Chapter Two
Present day
“It’s him. He’s back. The pictures are all over social media.”
Adele’s voice was usually a comfort, but the anxiety in it only fed into Livia’s own. The words were an ominous bell tolling through the phone line, then throughout Livia’s body. He’s back.
“I’ll send you a link,” added her sister.
“I thought the Institut Monte Vue didn’t allow you to have a phone,” said Livia. “Whose number is this?”
“It’s a shared contraband item, so, please, only cryptic messages in the chat. Nothing incriminating.”
“Got it.” Livia sunk into the soft white sofa in the airy living room of her apartment in the middle of Isrikesland’s Old City and clicked on the link her sister had sent.
Someone had captured an image of the royal jet through the glass of the country’s main airport.
And her soon-to-be fiancé. At the top of the staircase leading to the tarmac stood Edvin af Isborg, Crown Prince of Isrikesland.
The person had tried to zoom in on Edvin with their camera, resulting in less-than-ideal resolution, but he looked as he always did.
Confident. Stately, one could even say. Not like a man who might have endured hardships over the last eighteen days since the world had last seen or heard from him.
There had been all manner of speculation in the Isrikesland press about the circumstances behind the crown prince’s recent disappearance.
From the start, the official party line from the palace was that he had left on emergency diplomatic relations, but as the days turned to weeks, Scandinavia’s less reputable news outlets had leaned into more scandalous theories that involved plane crashes, secret cabals and zany abduction plots.
Privately, Livia thought that a tryst with a mistress was most likely, though eighteen days did seem excessive, even for him.
She didn’t share this thought with her sister.
It was possible that Adele, far off at her current boarding school, huddling around a borrowed, illicit mobile phone, had heard the rumors that Edvin af Isborg shared his father’s habits of excess, even if his cold disposition suggested otherwise.
Livia hoped she hadn’t. At seventeen, Adele deserved to survive the last year of her childhood with at least one of her illusions intact.
“Here’s another one.” Her sister’s voice was followed by a ping as a link to another photo popped up on her screen.
In this one, the crown prince was crossing the tarmac with an expression she could only describe as haughty self-importance.
His dark blond hair was longer than he usually wore it, and he looked a little leaner than the last time she had seen him, she noted.
Also, and quite unexpectedly, he wore a beard, a bit darker than his hair.
At least his beard made him look less like his half brother now.
That was the kind of unproductive thought Livia was better off ignoring.
Gustav had disappeared from her life that night beside the river eight years ago, though one could argue she had pushed him out.
That night had been followed by his rather explosive exit from the Alpine Institute for Boys—explosive enough for the details to make it to the girls’ school—and then…
nothing. Not that Livia knew exactly what she would have said to him.
Even if she had figured that out, how did one reach a prince?
Slide into his DMs? Not that Gustav was on social media—she had checked.
And not that he’d have wanted to hear from her.
But currently, she had bigger problems. The first priority was to reassure her sister that they had nothing to worry about.
“We can work with this,” Livia said, though the comment was as much a reassurance for herself as it was for Adele.
“While I’m happy Edvin is okay and all that,” said Adele, “couldn’t he have just stayed…lost for little longer?”
“Like eleven more months, until you’re eighteen?” said Livia with a little snort. “That would have been convenient. I’ll mention it next time I see him. When he decides to grace me with his royal presence.”
Her sister gave a huff of laughter. Belatedly, Livia made the same knee-jerk assessment of her sister’s emotional tone she made in every phone call ever since the Incident.
That night seven years ago had split her life into a Before and an After.
It had also been the turning point that had finally gotten their parents to take Adele’s bullying seriously, but it had been perilously close to being too late.
After Livia had graduated and left for college, Adele had taken to spending the weekends at home instead of in the dorms. She had been at home that Saturday afternoon, when her father was working and her mother had made the long drive into town for groceries.
What if their mother had arrived home just a little later, when the twenty-three sleeping tablets had left Adele’s stomach and were working their irrevocable damage?
Even if her sister was much better now, Livia still lived in After.
Every time she talked to Adele during the school year, these questions hovered.
Were the worries her sister occasionally voiced a regular-level anxiety or something more concerning?
She sounded fine today, she decided. Then again, these kinds of things could always take a person by surprise, and Livia had decided long ago she would protect her sister from the harsher realities of both their lives.
But while Livia had kept the coldness of her relationship with the crown prince to herself, the transactional nature of the arrangement was no secret.
After generations of living like the kings they were, the current members of the af Isborg royal family required some sort of divine intervention on their finances.
The miracle had finally arrived in the form of a strategic alliance with Henri Jacard, a groundskeeper turned land baron—her father.
Of course, the official reasons behind the empty royal coffers pointed everywhere except the king…
the man who actually controlled the purse strings.
Even Gustav, the so-called Bastard Spare, had been blamed.
The tabloid articles seemed to indict him based on two facts: that long ago, he had gotten kicked out of the Alpine Institute for Boys, and because he was the son of the king’s mistress.
Livia had found the accusation difficult to believe.
Then again, a lot could change in eight years.
Whatever the causes, the royal family needed money, and her parents now had it.
Her parents also had a desperate and driving need for acceptance into the upper echelons of high society, places that money could not buy.
The royal family of Isrikesland could offer a title that would, presumably, bring that reward.
How her father had managed to get an audience with the king and offer this arrangement without offending anyone was still a mystery to Livia, but Henri Jacard had always been extraordinarily resourceful.
How else did one accomplish his meteoric rise from a service staff member at the Alpine Institute to a real estate mogul with vast land holdings throughout the Alps?
Of course, Livia was not only expected to comply with this exchange of money for title and influence; she was supposed to want the dubious honor enough to enter into a marriage with the notoriously cold Edvin af Isborg.
And if she didn’t? With a little PR triage, Adele could easily be slotted into this same arrangement.
A solution that Livia most definitely could not let happen.
We must all look out for your sister’s well-being, her mother had declared less than a year ago as she’d gazed out at the snow-capped peaks of the Alps from the stone patio that stretched across the rear of the main house of their estate.
As if Livia had somehow forgotten the Incident.
“Our family will have a royal connection. Our family’s name will be admired around the world, a legacy that will provide for you and your sister, no matter what happens. ”
Livia suspected that her mother would not try to coax her into marriage with an overt threat. Instead, she would simply imply that Adele would be approached if Livia wasn’t open to the idea. For the good of the family, of course.
Livia couldn’t decide if amassing wealth no longer had the same thrill for her parents or if her mother had realized that there were limits to what wealth could buy.
Acceptance and respect were two of those limits, as Livia had learned.
Firstly, at the Alpine Institute for Girls, back when she was still the groundskeeper’s daughter, and then once again as her father’s wealth had grown.
Livia had replied, I don’t think a child bride has much appeal these days.
Her mother had waved a dismissive hand. If Adele must be the one to marry, it wouldn’t be before she turned eighteen. We would simply present the idea and begin arrangements. To make sure she is cared for. If necessary.
But her sister deserved to live without the pressures of her parents hovering over her—pressures that Adele was far more susceptible to. Pressure she might even give into, just to have one last year of peace after too many difficult years.
Livia was treated to another of her mother’s meaningful glances. Someday you will understand why this is important. But until then, we will all need to work together on this.
All meaning Livia. Either she could sacrifice herself on the altar of a strategic marriage or doom her sister to this fate.
Not necessary, she had said firmly. I will marry Edvin, and I will take care of Adele.