, lays down her spear and unbuckles her armor. She is unprepared for the piercing needle of grief that follows. Her knees buckle. Marc has said nothing about love. It’s as it should be. This deal of ours—the emotional equivalent of strapping himself into a safety harness—includes a promise to leave, and I’m going to fight to uphold my end of the bargain.
“Mama is throwing a party for my birthday,” I tell him, throat thick with feelings I can’t begin to name. “Next week.”
“I know when your birthday is. Is this an invitation? It better be. I have a thing with the birthday girl.” His expression warms, and I clutch a fistful of flannel pajamas where my pearls would be. I can’t sell my soul for a ‘thing’.
“Is Freja coming?” he asks.
“We’re a package deal.”
In an attempt to stop thinking about Marc so much, I spend the whole week tracking the movements of the prime minister, logging the official information, and looking for patterns. If he has a say in wherewe’resupposed to be, I want to know whereheis.
On another screen, I break the source code for my app, reconfigure the architecture, and scroll through ReadHe threads on AI integration. On still another, I nurture mySquadRunteam, coaching dragonslayer2 through a tricky side quest and acting as a listening ear for Staggering_Indifference as she recounts an effort to get rent money from her live-in boyfriend while maintaining her image as totally chill, fine with whatever.
Marc is impossible to put out of my mind. I gave him the security code for my suite and he abuses it. One morning he wakes me up with a hot pastry and an iced Americano fromLa Baiser Chaleureux, an upscale bakery in the heart of Handsel, nowhere near his office or flat. He slips up to my room and gives me such a fierce kiss that I’m clutching my bed clothes as he goes without a word. Later, he sends me an article about tech stacks for my app development.
I watch him in a broadcast from the Grousehof, standing in the ornate legislative chamber with the rest of parliament to hear the opening arguments in Freja’s case. He wears his government robes—a heavy black cloak billowing back from a fitted waistcoat. Thick gold embroidery marches across the full sleeves and neck, and tiny buttons run from his chin to his waist, indicating his hereditary status asHochneerheid—the High Lord of Sondmark. The costume should denote that he is ornamental—a throwback to a bygone age—or that he lost the power his ancestors wielded as their right. It should proclaim that the rest of parliament—elected properly and shuffling in with white synthetic wigs and short red capes, bowing to the empty, golden throne at the head of the room—are his betters. The idea is laughable.
They speak Freja’s name and title, recounting her list of crimes, and present the formal petition to open an inquiry. The members of parliament murmur their assent with huddled heads, and I slam out of the media room, muttering my excusesto my family as I go. I am tense and suffocated and scared. I don’t even question my destination when I log it at the security gate.
I drive to Marc’s flat and wait for him in the front hall until he returns from the Grousehof. He opens the door wearing an ordinary suit and tie, and freezes on the threshold, a garment bag hooked over his shoulder. For a second, he looks at me in a way that clears the space between us, wiping away family obligations and old habits, future dreams and exit plans. My breath sticks in my throat, and I rush to fill the space with words.
“Your formal robes are wasted on the government,” I say, stumbling back to lean against an entry table. “I had to come and see what they look like in person.”
He shifts the weight of the bag, the intense, earth-shattering expression ebbing so slowly from his face that I wonder if I imagined it.
“Where else would I wear a thing like this?” he asks, wiggling the hanger.
“MangaCon? Dragon Summit?” For me? Around the house?
His eyes dance but he utters a soft complaint. “It took forever getting out of it. All those buttons—”
I push him toward the bedroom. “The sooner you start changing into your official robes, the sooner I’ll be culturally edified.”
He goes, but then sticks his head around the doorjamb—roguish now. “Are we renegotiating our deal?”
I lift my eyes. “In your dreams.” Inmydreams. “Make yourself decent and I’ll help with the rest.”
When he returns, he’s shrugging the heavy article over bare, corded shoulders, and I gaze fixedly on the skyline of Handsel.
“Decent, I said.”
“I’m decent for a swim,” he laughs, halting less than a handspan away, counting on his proximity and hotness to do the rest. “And you promised to help.”
It’s a punishing exercise in self-control. I vow not to play so near to the fire next time as I push one heavy gold button at a time through its loop, up and up and up. His skin flinches away when I brush against it, and we breathe our laughter even though I don’t know what’s funny.
I didn’t really race across town for this. I raced here because I needed to be with him. My skin feels singed and I want to burst into tears, but I slip the last button through and he hands me a thin black ribbon.
“Let’s do it properly,” he whispers.
TheHochneerheiddoesn’t wear a powdered wig. He wears the Sondish marriage knot to indicate his allegiance to the Crown. Marc’s hair is not as long as it once was, but I perch on his stone coffee table and rake the sides back in the traditional loop, tying it off—three times around for health, safety, and fortune. A knot for fidelity and another for love. The action, one I have never performed for a man, carries an intimacy I’m not prepared for, and my fingers are stiff and unsteady. I expected to get a little fashion show, some teasing—anything to get me away from the crushing tension of the palace. But this is the cord a Sondish Viking would wear as he went raiding—a pagan promise, carried from his hearth, that he would return to his woman. We all learn it in school. We make it into bracelets and draw it in the sand. We practice this as a game until one day—this day—it becomes a prayer.
He catches my hand as I tighten the loop, turns, and lifts me into a kiss. I thought I wasn’t any good at discipline, but who else could leave Marc in such a state—tugging at my hand while I back out of his apartment. Who among my sisters in a similarsituation could stop herself from undoing all those buttons again? Only me. Only just.
When Freja is called to testify before the committee, she wears a vintage Chanel suit. Oskar accompanies her to the door of the briefing room, handing over an insulated flask of tea and a package of cookies before giving her a light kiss. That image is splashed across the front page ofThe Daily MissiveandThe Holy Pelican. “FREJA PROPOSED”. “Over My Dead Body: A Princess’s Plea to Protect her Husband”. Protests and counter-protests spring up. The next day, the papers carry photos of riot police.
My mother is tense. At all times, she is flanked by courtiers, secretaries, ladies-in-waiting, and lawyers. She checks my clothes before official engagements. If I don’t meet her exacting standards, I am dismissed with the softest exhale of frustration. It drives home the point that I will never please her.
On the morning of my twenty-seventh birthday, I treat myself to a facial and manicure at Esther Hong’s. When I walk out of the spa, my skin looks like the glowing sunrise of an alien planet, but I press through a gauntlet of paparazzi, cameras in my face, livestreamers asking about my twin, shouting about laws of marriage and succession they don’t live under the unbearable yoke of. With my heart in my throat, I break a number of traffic laws to get home, arranging my expression into something that won’t make headlines like, “Princess Ella Drives into Hostile Crowd” or “Stone-Faced Princess Contemplates Murder”.
