Chapter Two #2
But Livia was not her parents’ chess piece, even if they were willing to make her the queen.
Instead, she and Adele had hatched an alternate plan: Livia would agree to this marriage, then draw out this courtship and engagement period until Adele turned eighteen—when their parents no longer had full control over Adele’s life.
At that time Livia would break off the engagement, and both Livia and Adele would then disappear to a remote Greek island together.
The archipelago had felt so far away from the world of elite boarding schools when the two of them had first found the glossy book full of photos of Greece in the school’s library.
This plan actually might have worked if her dearly betrothed had not beaten her to the disappearance—spooking her parents.
The moment the world became suspicious of the royal house’s flimsy explanation for why Crown Prince Edvin had mysteriously fallen off the face of the earth, her father had called Livia.
Where is he? he had demanded in the tone he took more often these days, as his power and influence grew.
I have no idea. They tell me nothing.
Her father, of all people, should’ve known this about the royal house. But clearly he had also tried—and failed—to get a straight answer out of the palace’s communications office, and his patience was running thin.
My royal tutor showed up this morning as usual, she had added, infusing a hint of bafflement into her voice. As if all of this was just a curious mystery. As if both Adele’s and her own future didn’t pivot on how their father decided to approach this problem.
Her answer had seemed to placate him a little. The moment he returns, I want to see a ring on your finger.
I’ll make sure to tell him, she had lied.
Livia had reminded herself that her parents firmly believed they were acting in her best interests, if not her personal preferences.
They believed they were setting up their daughters for a lifetime without hardship.
Livia suspected the results would be decidedly otherwise, but the most important thing was that neither of her parents ever suspected she would quibble with their ultimate vision: one of their daughters with a royal title to her name.
Royalty is royalty, her mother had proclaimed as she smoothed Livia’s long hair. As one of them, neither of you will ever be treated as less than anyone again.
Her mother was more the visionary in this plan, while her father handled the practicalities.
Of course, they would have preferred a match with a more prominent royal house, such as Morocco.
Though Livia was reasonably sure her parents were not so delusional as to have aspired to join the Windsors.
Instead, her parents had settled on marrying into the royal family of a tiny archipelagic nation in the Baltic Sea.
Livia stared down at her phone as all of these details collided in her head with the newest turn of events: Edvin had returned. Which meant her father likely intended to kick their wedding plans into high speed.
“Here’s another picture,” said Adele, her voice breathless in Livia’s ear.
Livia peered down at the third photo, which captured Edvin as he walked toward the motorcade of black cars.
He was dressed much like he always was, dark gray trousers and a crisp white shirt, his royal cufflinks sparkling when they caught the sunlight.
So different from Gustav, she told herself.
The thought was supposed to be reassuring.
“No announcement? No press release or anything?” her sister demanded. “He just suddenly walks off a plane?”
“If anyone can wave away the mystery of a sudden, untraceable disappearance, it’s the crown prince.”
“Do you think anyone will tell you what’s going on?”
Livia let out a wry laugh. “I’ll get the same official information as everyone else, probably just before the press release.”
“You don’t have to marry him. Really. We can figure out something else.” Her sister’s voice was quieter now. More serious.
“I can handle this, Adele. I’ve held off both Father and Edvin this long, and I can figure out how to do it for another eleven months.
Royal weddings take ages to plan and execute.
” In less than a year, her sister’s life would be her own.
Livia had put all the money she had saved from working at her father’s real estate business into a house on a remote island in Greece.
Her current savings would be enough for them to take care of themselves for a year, while they got on their feet.
Most importantly, their futures would be their own.
“But you know Mother won’t accept the delay now that she’s seen how quickly her plans could be thrown into chaos.”
Livia didn’t like the way her sister was sounding more and more worried.
“She won’t accept a delay from me, but she will if it comes from Edvin,” said Livia quickly.
Which was why she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, to head off this problem immediately.
“Mother will calculate that it’s too late to change the royal marriage plans simply because the engagement date isn’t to her liking. ”
At least, she hoped so.
“I’m going to try to negotiate in person,” she added. “I’ll let the palace know I want to see him as soon as possible.”
Edvin had always treated her with condescending politeness—the default tone of adult royalty, it seemed.
Livia found this preferable to dealing with Marika, though the bar was admittedly quite low.
The crown prince had never approached this so-called relationship as anything but transactional.
Livia supposed this was how many marriages in his world worked.
Still, she couldn’t help but suspect that he saw her as lower class, a status that an elite boarding school could never erase, especially when her father had worked there.
Despite the fact that her family had promised the money to hold up the royal house’s way of life…
at least until Edvin and his father blew through that, too.
She had spent enough time in their world to know that money lay behind the entire artifice of prestige.
Edvin belonged to one of Europe’s oldest if not largest monarchies.
Out of necessity, its survival depended on strategic alliances, not romance.
Still, she knew Edvin had at least taken stock of her credentials.
I believe my younger brother attended the boys’ school for a period, he had commented on their first meeting.
She had given him a bland smile, even when her heart had jumped in her chest.
Did you know him? he had asked.
Lying was out since he might ask Gustav the same.
She found herself thinking about that last night by the river.
After he had returned to his dormitory, rumors from multiple sources had said he had destroyed everything in his room in a fit of frustration.
The next day, he was expelled. In retrospect, Livia supposed she understood his position a little better.
She might have kept her own identity quiet, too, if the darker parts of the internet called her the Bastard Spare.
Had she actually known him?
A little, she had hedged, which was true.
But Edvin seemed to know more than he let on because his eyes narrowed, as if he had seen through this lie. As if it was a test and she had just failed.
“I have to go,” Livia said to her sister, forcing herself back to the present. “I need to message the palace.”
“Don’t forget to do yourself up like a princess.” Livia could hear the smile in her sister’s voice. Another bit of evidence that Adele’s stress level wasn’t dangerously high, she noted.
“Don’t I always look like a princess?” Livia absently patted her hair, currently twisted in a messy knot on top of her head. Yikes.
“Always. Love you.” The sound of her sister’s kiss came through her phone.
“Love you, too.”
Livia quickly messaged the palace’s communications office, then lay her phone on the glass coffee table and flopped back onto the sofa.
She stared up at the decorative plaster moldings that surrounded the antique brass chandelier.
Her parents had bought the apartment as the first step in this arrangement, as a place for Livia to stay on her visits from Geneva, and she had to admit it had been the loveliest of purgatories, even if it was just a part of the fiction they had all been creating.
Window boxes overflowed with flowers, and her balcony was just big enough for a café table and two chairs.
On the days when she stayed here in Isrikesland, she sat on her balcony every morning, drank her coffee and gazed out at the Baltic that shimmered and sparkled in the morning sun.
Though her father’s wealth had exploded soon after the Incident and she had spent her adult life amid the luxuries that her boarding school classmates casually mentioned, Livia couldn’t escape the feeling that none of it was real.
Each lovely element of her life in Isrikesland was a prop in this theater created by her father and the crown prince, chosen carefully to indicate wealth and taste but not excess.
The apartment, her furniture, her wardrobe—all of it was a setup for a future PR exercise, not a show of actual restraint.
Livia rubbed her eyes, trying to process the news. Edvin had returned, and she needed to somehow get his attention, then convince him that it was to his advantage to push back on her parents’ demands for an immediate engagement and a wedding that followed shortly after.
A sharp rap echoed through the hallway, and Livia bolted to sitting.
Who, in this day and age, showed up on the doorstep of an apartment without warning?
Who had the code for the front door of this apartment building?
The other residents, but she knew none of them, and the building had been very quiet this summer.
There was another possibility, and it made her stomach clench. Edvin.