Chapter 12 Serving S’mores
Serving S'mores
MARC
A noise startles me awake. My eyes jerk open to chinoiserie wallpaper, the vines and flowers climbing up to the high ceiling, bathed in moonlight. I’m at Lindenholm and I throw a switch, groping for my phone.
I swipe up to be greeted by an animated genie who shares Ella’s playful expression and curvaceous figure. The sticker nods and winks, arms folded over her chest, while a ponytail bounces over her shoulder. I scrub my face with my hand and text dots bounce.
I’m granting you three wishes, her message reads. I apologized to Alma and she has no plans to murder me. Henceforth, I promise to do whatever you say.
I jerk upright. It is barely five on a Monday morning and I am suddenly wide awake with ideas invading my mind, jostling for supremacy.
She adds a rider. Sorry. Hit send too soon. Promise to do whatever you say so that I can help my family out of this mess and move on with my life.
I shove a pillow behind my back and command my heart to slow down. If Ella needs help, I help.
I sigh, hitching myself up on one elbow. This again? You aren’t a quitter.
Don’t you remember driving us to ballet lessons? I didn’t last a year.
I grin. If I recall correctly, the lessons were taught by a ruthless Russian instructor who spent weeks shouting at Alix to put her shoulders back so her dead ancestors might rest free from the fiery, eternal torments of family shame.
You were good, I type. I’m not sure that’s true. Most of that year I spent slouching in a corner, trying to improve my grasp of English by binging Chicago Law and thumbing through vocabulary books.
I’m not interested in your lies, Ella declares. Madame Nikolaevna called me a dumpling.
A long-buried memory surfaces and I laugh.
Any other princess might have thrown a tantrum and dropped the name of her mother’s legal team, but Ella started wearing shirts printed with anthropomorphic dumplings over her leotard and making disconcertingly aggressive eye contact while rotating through each ballet position.
She would still be at it if Alix hadn’t decided that being a prima ballerina wasn’t the vibe.
Back to these wishes I’m granting you, she types. I feel a sharp pain under my ribs and frown it away.
How can I fix this situation for Freja? This is quickly followed by, For my family?
This is the reason Noah asked me to keep an eye on his sister. The monarchy needs Ella to blend into the background, but a question nags at me. What does she need?
I glance at the hand-painted silk wallpaper. One-of-a-kind. She was not born to blend in.
I type. First wish: Don’t start fights when you don’t have to.
She responds with a string of question marks.
You go to war over stupid things, I clarify.
Such as?
I can hear the irritation vibrating between the satellite signals, but I fire off a list. High heels, stockings, trousers, contact lenses, trainers, make-up, tiaras, orders. I can go on…
Her answer arrives. Stockings are symptomatic of more serious concerns.
A pair of stockings is a pair of stockings.
I haven’t been able to shake this attraction yet, but that’s not the only thing between Ella and I.
We are friends. Old friends. I care about her happiness, and don’t simply want to force her into acting in ways her mother finds agreeable. When you fight, it needs to matter.
The thread goes slack between us and I wait until the bouncing dots appear. Your second wish?
Two: Do the best you can with the job you already have.
I accept the incoming video request before I think, and frown into her sparkling eyes. “You are abusing your right to call me whenever you want. What if I wasn’t alone?”
“You’re adorable,” she laughs, shaking a ponytail over a bare shoulder. She’s in the small private gym set aside for the Royal Highnesses, and the spring in her curls is explained by the sound of a treadmill. “To have a girlfriend, you’d need to spend time with actual women.”
I raise the lights in the room. “I spend—”
“Employees don’t count,” she says, dragging me as cheerfully as a kid with a cricket bat. “What do you mean ‘do the best you can’? Have you seen my public approval numbers? You’re looking at Sondmark’s favorite princess, eight years running.”
The polls could reverse tomorrow. She’d still be my favorite.
I stretch, folding my arm behind my head. Her face tips away and she emits an exasperated growl. “Stultes es, Marc, can you put on a shirt?”
I grin but reach for a robe, propping the phone up on a side table. Once covered, I sink against the green silk headboard the same color as Ella’s eyes. Above it, contrasting fabric is gathered in a sunburst, and when I settle myself, it sets the tassels on the canopy lightly swinging.
“I like your room,” she says. “I like how old it is.”
“That’s silly. Parts of the Summer Palace are a thousand years old.”
“Yeah, but my things are all modern. My bed is huge.”
