Chapter 4
Fake It Till You Make It: Royal Edition
The transition from Your Highness to Your Majesty should have felt monumental. Instead, it felt like drowning in appointments.
But for Alexander, it wasn’t the title that weighed most, it was the calendar. Each day stretched before him like a battle plan: relentless, overbooked, and devoid of oxygen.
He dressed in a crisp white shirt and navy suit, his dark hair still damp from the shower he’d taken after his morning workout.
He’d been up since five. He studied briefing notes over black coffee, everything from agricultural subsidies in the south to notes on the delicate diplomatic overtures meant to thaw Caledonia’s frostbitten foreign relations.
It wasn’t glamorous.
But this was the job now.
King Alexander James Edward—twenty eight years old, recently crowned, chronically sleep- deprived, and determined not to screw it up.
A knock at the door announced Thomas, his equerry carrying the day’s schedule and already frowning.
“You’re late for your own life,” he said, tone mild, stride brisk.
He carried a leather portfolio and the composure of someone who’d once salvaged an G7 summit with a spreadsheet and a glare.
“Today’s highlights. First you’re expected at the veterans’ memorial unveiling at nine.
Then a working lunch with the energy minister.
After that, the Education Committee briefing—still pressing for digital curriculum reform—and the State Dinner briefing with Foreign Affairs at six. ”
Alexander looked at the full schedule and flipped a page. “No breaks?”
Thomas didn’t blink. “No, we need the time between meetings for correspondence, reviewing notes, and of course a few engagement-related tasks.”
Alexander sighed. “Living the dream.”
The coronation had been a moment. Grand. Symphonic. Unavoidable. This, the endless symphony of logistics and expectations—was the afterparty that wouldn’t end.
The palace looked the same, but it didn’t feel the same.
The mirrors reflected the same man— same brooding brow, same too-serious mouth—but now the suit carried weight.
Authority clung like a second skin. And the corridors echoed just a little too loudly with the footfalls of someone trying not to fumble an entire country.
“Think they’ll ever stop looking at me like an imposter? ” he asked.
Thomas didn’t miss a beat. “No, sir. Not any time soon. Which is why you must never act like one.” Thomas was not warm.
Not fuzzy. But real—and more useful than a dozen other palace advisers.
By 8:45, he was outside the capital’s new veterans’ center.
The rest of the morning he was shaking hands, nodding through speeches, laying a wreath with solemn grace.
Cameras clicked like mechanical insects.
Somewhere in the crowd, a child called his name.
He turned, smiled, waved. The papers would call it natural charm. He called it muscle memory.
The lunch was worse. The energy minister droned on about nuclear viability while Alexander tried not to rub at his temple.
He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. His tea had gone cold.
He’d once thought ruling would be about shaping the future.
Mostly, it was about listening to people complain, making hard decisions with too little time, and enduring scrutiny from a thousand angles.
After the education briefing, where he had to politely dismantle an ill-considered AI initiative from a tech-happy earl, Thomas finally pulled him aside. “There’s a twenty-minute gap before the dinner prep. You could—”
“Coffee,” Alexander said immediately.
Thomas gave a short nod. “I’ll have it brought to the private study.”
The private study was the only room in the palace that still felt like it belonged to him. Books lined the walls. A record player sat under the window. And on the desk, in a plain frame, was a photo of Emilia laughing in the garden, head tilted back, sunlight in her hair.
He stared at it now, coffee in hand. She would have hated today’s education meeting. He could hear her now—who approved that proposal, and had they ever seen a classroom? The thought made his lips twitch.
Then his smile faded. He hadn’t spoken to her since this morning.
Alexander set the coffee down and ran a hand through his hair.
He should be preparing for the State Dinner briefing.
He should be reciting talking points about tariffs and trade balances.
He should be doing a hundred things — none of them anything to do with the person he missed most.
Instead, he found himself moving — fast, almost reckless — through the private wing.
Nodding once at the security desk, he slipped past without inviting questions.
The palace corridors gave way to older stone and thicker shadows.
The air outside bit cold against his skin, sharp with the promise of rain.
Halfway across the courtyard, he hesitated. He couldn’t show up empty-handed. Not after he hadn’t even messaged her today.
Five minutes later, he ducked into the tiny, tucked-away kitchen usually reserved for late-night staff meals. The kitchen staff barely blinked when he appeared — just nodded and returned to their quiet bustle.
Alexander scanned the sideboard — metal trays gleaming under heat lamps — and found what he was looking for: a plate of still-warm pastries, flaky and golden.
He snatched several and tossed them into a paper bag he found.
It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing.
Cradling the awkward bundle in one hand, he pushed back out into the evening.
As he approached the cottage—what the palace, with a straight face, called “the cottage” despite its fireplace in every room and priceless antiques—he could see warm light spilling from the windows.
Through the sitting room window, he caught a glimpse of Emilia moving between her stacks of books, fingers trailing along their spines in that absent way she had when she was thinking.
