Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARCHER
People can romanticize them all they want, but I’ve always thoughts sunsets were melancholy things.
They can be nice, if you like the advent of night. They can also be comforting, I suppose, in a way that signals rest or the completion of a day’s work.
But when does an heir to the throne ever really rest?
Our jobs are cushy materially, but there’s also never ever truly a day off.
Not all royals have it the same. My closest friends from boarding school, whose chaos I get to look forward to during the Games, both technically have it better.
Greg is a second son and one of three siblings, and he gets to be the invisible middle child whenever he wants to be.
Eds is, well, Eds—flamboyant flirt, incorrigible playboy, and still two generations removed from the current ruling monarch of Sanbellini.
And then there’s me. Archer Penderson, Crown Prince of Northandria, Count of Westmore, Lord of Langford Castle, heir to the centuries-old Sapphire Throne. For the ten years before Alya was born, I was the only heir, a person whose every living breath kept our country from a constitutional crisis.
How does one ever lighten up with that kind of life?
Greg and Eds tease me about it all the time, but they know what’s really underneath.
The tabloids might think my friends live vicariously through me, weighing their influence with someone who actually has a future of wielding real political power.
What most people don’t know is that I live vicariously through them, imagining a world where I don’t have to marry just to ensure we create legitimate heirs for another generation.
Maybe a world where I can actually ask out a girl I meet in a random American airport and have her interested in me without the twenty titles trailing my name.
“Your Highness.” Sven stops me before I take a turn towards the wall.
“Yes?” I question him with my voice and my brows. He may be my personal protection officer, but I’m not a toddler needing guard rails, and he knows that.
“Three o’clock,” he says.
I turn around just in time to see Ella Langford wandering into my line of sight.
The twilight basks her in picture-perfect lighting.
She’s in some sort of printed sundress, or at least I think that’s what it’s called.
A light grey jacket covers most of the top half, but she still looks like a storybook character wandering the woods like a fairy, her eyes bright with wonder under her glasses.
They don’t make women like this in Northandria. Or, at least, I’ve never met them.
No one signs half a dozen NDAs and agrees to a madcap scheme of a fake engagement just to save the reputation of Northandria. No one without the last name Penderson would ever be that crazy. Protecting Northandria’s legacy is our job, not hers.
An unexpected voice whispers inside of me that it could become Ella’s job too, that I could technically marry her and make her a Penderson for real. Isn’t that what all the women I ever come across are after?
But not a single one of those women would have tried to return an heirloom Northandrian ring. Only Ella ever did.
I step forward and clear my throat. She stops her walk abruptly and looks up, eyes wide and surprised.
“Oh,” she says.
I can’t help a small smile. “Ella.”
“Your Highness.” She drops into a curtsy, or at least a semblance of one.
I shrug. “Call me Archer.”
Her eyes grow even rounder. “No one ever calls you Archer.”
“Alya does, and my mother.”
“They’re both related to you.”
“As far as the world is concerned, you will be soon.”
The allusion to our strange arrangement seems to steal away some of her openness. I curse my mouth. If there’s ever a time I could have used some of Eds' smooth ways, now would be great.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” she said quietly, almost apologetically.
My heart does a small, odd flip that feels a little too close to disappointment.
Did I somehow wish she had been wandering around the gardens to look for me?
I’ve spent my whole life running away from unwanted female attention.
Every other feeling when it comes to the female species is a very weird novelty.
“I try to take a garden walk at least once a week.” I don’t know why I think it’s pertinent to tell her that, but my tongue and my heart and all my organs seem intent to go rogue right about now.
“It’s a beautiful garden.” She smiles, soft and genuine. Her eyes fly over the sprawling, manicured walkways and flower beds. “I didn’t even know there was a shortcut. If it wasn’t for Alya suggesting it—”
“Ah,” I say.
Ella’s eyes snap up in recognition. She huffs. “Your sister knew you’d be here.”
“I'm quite certain she did.”
“So she sent me.”
“She seems intent to wreak havoc.”
Ella looks at me in an evaluative way, as if she’s trying to figure out if I am joking or not. “She’s just enthusiastic, and maybe a little lonely.”
The fact that she feels compassion for my pampered little sister, of all people, indicates vast resources of empathy that most human beings probably lack.
I step closer. “But since she thinks we could use each other’s company, may I take you on a walk?”
I extend my arm formally, like some sort of ancient knight.
I don’t know why I do that, although it probably has to do with having been tasked to do one too many formal cotillions with young heiresses and princesses over the years.
Archer Penderson does not do casual—not with work, not with life, not with women.
I feel Sven suck in a breath behind me, a hint that Greg and Eds would probably burst out laughing if they saw me right now.
Easy for them. Greg is a soft-spoken creature who seems to make friends with all human beings effortlessly, and Eds would have just sidled up and charmed Ella like the pro that he is.
But Ella Langford is different. She doesn’t laugh, and she doesn’t swoon. She just smiles and takes my arm with a grateful-looking smile, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And I take her down my grandmother’s favorite part of the garden.