The Swedish Prince (Royal Romance 1)

“And did it? Change everything, that is.”

I shrug, trying to ignore the pangs of regret, the disappointment. “It might have. I was never really given the chance. You have to understand, one minute I was just a student at NYU, studying for classes, partying with friends, just trying to figure herself out on her own. The next I was here, and I was in charge of my brothers and sisters. I lost my mother, my father, hell, my dog. It’s only been a year. I’ve had no time to adjust.”

“I think you have,” he says.

I can’t help but glare at him. “You have no idea,” I snap.

His forehead creases in sympathy. “I know I have no idea. I have some idea, but not to your extent. I just don’t think you see yourself the way that I do, the way that others see you. That you’ve adjusted more to this than you think you have.”

I gnaw on my lip. I want to ask how he sees me, but I don’t have the courage right now. Suddenly I’m his focus. I think I’ve always been his focus but now he’s looking at me like I’m some puzzle he has to get to the bottom of and he won’t stop until he does.

And I should open up to him because he’s a stranger. No, he’s not a stranger anymore, he’s Viktor. He’s not the crown prince of Sweden either, he’s just Viktor. But Viktor leaves in a couple of days.

He leaves in a couple of days.

And I both want to let him in so I feel like someone out there knows me intimately, knows who I am and what I’m made of, and I also want to shut him out because if I let him in, a piece of myself will leave me and I’ll never get it back. I’ll always think back to this and think, there’s a man out there, a prince, and he knows my deepest thoughts and feelings and it might be freeing or it might be the opposite. Giving Viktor my heart might just put me in a cage.

It doesn’t seem fair to have someone get to know you right before you never see them again.

“So, how do you see me?” I whisper.

He stares at me for a few long moments, taking in the different corners and features of my face. In this light, with the sun setting behind him, the gold in his brown hair glows like a halo.

“I see a young girl, a strong girl, who had to give up her dreams and everything she wanted in life in order to do the right thing. I see a woman who made a choice to do the right thing, which was to take care of her family. Her brothers and her sisters who mean the world to her. She decided to step up and be their guardian, the one to protect them, the one to raise them. I see a woman whose strength not only lies in the day to day but in the choice to be there forever.”

I look away from his gaze, feeling like he’s peeling back too many layers and only seeing what he wants to. “I had no choice.”

“Of course you did,” he says. “You had a choice to tell the courts that you weren’t capable of raising your siblings. Legal guardian or not, they would have taken one look at you and seen how young you were, seen your lack of experience and education, maybe even the trauma that you had gone through when you lost them. They would have given them to a state worker or whatever you call them here. But that didn’t happen. That wasn’t even option for you, was it?”

I shrug. “It had to be me. There was no one else.”

“You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t think you were strong, if you didn’t think you could handle it. You would have quit. But you didn’t, Maggie. That’s strength unlike any I have seen. And, in time, maybe you’ll see it too.”

“I don’t feel strong though,” I tell him. “I just feel like I’m constantly trying.”

“There is great strength in trying. It’s like working a muscle. The more you try to do something, the more you try to do better, the stronger you’ll get.”

A silence falls between us as the last of the sun disappears. Dark blue seems to drift down from above.

“I’m only strong because I’ve been lucky so far. I don’t know what’s around the bend, especially with April. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it. I never asked for any of this.”

“I know. But that’s life. Life is about making the best out of what you’ve been given.”

I stare at him, sometimes so lost in the beauty of his face that I forget to see that sadness swimming beneath his eyes. Somehow it seems even more apparent in the dusk. “It sounds like that should apply to you, too.”

He gives me a slow nod and looks away. “You’re good at switching the subject.”

All of our conversations the last couple of days–or at least the questions I’ve lobbied his way–have been quite shallow and safe. They have to be. Something painful and in-depth, Viktor would never agree to that. He’s as guarded to the others back home, the public, his family, as he is to me here.

“You’re good at avoiding the personal questions,” I rally back.

“You’ve never asked me any personal questions.”

“Okay, then I will,” I tell him, adjusting my position to pour myself my second glass of wine. “You had told me on our first date, well, our only date,” he frowns at that, “that you were running away from something. What was that?”

“Is this on the record?”

“Of course not,” I tell him before I have a sip of wine. “This is between you and me.”

