Majesty (American Royals, #2)(4)
Or maybe it had died with the old Beatrice, the one who’d been a princess, not a queen.
“All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll talk to Teddy.”
She could do this, for her family, for her country. She could marry Teddy and give America the fairy-tale romance it so desperately needed.
She could let go of Beatrice the girl, and give herself over to Beatrice the queen.
Nina Gonzalez tensed as she drew a wooden block from the increasingly precarious tower. Everyone at the table held their breath. With excruciating care, she placed the Jenga piece atop the makeshift structure.
Somehow, it held.
“Yes!” Nina lifted her hands, letting out a whoop of victory—just as a pair of blocks slid off the stack and clattered to the table. “Looks like I spoke too soon,” she amended with a laugh.
Rachel Greenbaum, who lived down the hall from Nina, swept the fallen blocks toward her. “Look, you got FIND A HAT and CELL BLOCK TANGO!”
They were playing with King’s College’s famous “Party Jenga” set, covered in red Sharpie. It was the same as regular Jenga, except each block was inscribed with a different command—SHOTSKI, KARAOKE, BUTTERFINGERS—and everyone had to follow the rules of whatever blocks they knocked down. When Nina had asked how old the Jenga set was, no one knew.
It was the last weekend of spring break, and Nina’s friends were hanging out in Ogden, the café and lounge area beneath the fine arts building. Because of its location, Ogden mostly attracted the theater kids, which had always surprised Nina, since it served cookies for free.
“FIND A HAT is easy. You just wear some object as if it’s a hat,” explained their other friend Leila Taghdisi. Nina obediently folded a paper napkin into a triangle before setting it on her head.
“And for CELL BLOCK TANGO, you have to leave your phone out for the rest of the game so we can all read your texts.” Leila shot Nina an apologetic glance. Her friends knew how private Nina was about her personal life—and her relationship with the royal family.
But Nina had resolved that this semester she would be normal. So, like any normal college student, she pulled out her phone and set it on the table.
Rachel sighed. “I can’t believe our first day of spring quarter is on Monday. I’m nowhere near ready for the start of classes.”
“I don’t know, I’m kind of glad to be back.” Nina was actually excited about school again, now that she could walk around campus without being tailed by paparazzi. She still garnered a whisper here or there—still occasionally saw her fellow students looking at her for a beat too long, their brows furrowed in confusion, as if they thought they’d met her but couldn’t remember where.
But it was a massive improvement over the nightmare she’d been living earlier this year, when she was dating Prince Jefferson.
People had remarkably short memories for this sort of thing. And after the earth-shattering, world-altering news of the king’s death, Nina’s brief relationship with Jeff was the last thing on anyone’s mind. The world had clearly forgotten her and moved on, to Nina’s immense relief.
“Not me. I never wanted to leave Virginia Beach,” Leila chimed in. “If we were still there, we’d be out on the sand right now, watching the sunset and eating Nina’s addictive guacamole.”
“It’s my mamá’s recipe. The secret is in the garlic,” Nina explained.
She was so grateful that Rachel had dragged her on that trip. It was nothing like the vacations Nina had gone on as a guest of the Washingtons: the rental house had been run-down, with no air-conditioning, and she’d had to sleep on a sofa in the living room. Yet she’d loved it. Sitting there with the other girls on her hall, drinking cheap beer and telling stories over a beach bonfire, had felt infinitely more satisfying than all the five-star royal travel.
“Sadly, I can’t offer you guacamole.” Jayne, another of their friends, emerged from the café’s kitchen, balancing a tray in her oven mitts. “But these might help.”
The three girls immediately tore into the cookies. “Have I mentioned how glad I am that you work here?” Nina asked.
“Instead of at the library with you?” Jayne and Nina were part of the same work-study program, which required them to get jobs on campus in exchange for the funding of their scholarships.
“Your baking talents would be wasted at the library. These are delicious,” Nina replied through a mouthful of cookie. Her mamá would have scolded her for talking with her mouth full, but she wasn’t at home right now—or at a stuffy royal reception, either.
Jayne set the cookies on the counter before pulling up a chair. She didn’t bother taking off her school-issued apron, which was printed with the mascot of King’s College: a knight in a shining silver helmet. “That’s me, the gourmet chef of slice-and-bake.”
Nina’s phone, still at the center of the table, flashed with a new text. Rachel eagerly snatched at it, then slid the phone over. “So far, your texts are boring.”
It was Nina’s mom. Are you coming over for dinner sometime soon? I’ll make paella!
Nina’s parents, Julie and Isabella, lived in a redbrick townhome a few miles away. It was a grace-and-favor house: a property that belonged to the royal family and was leased rent-free to those who served them—in this case, Nina’s mamá Isabella, who had once worked as the late king’s chamberlain and was now Minister of the Treasury. Nina tried not to be bothered by the fact that Sam’s family, Jeff’s family, owned the house she’d grown up in.