“So that’s love. That’s real love. You fought for her for years and years before you were finally allowed to marry her. What you’re prescribing me is the opposite of that.”
“And since when do you care about love, Magnus? Have you ever been in love? Do you want to be in love? Is that what you’re doing every night with all these different women, are you bedding them because you’re searching for love?”
I blink at him for a moment, my thoughts becoming heavy, clouded. “No. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“And I know you don’t love any of them either. So what’s the difference?”
I give him a poignant look. I really don’t want to explain, but he’s leaving me no choice. “I like sex. Okay?”
My father rolls his eyes and snorts. “Dear boy. That is more than apparent. I know this is the last thing you want to hear, but just because you’re getting married doesn’t mean you stop having sex.”
I throw my hands up. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to marry someone I don’t know, let alone someone I do know. I don’t want to have sex with the same woman for the rest of my life.”
He cocks a brow. “Not even if it’s good sex?”
I don’t want to talk about this anymore. It’s still beyond mind-boggling that we’re even having this conversation to begin with.
“I don’t know what else to say,” I tell him, “other than I don’t want to do this and you have to understand why. It’s 2018. This sort of shit shouldn’t happen.”
“You’d be surprised how many marriages out there—genuinely happy ones—started out just this way. Royals, celebrities, we’re all very good at pulling the wool over the public’s eyes. And that’s precisely what we’re going to do with you. You will marry someone, Magnus, or you won’t be king. You will marry someone and your relationship will look believable to the world, and I promise you, in time, if you let it happen, you will learn to believe it too.”
He hands me the clipboard and I’m surprised to find my hands are shaking as I hold it, my eyes glancing absently at the girl on the first page, some pretty, dark-haired brunette princess from Spain. Who isn’t too far from the women I date but marriage is a whole other ballgame.
“Your mother is looking for prestige. And looks,” my father says to me with a wink. “So she can have grandchildren the world will fawn over. But, Son, don’t go for that. Go for the nicest, smartest one. The one with the biggest heart and the boldest mouth. Being kept on your toes is more attractive than anything, believe me. Have a smart woman in your marriage and you’ll never be bored a day in your life. Be with someone you can have a conversation with, who will challenge you, no matter what she looks like.”
So far in life, my ideal woman has been someone who keeps me on my toes until I’m ready to move on to someone else who keeps me on my toes. I don’t think any type of personality—or looks—will change the fact that after a week or so, I’m already moving on and looking for someone else. I’m not even doing that to be a non-committal asshole, I honestly have never met anyone who captures the attention of my heart, soul, and dick for long enough.
When I look up from the clipboard, my father’s eyes are closed and his head is back against the chair.
“Father?” I ask softly, and his eyes open briefly.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten to the useless part of the night.” He yawns and then closes his eyes again. “Remember, we’re not only doing this for all of us. We’re doing it for you, too. You just can’t see it yet, but one day you will. You’ll see that...” He trails off and starts to snore.
I stare at him for a few moments, wishing I could talk to him more, selfishly, of course, just to argue and try and get out of this. But there is no getting out of this.
After I leave his room, the nurse comes back in to help him to bed and I wander the halls aimlessly, not sure what to do with myself and how to handle the ticking time bomb I’m holding in my hands. My mother and sisters all seem to have disappeared, so I hunt down Einar and he takes me back to my place.
With my father’s words ringing through my head, I turn on a lamp, sit down in my armchair with a beer, and start flipping through the pages of princesses.
Three
Ella
St. Andrews, Scotland
I’m having that dream again.
The one where I’m standing on the pebbled shoreline of some northern island, maybe the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, maybe the Faroe Islands. The clouds are low, dark, and broken, stretching from the gray horizon of the sea across to the barren lands behind me. The wind is strong and sharp, the kind that would drive you insane over time.
As usual, I am alone on the beach. Alone, except for the dozens of beached pilot whales that stretch out in the surf, their shiny black bodies floundering for air, struggling to breathe. The waves pound over them but it’s not enough to carry them back into the sea.
They are dying and I am powerless to stop them. I can only stand there and stare. My mouth is mute.
Then the black oil bubbles up from their blowholes, a sticky ebony glaze that coats them, the waves, the shore, until it’s swirling around my ankles, then my knees. I will drown with them here.
But this time the dream changes. Off in the distance, from around the bend of the clay cliffs, I see the figure of a tall man, sloshing through the oil toward me.
He’s come to save me.
For the first time, this dream brings a ray of hope along with it.
But before he gets any closer, the oil rises, and I am covered from head to toe, unable to breathe, unable to speak.
Unable to scream.
I wake up as I usually do, sweating and out of breath and it takes me a few moments to realize where I am.
In my room.
In the evening.
The last vestiges of twilight coming in through the window.
What on earth just happened?
I blink and fumble for my phone, finding it underneath my arm. It’s seven forty-five in the evening. The wine and cheese party started fifteen minutes ago.