Two weeks in, and she’d already managed to make the space hers despite the palace’s best efforts at refined imprisonment.
Crooked book towers, mismatched throw pillows, and what looked like more of her mother’s Parisian flea-market treasures scattered about with deliberate rebellion.
He pulled out his phone and sent a text: “Escaped five minutes early. Do you accept deliveries of exhausted monarchs?”
Instead of waiting for a response, he walked around to the back door and knocked. Not protocol. Definitely not advised. But then again, no one was going to tell King Alexander IV what doors he could or could not knock on.
Emilia opened it, and he could see something ease in her expression when she spotted him—like she’d been holding her breath without realizing it.
“I bring tribute,” he said solemnly, holding up the bag. “Croissants. And what might be a cinnamon bun, but I refuse to confirm or deny.”
“You know you’re supposed to be the dignified embodiment of the state,” Emilia said, stepping back to let him in. “Not a rogue sugar mule.”
“Needs must,” he said as he collapsed onto the sofa like a man avoiding a firing squad. The cushions smelled faintly like her shampoo—a detail he was absolutely not sentimental enough to notice, except apparently he was.
“Besides, you’re the only person who doesn’t mind when I inhale carbs and complain about existential dread.
” He watched her pause, studying him with that particular look she got when she was reading between his lines.
His shoulders had deflated the second the door shut behind him.
His whole body exhaled like it hadn’t been allowed to all day.
“You’re not a robot, Alex.”
“Debatable. Most days I don’t even have time for a proper lunch break.”
“You need a rebellion,” she said, sitting beside him. “A quiet one.”
He raised a brow. “Like a coup in the rose garden?”
“No, like this.” He watched her pinch a crumb off his lapel and pop it in her mouth. Something about the way she did it—casual, defiant—made his chest ache. No one else touched him like that. Like he wasn’t made of ceremony.
“Ten stolen minutes. One subversive pastry at a time. The little rebellions that keep you from becoming a marble bust.”
He tilted his head back, watching her like she was some rare celestial event. “Do you know what they call this cottage on the security logs?”
“Please say ‘Emilia’s Fortress of Feminist Rage.’”
“‘Secure Holding, Civilian Asset, Tier One.’”
She snorted. “Sexy.”
He smiled, the rare real one, not the public one that said I’m fine, thank you for asking, let’s never speak of emotions again. “You’re my emergency exit,” he said, almost too casually.
Something flickered across her face—surprise, maybe something deeper. “Well,” she said, and he caught the slight catch in her voice. “You’re mine too.” The words hit him sideways.
He turned to face her fully. “Are you—do you feel trapped?”
“No.” She laughed, but he could see the complexity behind it. “Just… slightly suffocated by tradition and the passive-aggressive comments from your mother’s staff.” She gestured around the cottage. “I’ve been gifted a royal Barbie Dreamhouse and a list of acceptable talking points to go with it.”
He reached for her hand, threaded their fingers together like it was second nature. Her skin was warm, real, anchoring him to something that wasn’t duty or expectation. “We’ll figure it out, Emi,” he promised, meaning it more than any oath he’d sworn during his coronation.
“You promise?” she asked, squeezing back. “I swear on this sacred cinnamon bun,” he said solemnly.
She laughed and this time it was the real one that made her eyes crinkle. She leaned against him and for a few seconds they just were—not titles, not obligations. Just two people hiding out with carbs and sarcasm.
And then, as all moments must in royal life, it ended. The back door creaked open. Thomas, immaculate as ever, appeared with the polite menace of a butler in a gothic novel. “Majesty,” he said, voice pitched to regretful but resolute. “We need to leave. Now.”
Alexander didn’t even flinch. Just sighed, stood, and grabbed the last croissant.
He squeezed Emilia’s hand once, a silent “I’ll come back” buried in the gesture.
And then he was gone—off to be King again.
Alexander felt that familiar ache of longing as he walked away from the cottage.
Through the windows, he could see Emilia watching him go, and he had to resist the urge to turn back.
Thomas and Alexander walked side by side through the grounds. Silent at first. Then, as if tossing a stone into a still pond, Thomas murmured, “For what it’s worth, sir… I’m glad.”
Alexander blinked. “Glad?”
Thomas’s expression softened just slightly, and Alexander caught something that looked almost like a smile.
“That you have someone to run to. Not everyone gets that, in your position.” Alexander studied his equerry’s face—the same careful expression Thomas had worn since Alexander was seventeen and drowning in expectation.
Some loyalties, Alexander realized, were earned not through title but through witnessing someone’s worst moments and choosing to stay anyway.
He felt a strange, bittersweet gratitude.
Not just for Emilia waiting back there in the cottage.
But for Thomas, too—for seeing it, for protecting it, even when palace duty made it difficult.
“Thank you,” Alexander said quietly.
Thomas nodded once, brisk but sincere. And for once, Alexander was beginning to believe he could do this.