Chapter 6 No Choice
No Choice
MARC
The Han Heyden office tower casts a long shadow. An armored Mercedes pulls up in the chilly forecourt, and when Thor opens her door, Ella steps out. The way she does it isn’t like any other woman in the royal family—neutered, bloodless, brisk. Ella moves like Italian cinema.
She waves, setting off a cheer from the small crowd gathered outside, and I take a long look.
Vede. She’s dressed wrong. I know the palace dress code as well as she does.
I know that white trainers, glasses, a tailored jumpsuit, and a navy blazer breaks it in a dozen ways. And I know that I like it.
It’s a good thing that she doesn’t work for me. It wouldn’t take more than a week of steady employment before there would be meetings organized around getting me to stop leering at the new web dev. My VPs would stage an intervention, demanding that I keep a two floor buffer zone around her cubicle.
I bow over her hand.
“This is new,” I murmur. It’s been a long week, every second filled with meetings and emails to get me back on track after my leave of absence.
I’ve barely had time to catch my breath, and when she looks up at me, I can’t breathe again.
“Did you have to scramble over the palace wall to avoid Queen Helena’s inspection? ”
“Mama is busy,” she answers, smiling her princess smile. It has ceased to be strange to me, this habit the Wolffes have of transfiguring into living embodiments of the nation in the blink of an eye when the cameras demand it, but I miss my own, personal Ella.
After greeting a row of giddy executives, I escort her down a wide, wood-panelled hall where a line of script reads, “The Story of Han Heyden”. What follows is a series of quotes and photos charting the progress of the company over more than a decade. Ella halts in front of an enlarged image.
“This is new,” she says, eyes roving over the picture of four recent Stanford alums standing in a spray of champagne, celebrating their first venture capital deal.
I’m holding a yellow legal pad and I’ve got my arm around a girl who disappears into the frame.
The only sign of her is a shoulder and a sliver of a hip.
“I didn’t crop you out,” I say.
She laughs. “I’m not offended.” She points to one of the figures in the background. “Isn’t this that awful girlfriend you had? What was her name? Maple? Evergreen? Something unshaved and smelling of patchouli.”
“You know it was Willow. And I didn’t crop you out.”
The dimple flashes. “I don’t blame you. I was more harm than help in those days.”
I point at the frame. “I had them print the whole picture but wrap you around the back to preserve your privacy.”
Ella glows with pleasure and moves on to another photo. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“I own the place,” I answer.
“Aren’t you too busy for these kinds of things?”
I am. My responsibilities are as loud as the dull, heavy drone of bees over a lavender field in high summer—ever-present, unrelenting—but standing with her now, everything quiets.
“We’ll get a nice tax break for sponsoring this event.”
Ella continues up the hall, smiling and nodding her head at doorways crowded with curious employees. “The brief said I was to be escorted by the Director of—”
“Human Resources and Recruitment.” I nod. “Val’s daughter is sick and she asked me to step in.”
This is a lie. Not about Val and the kindergartener with the croup. That’s true. But when the position opened up, I shook off a meeting with a fleet of executives to be here.
I can’t afford this, but my eyes linger on Ella’s face, looking for traces of the goose egg. My muscles tighten, maybe a sign that I haven’t been getting enough sleep.
When we come to the end of the hall, a line of primary-aged girls trails obediently after their teacher.
The first one spots Ella, and bouncing on her toes, reaches out for a high five.
Ella nods politely, decorously, to the teacher and then locks in.
Twenty-two high fives and twenty-two new monarchists later, she glances over her shoulder.
“Coming?” she laughs, and I lead her off to the conference hall, humming with noise.
“Your Royal Highness,” I say, leading her to one of the dozen circular tables, following the set script. “We’re building egg-drop devices using recycled items collected in the past month—cardboard boxes, interlocking bricks, tongue depressors...” Ella’s eyes glint with silent laughter.
“Not every design will be a success,” she muses, glancing around the room. “I’m sure the early days of Han Heyden taught you a lot about failure.”
Ella was there at the birth of Han Heyden as a freshman at Stanford with some practical knowledge of software development. Several times a week, she would crowd into my tiny apartment to perform QA tests, writing automation scripts to try to break the software.
I had my work cut out, keeping my engineers from glitching out in the presence of an actual human woman, but she worked for free, happy to take compensation in the form of late night bowls of ramen and Han Heyden merch—mousepads, low-quality pens, and hoodies she’d wear all year round with a pair of tiny shorts.