“Shit,” I swear, jumping out of bed. Thank god I’m fully clothed and still wearing makeup so I can just join the fun. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I guess that’s what happens when you have too many late nights of studying in a row.
I double-check myself in the mirror to make sure I don’t look horrendous and then head out the door into the lounge and kitchen area that I share with my three other roommates, ready to apologize for falling asleep and being late.
Except that there’s no one here. The flat is empty.
Odd.
“Audrey!” I call out, not wanting to go around banging on their doors. “Catherine?”
I look at my phone again. It’s Thursday night and it’s wine and cheese night here in our dorm. Or at least it’s supposed to be. That was what Audrey had said before I closed the door to my room and proceeded to pass out.
Actually, that was what I had said to her. “I got the best gouda I could find for tonight,” I’d told her, overly proud, like the big dork that I am. Only I don’t think she ever responded to me, just gave me a tight smile and kept walking past.
Shit. What if wine and cheese night isn’t tonight?
I take in a deep breath and try to think. I’ve only been living in this dorm for a month now and the girls had said they wanted to do a wine and cheese night on the first Thursday night of the month. And it’s the first Thursday of October, so…
Maybe they went out and they’re late coming back, I think to myself, trying to stay positive. I go over to the fridge and take out the gouda and sopressa plate I had made earlier, surprised to see all their cheese plates are gone. They were there this morning.
I don’t know the girls that well. I’ve been trying to for the last month but making friends doesn’t come easy to me, especially when they discover who I really am and that ship sailed the moment they found out that Jane was living down the hall.
I lean against the kitchen counter and peel back the plastic wrap I’d put over the cheese, sneaking a slice and munching on it with a defeated sigh. I’d really been looking forward to tonight. I’d been studying so much lately and just throwing myself into all my classes, and my social life has come at a cost. Now I’m trying to catch up, as is what seems to happen every school year. I just thought maybe this year, my third year, would be different.
I gather my courage and text Audrey since she’s the one who is usually the nicest to me: Hey Audrey it’s your flatmate Ella! Just wondering where you are. I thought the wine and cheese party was tonight and I fell asleep so I think I missed you.
Thankfully she doesn’t take too long to get back to me. I’m in the middle of a second piece of gouda when I get her text: Party is already happening. It’s over at Zelda’s at Hawthorne Hall. Didn’t want to wake you.
I swallow hard as I stare at the text. Ouch. The party was moved. I wasn’t told. They didn’t want to wake me up. I don’t know who Zelda is and I think I’ve been told to bugger off.
With shaking hands, I text back: Okay, thanks! I’ll see you when you get home. And then add a bunch of wine and cheese emojis.
Shit. I know I shouldn’t feel upset by all of this, but I’m always the one tagging along, never feeling welcome. There’s a reason I’ve been a loner for most of my life.
Most of it has to do with the fact that as hard as I try to be average, I’m not your average girl. My father is the Prince of Liechtenstein, which makes me a princess. Princess Isabella, to be more precise.
It's more in title than anything else. There are no kings and queens in my country and it's not a monarchy. Prince is just another word for leader and my father is the head of state, having full power along with the government. Nonetheless, I grew up as the sole daughter of the leader of a tiny European country, which means I was raised in a world that was exclusively for the powerful and wealthy.
I wasn't alone in it, not at the beginning anyway. I have three older brothers who are mirror images of my father. Our mother died when I was just three years old. Cancer. Apparently it took a long time for her to succumb to the disease, barely hanging on while the world's best doctors couldn't do a thing for her. They say my father was a different person after she died, which makes me wish I knew him before.
If my brothers take after him, I take after my mother. That's probably why, when I turned thirteen, my father sent me as far away as possible and hasn't had much to do with me ever since. I look too much like her.
Not that I haven't tried to forge a relationship with him, or my brothers. When I was all alone in boarding school in the south of England, I called and wrote all the time, telling him how well I was doing in my classes, practically begging for him to be proud of me, to acknowledge what I was doing. Here I was, a teenager with only her lady-in-waiting, Jane, as her guardian, adapting to life on her own and getting nothing from him in return except a birthday card and the annual trip back home at Christmas time.
I look at my phone, my heart feeling heavier than normal, and wish there was someone else I could call. But there isn't. There’s only Jane.
I text her: Do you want to come over? I have wine and cheese.
Jane has been my lady-in-waiting for nine years now, and the two of us are pretty close. Well, she's the closest person to me but that's to be expected. I know it's ridiculous to even have a lady-in-waiting since I'm not really a princess and the term sounds like it's been ripped straight from medieval times, but it's the rules and I guess it's more for security purposes than anything else.
Jane texts back: What kind of wine?
Any wine you want, I text her, knowing I went above and beyond for this stupid wine and cheese night and got both red and white.
Two minutes later there's a knock at the door.
"It's open," I call out to her.
