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but she is already happily married with a whole slew of children,” I say dryly.
    “My point stands. There are plenty of people of your ilk who are married as a result of their own free will.”
    “Not if they were single during the Decennial Summit.”
    She slaps her notepad down upon a table and comes to sit next to me on the couch. “Would Their Serene Highnesses really go through with making you marry someone you don’t know? Or love?”
    I set my teacup down. “Yes. I neglected to mention that Isabelle is to come, too. It will be a two-fer: the Vattenguldian princesses for two new political gains.”
    The pity on my best friend’s face makes me want to claw my own in rabid frustration.
     
     

chapter 4
     
     
     

    Christian
     
    The rock my father kicks skitters down into the pond at the edge of the palace grounds; ripples barely form as it rolls to hidden depths. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and glances up to the angry sky. “It’ll rain today, I think.”
    It rains a lot in Norslœ, so that’s basically like him saying, “Grass is green,” or other stupid shite people say when they’re trying to make irreverent small talk. But that’s Andres de la Warren’s modus operandi, especially in difficult situations.
    Lukas’ pack of dogs yip and rush past us, scattering ducks into the pond. My brother shouts their names, but as they are the only truly willful, disobedient creatures on the palace grounds, they pay him no mind. “Fuck the rain,” he says. “Let’s talk about how Chris and I are lambs off to slaughter tomorrow. Can’t you talk to the She-Wolf about this?”
    Once upon a time, I believe my father was a confident man. He was popular, funny, and charismatic, a favorite of Spanish society and media. He had girlfriends and money and even played a year on a professional Spanish football team. Within a blink of an eye, his uncle, the King, sold him off to my mother for banking perks during one of the RMMs and shipped him north. Isolated from the Mediterranean, and trapped in what he rapidly realized was an antagonistic, loveless marriage with a She-Wolf, my father initially rebelled until my mother somehow smashed him into submission. None of us know how she did it, but whispers in the palace tell me that all of his joie de vivre disappeared until he was nothing but a puppet the She-Wolf trots out when necessary.
    He is no true Grand Duke. Instead, he is the Grand Duchess Britta of Aiboland’s silent Prince Consort. So for Lukas to even ask him of this is absurd. Still, my father says, his lingering accent more noticeable in the fresh air than inside, “Mis hijos , she is resolute about finding you proper matches at the Decennial Summit.”
    He bends down and digs a smooth rock out of the mud below our Wellies. With a flick of the wrist, it sails toward the pond and skips one, two, three times across the surface.
    “I am resolute about telling her she can go to hell,” Lukas mutters.
    For hours after we got home from the pub, my brother and I brainstormed over ways for me to escape the She-Wolf’s machinations. No solutions were found, except for Parker to call the local newspapers and cash in favors to have the photographs from the outing not published.
    “I hear,” my father says, “that the Vattenguldian girl is lovely, Christian.”
    “Well, shite. That makes it all okay, right?” Lukas tugs a stick out of one of his dog’s mouths and throws it into the distance. “Chris! Did you hear that? As long as the lady is pretty, nothing else matters. She could be an inbred idiot or a raving bitch like the She-Wolf, but as long as her face is good to look at and the babies she pumps out are lovely, you’re golden.” He pretends to step into line like one of the ceremonial guards outside the palace. “Long live Aiboland, an island of beautiful, unimportant royals in a world that finds monarchies obsolete.”
    Our father sighs. “Lukas . . .”
    Light raindrops splatter against