The Princess and the Player (Royally Pitched 1)

“It’s good to see you.”

Her face remained impervious. She could have told him how she thought she’d felt secure here, but now that he was in her presence, she knew what safe really felt like. But she didn’t. She had managed here, thrived even. And she’d accomplished it without him. It wouldn’t have been her choice, but she’d done it all the same. At her continued silence, the imperceptible grin threatened to lift his lip. But he fought it. As usual.

“I have a story to tell you.”

Ele tilted her head. Thank you, Tristan, for this new little trait of mine. “I’m listening.” She took a dainty sip of her tea.

Robert mirrored her action before leaning forward and placing his cup down. Their eyes met, and Ele glimpsed his part of the love between them. She gave him a small smile.

It must have fortified him because he leaned back and spoke, “Once upon a time, there was a crown prince.”

Ele straightened in her seat. Her hand began to quake, so she deposited her cup. She couldn’t begin to explain how she knew, but she suspected everything was about to change.

“He was everything you’d expect from an only child who had been indulged his whole life. He knew he would ascend to the throne one day, and he used up all the time before to be royal. When he was eighteen, he convinced his parents to allow him to attend Oxford. He explained how it would help him when he ruled the country. Because they gave in to all of his requests, they sent him off.” Robert paused and broke eye contact between them. “But something interesting happened when he interacted with normal people.” On a sardonic chuckle, he continued, “The prince fell in love with a commoner. His parents again indulged him because they assumed it would be temporary. When he completed college, the girl would return home, the prince would return to his country, and life would move on.

“But they’d miscalculated. The prince had always been single-minded, purposeful, but it had mostly been used to fulfill his every desire. Now, it was focused on this woman. He came home to tell his parents he was going to marry her, and they told him to choose—the girl or his kingdom. While it pained him, he knew if he gave up his crown, he would eventually resent the girl. So, he let her go. What he hadn’t counted on was resenting the kingdom when he lost the girl.

“For the next six years, he threw himself into becoming the best future king and to pretty much do anything else he wanted. There were little restraints on him. But when he reached his thirtieth birthday, his parents forced him to marry a woman of his station. He married her, and a year later, to great celebration, they had a set of twins.”

Ele had assumed this was her father he was talking about, but the clarification—the set of twins who could only be her and Jamie—brought her forward in her chair. Leaning intently into the story, she watched Robert.

His gaze returned to hers. “Like everything the prince did, he threw himself into the role of father. The public loved it. The prince was often seen pushing his twins in a buggy, providing mad photo ops.”

Ele knew this. Her life had been chronicled in the press. From birth to age seventeen, one could trace the growth, the whims, the children’s fashion by the day by looking up pictures of her and Jamie.

“On one such outing in a park, our prince received the shock of his life. He’d been running after his willful daughter and stumbled over an eight-year-old little boy. The boy had fallen and scraped his elbow and his knee. The prince, being who he was, scooped the boy up to return him to his mother, who happened to be the prince’s lost love. The moment he spied her, the prince knew the boy in his arms was his son. It wasn’t just the math; it was the crooked smile of the child along with the absolute horror on the face of his former lover. After much haranguing and yelling and blame, the prince demanded to be part of the boy’s life while promising to keep his son’s existence from everyone else in the kingdom.”

“I have a half-brother?” Ele whispered.

But Robert merely continued, “Again, our prince never did anything by the half, so he moved the boy and his mother closer to the palace. The prince divided his time equally between his duties and his two families, but they never crossed paths again.

“The boy knew all about the twins. When his young half-brother got sick, the boy was frantic with worry. The illness changed the prince too. He decided he needed to make sure both of his legitimate children were ready to rule. He confided in his older son that his daughter took to it quicker, more naturally.

“The boy never once resented his half-siblings; in fact, he loved them like the younger siblings they were. He saw their life and didn’t want to live like they did. To be trained from birth to fulfill a role didn’t appeal to him. He loved open spaces and the freedom to do what he wanted. For a few years, everything was perfect really.”

Robert paused for a sip of tea. “When the boy turned eighteen, he told his father he was joining the army. It was always what he wanted to do. But the prince worried about his son, so he placed him in the care of his country’s highest-ranking general. The boy was trained to fight, to defend, to stay alive at all costs.”

Ele froze.

“Before every out-of-country trip, the prince would visit his son. Twelve and a half years ago, he showed up at the base. He was unusually pensive and quiet during the visit. But before he departed, he sat his son down and told him that if anything were to happen, it would be his responsibility to look after the twins and Juliana. But specifically, Eleanor.”

“You’re my brother?”

“When they were assassinated, I was on a plane an hour later. We didn’t know at the time that you’d been taken. But I knew I had to get to you.”

Ele had been reliving that day hundreds of times since August. The stubbornnes

s that had saved her life. The disorientation of the bomb. The anger of her capture. The joy of her rescue. She spoke at length of the safety she’d experienced when Robert came for her. They’d enjoyed an immediate affinity for one another. She recalled the instant familiarity. Ele had recounted it all for her therapist, so it was fresh, a wound newly scabbed over.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“We determined it was an opportunistic crime rather than a premeditated one. Or so we thought at the time. Still, when I’d found you in that cellar, I’d expected to see a broken shell of a girl, hampered by shock and grief. But instead, you were this fucking force of nature. I actually felt sorry for those motherfuckers. You had given them more grief than they’d anticipated.”

A small smile dawned on her face. She remembered that too. But just recently.

“Then, you were home for a while, and the queen reached out to me. She explained your panic attacks and your virtual withdrawal from everything. She asked me to come, to take over your detail. I couldn’t refuse. And not just because our father had asked me to look out for you. The girl I remembered, the fearless badass, had retreated, and I was determined to find her. But I think I ended up enabling you.”

“No, you didn’t. I just wasn’t ready. Trust me; it wasn’t you. It was me.”