“All right,” he says. He turns over so he’s on his side, facing me, his face open. A breeze ruffles a few wisps of hair. He clears his throat deeply. “My brother committed suicide.”

I still, the wine nearly slipping out of my hands. I place it down on the blanket and hold it upright, my grip tight on the stem.

I had no idea this was what he was going to say.

He goes on, voice lower, maybe trying to mask the tremor in it. “He took a bunch of medication our doctor prescribed him. I was the one who found him. Not his guards, not his secretary, not his parents. Me. I found him because I wanted to check up on him. You see,” he trails off, looks off, wrestling with a bitter smile, “he had actually called me a few days before saying he needed to talk to me and I blew him off. I couldn’t even tell you why. Maybe because I was going through a rough patch myself, maybe because Alex was always the strong one, the perfect one. Of course we all knew better. My parents pretend they didn’t know, but they all knew fucking better.”

I’m holding my breath as he tells me this, feeling like if I make it seem like I’m not here, it might be easier for him to talk, to continue. At the same time, I don’t want him to relive any pain, I don’t want him to hurt.

He takes in a shaking breath, his nostrils flaring. “Alex never wanted to be on the throne. He never wanted to be the direct heir. It’s not that…okay, the job, the role itself, it’s extremely stressful. It might not be what it used to be, but at the same time it’s not for the weak, not for the timid. There are rules, there are obligations, your freedom and your privacy are stripped. I personally think the roles should be appointed and not through birth. Appointed to those who want them, who earn them. If that had been the case, well Alex would have never been prince and I wouldn’t be either. But here we are.”

He reaches for the bottle of wine, unscrews the cap in one motion and then pours a big, messy glassful before downing half of it in one gulp. After that, his breath seems to slow.

“Alex,” he says, after letting out a deep exhale, “was a perfectionist. Always was. My parents can be tough. He had a lot he had to live up to. From an early age he cared very much about being perfect. About being strong. Unfeeling, even. The more he did that, the older he got, the more shut off he became. He had a…an inner world, if you can imagine. A world I didn’t understand. I tried to but he wouldn’t let me in. He wouldn’t let anyone in, which is probably why he never married, never had a serious girlfriend for long. There were rumors, of course, that he was gay but that wasn’t the case. It was just that Alex started to separate that inner world of his from the outer world and the more disconnect that happened, the harder he had to appear normal and perfect. The pressure crushed him in the end. That’s all it was. The pressure. God, how alone he must have felt. So alone that he reached out to me and I came to him too late.”

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose, shoulders slumped. He breathes in and out and I wish there was something I could do or say. Putting my hand on his back and telling him how sorry I am feels so trivial.

And yet I have to think about how I wanted people to be around me right after my parent’s death. People always meant well but pithy remarks never meant much to me. What mattered was knowing that someone was there for me. That I wasn’t alone.

Viktor has been nothing but alone in this.

“I understand,” I tell him, my words so soft they almost disappear on the breeze. I won’t share with him what I want to, how I can relate, that I blame myself sometimes for my parents’ death. It’s absurd, I know, I was on the other side of the country. I just think that had I not been in New York, had I been at home, it wouldn’t have happened.

But I know that comparisons don’t help. Every death is different. So I inch closer to him and I put my hand on his back and though it feels trivial still, like it’s not enough, I can only hope it is.

“Maggie,” he says, voice choked.

“I’m here,” I tell him, bringing my knees in closer so I’m now hugging him from the side. It’s an awkward angle, I’m not quite comfortable, and yet I’m not going anywhere. I hold onto him as if I can somehow absorb all his grief and combine it into mine. Maybe I don’t think I’m strong enough to be me but right now I’m strong enough for him.

“I know this isn’t like the old days,” he says, moving his face so it’s nestled in my arms, his words muffled. “I know that the monarchy doesn’t hold the power that it once did. But I am so afraid of taking this role. My whole life I lived with knowing it didn’t matter, that I would never likely be king. I was the one no one paid attention to and I liked it, I fucking liked it, because I could fail on my own and no one would notice. But now a whole country is watching. A whole country is measuring me against Alex. They never knew the truth about him, other than that he was poised and perfect. They never will know the truth. But with that comes the fact that I’ll never be enough. And that was fine before when no one cared…but now…”