The door opens and there's Jane in her fluffy leopard-print bathrobe, her dark hair pulled tight off her face except for her blunt bangs which nearly hang in her eyes. Jane is nearly sixty years old, with a round face, a big smile, and an outgoing attitude which usually makes her the life of the party in most places. With this being my third year of schooling, I know that she's the happiest here in this hall of residence than she's ever been, and I think she's living out the college days she missed out on, if only just in her head.
"You're lucky. I was moments away from putting my hair up in curlers," she says to me, shutting the door behind her. She claps her hands together and grins maniacally as soon as she spots the cheese. "Oh, what have we here?"
She shuffles on over to the kitchen counter and I step out of the way to give her full access to the cheese.
"It's just gouda," I tell her.
"Just gouda?" she repeats, looking me dead in the eye, as if I've insulted her cheese sensibilities, a slice dangling from her fingers.
"Listen," I say dryly. "You know me. It was the best damn gouda I could find. It's more than gouda-nough."
She pinches her lips together and gives me a mock glare. "You know I didn't come over here for your cheese puns." A wave of sympathy flashes through her dark eyes, the kind of sympathy that makes me wince internally, like something in my heart just bunched up. Pity. "What happened to your wine and cheese gathering?"
I shrug. "Who is to say I didn't want just you over?"
She tilts her head, examining me. “As much as I know you love my good looks and outstanding personality, I also know you were looking forward to tonight and getting to know your roommates. So what happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to sound breezy but failing. I turn my attention to the bottle of grenache and unscrew the cap. “I fell asleep and I guess they didn’t want to wake me up, and the party ended up moving somewhere else.”
“So why don’t you go to where it moved to?”
I grab the glasses and pour each of us some wine. “I don’t think I’m wanted.”
Jane doesn’t say anything, so I glance up at her. Her lips are pursed together and under her bangs I know she’s raising a brow.
“What?” I ask, that look meaning something.
“You’re always wanted, Ella,” she says. “I know making friends is hard for you, but it just means you have to be a little more persistent and braver than normal.”
“If they wanted me there, wouldn’t they have told me? Texted me? Tried to wake me up anyway?”
“Maybe they don’t know you enough or feel comfortable with you to do that. You are a princess, after all, and they know that. You know that people aren’t sure how to handle it, how to behave. Maybe they think waking up Princess Isabella from a nap gets you bloody hanged in Liechtenstein, I don’t know.”
I manage a smile. “That’s definitely why the guys stay away from me.”
“It is what it is, dear.” She takes the glass and swirls the red wine around. “And it isn’t going to change. It doesn’t matter where you are or what school you go to because you are what you are. Even if you changed your name and pretended to be some dumb redneck named Mindy from Arkansas, you’d still struggle. You have to be bold, my friend. Be bold and brilliant in all things.”
“So what do you suggest I do?”
She takes a long sip of her wine, briefly closing her eyes and sighing happily. “Speaking of bold and brilliant, this wine is something else.”
“Jane…”
She looks at me in surprise. “What do I suggest you do? Just take this cheese and that other wine, leaving this one here with me, and go find out where the party moved to and show up there.”
I shake my head, feeling panic swirl through me. “That’s pushy. I’ll get on their nerves.”
“You won’t and so what?”
“I hate feeling like a tag-a-long.”
“But maybe that’s just a feeling. They might not see you that way. They might just say, oh hey, it’s Ella, she came after all. Glad she’s here, now it’s a party.”
I shake my head, knowing
full well that won’t happen. I take my glass of wine and head over to the couch, plopping down. The thought of doing that brings me nothing but anxiety. I don’t want to be a pain in the ass, so it’s just easier if I stay here and pretend the whole thing never happened.
I avoid Jane’s eyes as she watches me, trying to figure out what she can say next to convince me, but then, as usual, she concedes. With a heavy sigh she brings her glass and the bottle and the gouda, balancing all with ease, and comes to sit beside me on the couch.
“Are there any new episodes of that Making of a Murderer show on Netflix?” she asks, getting herself comfortable before reaching for a slice of cheese.
I grab the remote and turn the TV on. “Let’s find out.”
The next morning is dreary and drizzly. I spend too much time looking for an umbrella, which already puts me a few minutes behind my schedule, and when I give up and head out onto the campus, the skies decide to open, drenching me in seconds before I reach shelter under an elm tree.
Not the best start to the day. I drank a little too much wine with Jane last night, and despite passing out on the couch early and then dragging myself to bed before my flatmates got home, I still woke up feeling like crap.
Now my head is still muddled and there’s a chance I might be late to one of my favorite classes, Marine Ecosystems. I’m always punctual, early even, and the professor doesn’t look too kindly toward students who come in late.
I cringe at the thought of having everyone in the class stare at me, probably making comments at what a “princess” I am who thinks she needs special treatment or something like that. I crane my neck to look at the sky but it seems to have grown even darker.
Suddenly “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” bellows out from my book bag, making me jump, and it takes me a moment to recognize what it is. My ringtone. It has been so long since someone actually called it—usually I talk to Jane or my family through text or email—that I didn’t remember what I’d set my ringtone to.