Chapter 10 Stupid Games
Stupid Games
MARC
Don’t touch Ella.
This is a recent rule I have imposed upon myself. As soon as I break it, I remember its wisdom.
All week I’ve been fighting to get away from the moment I tumbled to the floor of the library, Ella in my arms, alive at every point of contact.
It comes rushing back with all the speed and punishing strength of a rugby tackle.
I thought I’d achieved something—peace, stability, perspective, whatever—when I finally admitted to myself that I was attracted to her.
It was like a pagan offering to the gods, a hedge to keep them from taking more. See what I’m giving you? See how much it costs? The sacrifice was supposed to buy me something. Rest. Indifference. Critical detachment. Gripping her wrist in my hand, my thumb brushes the delicate bones.
How much would I offer for the chance to act on the attraction?
Everything.
The word passes through me like a ghost, insubstantial but chilling. Ella pulls her wrist free, breaking the connection, and I brush the prickling sensitivity from the back of my neck.
“It’s only been a few hours and Alma is all over the news,” I say.
Ella curls up on her green velvet sofa and tosses me a game controller. Firing up Runaway Wagon, she toggles past the princess, selecting the bandit as her avatar. Typical.
I don’t want to play games, but I take the floor at her feet and choose to be a melon farmer whose goal is to get my crops to market.
Her skirt brushes my shoulder, her bare foot swings down, and I see the thin gold chain around her ankle within easy reach.
I lift my hand, but she nudges my shoulder as the countdown begins.
Three…two…one…
“Alma is in every headline and you are cited in every article,” I say, muscle memory taking hold, guiding my hands through a rapid series of moves that propel me into an early lead.
“No one has any idea who the leaker is beyond a ReadHe handle,” she counters. “Anyway, don’t you have better things to do on a Friday evening than monitor gossip sites?”
Werner is waiting for me to review a financial statement. The rest of the night was supposed to be devoted to reading reports and contracts, some from Han Heyden, others from Lindenholm.
“I set a notification for ‘trashpandaprincess’ this week to keep up on your illicit activities,” I tell her. I set notifications for “Princess Ella” to keep up on everything else. I’m not sleeping well.
Ella swerves into the forest, overtaking my melon farmer, and I slow my progress, looking out for traps. “When the news was picked up by the national press, I thought my phone was going to catch fire.”
“The post escaped containment,” she says, giving a little whoop when my wagon slams into her net. My cargo cartwheels through the air and shatters on the road.
Round one to Ella.
Her stomach growls, and she frowns. I head to a sleek Scandinavian sideboard, retrieving a butane stove and a gold aluminum pot from a cupboard. In another cupboard I locate her stash of ramen. “Spicy Hot Chicken or Golden Shrimp?” I ask.
“Hot Chicken,” she answers, shifting a pile of manga and a well-thumbed copy of The Joy of Coding from the coffee table. She sets out two pairs of chopsticks while I fill the pot with water from the bathroom tap.
“You want extras?” I ask, putting it on the heat and rifling through the sideboard for some bowls.
“Is this a question?” she replies, arranging the spoons on the table.
I place an order for the palace kitchens, and a servant delivers two soft-boiled eggs, a few slices of chasu, chopped green onions, a lump of chili paste, and sheets of nori almost as soon as the water begins to boil. Ella slips two noodle squares into the liquid.
“You should change,” I say, my throat constricted, watching the sway of her hips and the soft lavender point where the bodice ends in a narrow ribbon. I catch one trailing strand, my hold too light to hold her. “You shouldn’t slurp ramen in something so expensive.”
When she turns to face me, the ribbon slides through my fingers. In another life, I would catch it, feel a tug and release. Narrow the distance between us.
“Dripping is for civilians,” she says, slipping around me, heading for the closet. “I was trained by a British nanny.”
“You were her worst student.” I lean against the console, crossing my arms, keeping them to myself. She returns with her phone, checking messages while we wait.
When the noodles are bouncy and translucent, I prepare the bowls and carry them to the coffee table.
Tucking loose strands of hair back, she mixes the ramen and brings a twist of noodles to her mouth. No drips. I thought I was being rational, admitting to an attraction. I could keep it penned up that way. Domesticated. That’s what I thought.
Vede.
I stare hard at the steam coming off my bowl. Nothing has to change between Ella and me. We’ve gamed like this a thousand times. I taught her which buttons mapped to which functions on her first controller. It’s nothing new.
I drag the noodles into my mouth, scalding my tongue. “That actor,” I say, stabbing the ramen back and forth. The sunset casts a brilliant glow in the room, on the edge of day and dusk. Nothing stays the way it always was. Not even the light, shifting every second.
She laughs. “Mikkel?”
I grip the chopsticks in my fist and blow on the noodles, cooling them.
“Mama probably wishes she could send me to a convent, but our ancestors were too quick to welcome the Reformation.” She winks. “Sucks to be a Protestant queen.”
“Lutherans have nuns,” I mutter. A few. I might be able to sleep again if Ella is bound to vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
The light piercing the windows looks like a ripe peach, and I wish I could hold it in my hands, saving it for a dark hour.
“I’m not a nun,” she says.
I close my eyes and find a thin slice of pork, swallowing it down. The taste is simple, nothing like the depth of flavor you get when the ingredients have time to sweat and steep. Time is the thing. Maybe that’s the potent ingredient to this attraction, too. I’ve known her forever.
She tips the bowl to her lips, swallowing the last drops, her soft throat working.
“Did he ask you out?” I’m not proud of these words.
“Several times.” She dabs gently at her lips and gives me a dimpled smile. “No drips.”