“Oh, now it’s huge,” I taunt.
“I’ve always wondered how you manage to sleep in an antique four-poster at your size.”
I grip the sheet. We can’t be talking about sleeping accommodations. We’re friends. Friends.
She goes on. “You’ll have to change it out when you do find a woman.”
“I’ll get one who likes to snuggle.”
Her cheeks flush, washing pink through her freckles. “Be serious, Marc. What do you mean ‘do the best I can’?”
She’s the only one who ever scolds me for not taking things seriously enough. Everyone else expects me to carry the burdens and risks, to have the answers, and know what to do. To them, I’m as funny as a stroke.
I clear my throat. “The press loves you. You give them all kinds of copy being the rebel of the royal family, but how often do they talk about your work?” I burrow into the pillows and a line forms between Ella’s brow. If she were here, I’d smooth it away with my finger. I’d chase it with my lips.
“I’ve been working for Seong—”
“Beautifully,” I break in. “You’ve been creative and unorthodox, and it’s paid dividends. But have you ever given that kind of energy to the Queen’s Animal Trust, Fairy Godmothers, or the Veterans of the Motovian War Society? Your patronages deserve your best.”
“I thought you were going to help me with the succession crisis?” She bites her lip.
Dominanstid. I force myself to concentrate. “Your mother would have more bandwidth to deal with Freja if she didn’t have to worry about you.”
I roll over, propping my phone on the silk sheet, and stuff a pillow under my chest. Ella mirrors me, hopping off the treadmill, and perches her phone on the ground to do some stretches on a yoga mat.
“Your wish is going to turn me into a robot,” she grouches. “Why bother showing up for engagements when royalty-trained predictive text would do a better job than I do?”
I gaze upward, my eyes catching the riot of stripes, flowers, tassels, and fringes, each surface decorated with unnecessary pillows and ornate molding. Above the bed, there’s a cupola carved in wood and covered in gold leaf. It should be eye poison. It should be frilly and excessive. Too much.
I wouldn’t change one stick and, heaven willing, when I have lived to a great age, I hope to draw my last breath in this room.
I wouldn’t change Ella either.
An eternity sinks between one breath and the next. It’s not as simple as what I want. Ella isn’t just Ella. She is also Her Royal Highness Princess Ella and she has to make her way in the life she was born into, not run away to some other life, forever out of reach.
I flick the screen “You asked for my wishes.”
“You want me to give in to them.”
“Your family isn’t the enemy.”
She moves briefly out of frame to adjust her pose and replace the camera. “Agree to disagree. I’ll try to do better with my assignments,” she says, returning, slightly breathless.
Her bright green eyes catch me by surprise, the shock of them landing hard against my heart. I have to brace myself for her now. Every time.
“What’s your third wish?” she asks, reaching her arms above her head, hooking her fingers in a deep stretch.
I open my mouth to answer but the words won’t come—would be wildly inappropriate if they did. Saying what I want would be like shattering a porcelain dish on a cool tile floor. Something priceless might be lost and there would be no putting it together again.
“When I think of something I’ll let you know,” I answer.
I spend my week thinking about ways Ella is already perfect while she sends me screenshots of the deleted home page on Chirp.
Her comments on Pixy disappear, leaving empty spaces in their place.
Notifications still ping on my phone, but these are mentions of her handle on ReadHe or PAPZ, speculating about her identity.
Noah accompanies me to the Grousehof when I report to a government agency on conditions in East Asia, claiming his prerogative as the future head of state.
He asks about Ella, but I shrug, heading him off with a question about Himmelstein’s financial woes.
Ella sends me cat memes and progress reports.
“I wore a pair of heels to open a community garden and didn’t fight my mother,” she says, expecting praise.
I spend a concerning amount of time choosing a congratulatory GIF that says “I’m proud of you but you’re also a grown woman who can make her own decisions but also I wasn’t checking out your legs when you showed me your stockings unless you’re into that and, if so...”
On the morning of my sister’s party, I schedule a breakfast meeting with a team of VPs and skip lunch to field questions about long-term budget forecasting with an investment group.
“I’m reminding you that you’re clocking out at four,” Werner murmurs, slipping me a protein bar in the middle of the meeting, along with an updated cash flow statement.
We both know a real break is impossible. Han Heyden is hungry, always demanding everything I can give it.
I am alone in my office, going over a list of action items, when my tablet flashes a silent reminder. 16:00. Lindenholm.