Stultes es. I haven’t thought of those shorts in years. I hook a finger behind the knot of my necktie and tug it slightly. Maybe I’m having a medical event.
“You’ll work here,” I say, nodding at a pile of garbage. My voice drops to a whisper, “A trash panda in her natural habitat.”
She kicks me under the table and I smother a grunt, moving out of the way when she introduces herself to the others.
A pool photographer weaves around them, capturing the right shot of interest or surprise.
Later, she gives a short speech to introduce a pioneering physicist, and finally adjourns to the lobby for the egg drop finals.
“Sir, the senior executives are restless,” my assistant, Werner, warns. “If you had hinted that you would be attending—”
“I didn’t know I’d be attending,” I say, following Ella with my eyes.
“There’s still time to catch the end of the budget meeting.” Werner offers this thrilling prospect, and the noise of my responsibilities—Lindenholm, Seong, Han Heyden—comes roaring back.
Ella steps into the elevator with members of staff and gives me a nervous little wave from the back. She hates tight spaces, and I return a reassuring smile.
“Sir?” Werner prompts.
“I’ll work late.” I always work late. “All night if I have to.”
My assistant gives a resigned sigh. “I’ll let them know that instead of reviewing our technical infrastructure needs, you’ve elected to…watch eggs as they are flung from the mezzanine.” Werner places a microphone into my hands.
Any regrets I may have are silenced when Ella leans over the balcony. “Stand free of the blast zone, Neerheid van Heyden. From what I understand, the tabloids have dubbed you the nicest face in Sondmark.”
Brat.
She continues. “Shall we endeavor to leave it as we found it?”
“Marc,” I say, flipping the microphone up. “Anyone about to pelt me with eggs should know my given name, Your Royal Highness.”
“Ella,” she corrects. “Our first contestant is,” she bends over to hear the shy voice of a future scientist, “Mia. What was your method, Mia?”
The short, tow-headed girl speaks in a tone of breathy excitement. “I used an inflatable neck pillow wrapped around a shoe stuffed with newspapers holding the egg.”
“An excellent use for newspapers, Mia. Let’s see if your meal will be scrambled.”
Over the side it goes, right on target. I tuck the microphone under my arm, unwrap the package, and hold the intact egg aloft. See, ladies? Science is fun.
Ella continues through the queue, meeting triumphs and disappointment with the same cheerful energy. At last, an egg—wrapped in an orange peel packed with confetti and tucked in a nappy—explodes across the floor, spattering my leather shoes in yolk.
“There goes my lunch,” I laugh, taking the sting out of a failed attempt. The young scientist giggles.
“Who’s next?” I ask.
Ella leans over, her red curls falling forward, as breathless as a teenager. “Me. I’m the last one.”
“What do you have, Ella?” I ask.
“I folded three origami wings and bound them with painter’s tape. In the middle, I’ve cocooned the egg in slightly inflated surgical gloves.”
I retreat from the blast zone a generous step.
“Want to make a friendly bet?” she asks, lifting her package over the railing. The crowd screams its approval and her eyes dance. “I’m hungry,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
I don’t have time to be hungry. “I’m hungry.”
She smiles. “If my good pal, Eglantine, makes it,” she bounces the egg lightly in her hands, “you have to feed me lunch. Agree?”
The crowd, scenting romance, goes wild. Suddenly, I want to send up some bubble wrap tied to a bouquet of helium balloons, and lay down a nest of pillows. Our good pal is not going to make it.
“Agree.”
When she drops it, I feel a dog of hope sit up in my stomach, paws restless, chin raised in expectation. The paper wings set her packet spinning in an elegant dance but when it lands an ominous pop echoes through the lobby.
Before I can confirm the outcome, she breaks in. “If you don’t open it, we never have to know if the egg broke.”
I lift a brow. “You want me to falsify test results in this Temple of Reason?” I ask.
“Falsify? You wound me, Marc. No. We’ll put it to a vote,” she says.
I grin. “Ella, this is not how scientific consensus works.”
She ignores me. “Those who say the egg is broken...” A few scattered claps serve as the only memorial to empirical evidence. “And those who think it’s intact…” The lobby shakes so hard that government scientists are registering signs of volcanic activity.
I’ll tell Noah I had to keep her for a lunch date. It was for science, after all.