She invites me to inspect the immaculate fabric of her bodice, but I look at the ceiling. I spend a lot of time looking at ceilings these days. “You can’t go out with him.”
I did my research. Noah would want me to warn her that Mikkel abandoned a long-time partner amidst rumors of an affair with his most recent co-star. He’d want her to know about Mikkel’s closest friend doing a stint of community service for a minor charge of drug possession. He’d want—
“Not you, too,” she releases a breath. “You can’t tell me who to date.”
The part of my brain belonging to some wise, ancestral warrior-prince tells me that I’ll lose this battle if I fight it.
But my ancestor probably doesn’t know that I’ve got an unbeatable opening line like, “Be reasonable, Ella.”
“Reasonable?” she squeaks.
I squint slightly. That wasn’t the top-shelf opener I thought it would be. “His reputation is rough and his PR firm probably told him to find some willing woman and—”
“Marcus van Heyden.” She straightens. “Did you come to insult me for the second time this week?”
“Ella, he’s not—” A good person. Good enough for you. Going to love you until his last breath.
I push the coffee table back and kneel at her feet, fisted hands pressed into the sofa, bracketing her hips.
I meet her stormy green eyes. I could say a dozen more things that would get me in trouble, some of them she hasn’t even thought of yet.
The possibilities gather on my tongue until the ancient strategist chases me down and holds me at swordpoint.
“I’m sorry,” I say, clamping my lips shut. “Of course you can date who you want to.”
She accepts my surrender. “I told him no a half dozen times. He’s not my type.”
Don’t touch Ella. I have to remind myself of the rules. “What’s your type?”
I follow the slow flush blooming up Ella’s cheeks. “I—”
When her phone pings, she reaches for it, falling across one of my arms. When she sits up again, I leave my hand at her waist, and shamelessly read the text from Clara upside down.
“We found your Pixy account, too.” This is accompanied by a rage-face emoji, pursed Pavian fingers, and a knife.
“Ells,” I say. Peace was nice while it lasted.
She tosses the phone to the other end of the sofa and grabs her controller. “Another round?”
Vede. No. I battled rush hour traffic to be here as soon as the first news dropped because, whether she knows it or not, Ella has kicked a hornets nest. “Did you ask Alma before you pushed her into the news?” I ask, reaching for more noodles. “Did you run things past your mother?”
“What business—”
I give her a level look. “We’ve been friends longer than you can remember. Your business is my business.”
She sets her controller aside. “Torbald has a plan that goes beyond raising so many questions about Freja that she’s forced to beg Parliament to approve her marriage retroactively.”
My brow lifts. “Beyond that? He said that to your face?”
“Don’t you believe me?”
“I believe you.” I brush her ankle, hooking a finger under the chain, and release it. Don’t touch Ella.
“Do you remember the summer our nanny taught me to curtsey properly? Remember how bad I was? I got a sound effects clicker so I could let off belching noises when I bent down. I nearly drove her into an insane asylum. Marc, I am literally the worst princess in the history of Sondmark.”
She can’t be. Not when she’s my favorite.
Ells continues. “But Alma is perfect. She hits every mark. She does everything Mama asks. She wears what people tell her to. She says all the right things.”
“No one is perfect.”
“She’s within kissing distance of it.”
I know someone else within kissing distance. I draw back, putting more distance between us. The light, shifting so slowly I didn’t notice, is now heavy and blue.
“The only thing she’s ever asked for is Jacob. Is her punishment going to be losing her role as a working royal?” She reaches for the end of my tie, threading it between agitated fingers. “Torbald has nothing on her as long as we could establish that Pietor was the one who cheated. So I did.”
I like the way she rushes in to help, but— “You used a sledgehammer on the problem. The government now has proof that your sister—and possibly your mother—was lying to the public for weeks about her engagement. When the prime minister finds out that you were behind the account that leaked the photos—”
“He’s too much of an idiot to find me,” she says.
“You’re too smart to believe that. The prime minister is dangerous, and you can’t be playing games at this level. They will catch you.”
And, vede, what if they do? I lift my hand, letting it fall before I touch her again. I can’t handle the consequences of touching her. She already has me on my knees.
Ella turns her stubborn face away. “I’ve covered my tracks. Remote VPNs, site-specific log-ins, software patches. I’m constantly running too far out of reach.”
I lean into her line of sight. “Unbreakable cyber security is an illusion. You know that. I suggest you follow your mother’s lead when it comes to protecting your family.”
“She’s doing such a bang-up job; you should ask my father how it’s going.” Ella’s tone is blistering and bitter. “My mother protects the monarchy first, Neerheid van Heyden, and our family last.”
The fire in her eyes is supposed to run me off, I suppose. I release a ragged breath. I wish something would.
“Your family and the monarchy are the same things, no matter how much you wish they weren’t.”
Ella lifts her chin, determined to shut me out, but I see an ocean of hurt beyond the stubborn pose. My voice softens. “Do the responsible thing, Ella. Back off from this fight. Delete the post and your accounts.”
Ella stands up and tosses the remains of our meal onto a tray, carrying it to the door. “I won’t keep you,” she says, as I get to my feet.
Her delivery is excellent—queenly and rippling with fury—but her timing is ruined by the automated door, swinging slowly open. She waits. The dishes clink together. She waits, and my lips twitch. I can’t rob her of the satisfaction of throwing me out.
Finally, the door opens far enough to scoot the tray through and she sets it in the hall. “You have enough on your plate,” she says, “being the golden boy of two countries. You don’t need to worry about me.”