Playboy Princes (Royals of Arbon Academy, #2)(8)

Lurching forward, I wrapped a hand around her arm. “Whoa, wait. Don’t you even want to know what happened?”

Her smile was not nice. “I don’t need to know. I’ve never seen you falter, no matter what was thrown at you—including an asshole half beating you to death, but right now… you look broken. No one breaks my friend and gets away with it.”

I’d marry this chick if I swung that way. She was that perfect.

“He doesn’t even know what he did,” I told her, stopping her from trying to get to the door. “I overheard something, and now I don’t know what to do about it. There’s more at work here than some fucked-up playboy who was using me for whatever.”

I’d had time to think over the weekend, time to truly understand what I’d heard from Alex. Or at least what I thought I heard. I was piecing bits together, but I had a pretty clear idea.

Mattie’s face was pale. “It’s bad, isn’t it? The world of monarchs is cutthroat, but I can already tell this is bad.”

I sucked in a shallow breath. “I think the princess ballot is rigged.”

She blinked at me, and the astonishment on her face spoke clearly of her confusion. “I did not expect you to say that,” she finally admitted.

She’d stopped trying to storm out, so I moved to sit at my desk. She perched on the bed. “The other night, I was heading to the underground fight ring when I overheard Alex and Claudette.”

Mattie’s expression went from confused to pissed in two-point-three seconds. “The fight ring? Why in the fuck… Do you realize how dangerous that is? Noles almost got his heart sliced out.”

“I know,” I said, “but you don’t have to worry about me. I’ve been training for years with one of the best weapons fighters in the world. It’s a long story, and I don’t want to go into it now, but I need you to understand that you don’t have to worry about that part of my life. That part I have handled. It’s the Alex thing I don’t.”

Mattie looked like she wanted to argue, but instead, she examined my face. She must have seen some truth there, because she sighed and nodded. “So what did the asshole of Australasia do to you?”

“He was fighting with Claudette. He basically said that he had me right where he wanted me, falling in love with him, and that I was the one who would give him a genetically superior heir. He implied that the entire thing was a setup and I was his last chance since Jasmine was dead.”

Just as I had when I’d spoken of this to the boys, I watched Mattie closely. If she’d known about this for the past few months and hadn’t said anything, my heart might possibly disintegrate in my chest.

Her shock and fury were real as she launched to her feet. “No,” she said, arms trembling. “That can’t be true. It’s random. A random selection. There’s no way it’s rigged so that Alex’s one chance at a perfect baby comes to the school. All of our marriages are arranged by our parents between royal families. They don’t need the ballot…”

“It makes sense though,” I said softly. “Do you have to go through testing first to make sure you’re genetically compatible?”

I’d done a lot of thinking about this, and I saw the bigger picture.

Mattie nodded slowly, horror dawning across her face. “Yes,” she whispered. “Fuck, yes. We have to be tested, and we have personality tests and genetic tests. We make sure there are no problems that might cause our heirs to be weak. It’s standard practice to strengthen the future of the monarchy.”

“So that information, teamed with the alliances you want to form between kingdoms, is probably how your matches are chosen.”

“It’s definitely how,” she agreed. “But I’ve never heard of a commoner being brought in like that.”

“What if there was no suitable genetic match for a royal among the monarchies?” I said slowly. “Or what if your match was murdered and you had no choice but to branch out into commoners. Wouldn’t an orphan, with no ties to anyone, be the easiest to manipulate? We literally have no rights at the best of times, let alone when it comes to royals.”

She just shook her head over and over, like she couldn’t fathom this being real.

“The winners are almost always female,” I reminded her. “And every single one of them has married into a royal family.”

“Not a crown prince though,” she argued back. “Only ever minor members royal houses.”

That was true. “Shit, I just don’t know,” I said running my hands through my hair. “I’ve been trying to research it on my palm reader, but I’m scared I’ll trigger some sort of security breach and get myself imprisoned.”

I waited for her to laugh and call me paranoid, but when she didn’t, I knew my instinct on that had been right too.

“What are you going to do?” she said, moving closer to me and perching her ass on the desk beside my chair. “Have you spoken to Alex at all?”

I shook my head, tangled blond curls going everywhere. “He’s messaged and called, but I haven’t replied to any of them.”

He’d knocked on my door too but unlike Mattie, hadn’t attempted to break it down. Not yet anyway.

“I should confront him,” I said, playing with the idea again. I’d been contemplating it for the past few sleepless nights.