The Star Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

unopened on her kitchen counter all week, while a small, silly, irrationally optimistic part of her had hoped that denying its presence would cause the letter to vanish without a trace. Instead, it had loomed over her personal happiness like an executioner's axe.
    She swallowed, her skin tingling. It wasn't the wedding that was the problem; she'd love to see her twin brother tie the knot. It was the getting-there part she couldn't deal with. Attending the wedding meant— she squeezed her eyes shut— flying to another planet. Yet another freaky moment in a life that read like front-page, tabloid news in the National Enquirer.
    It hadn't always been this way.
    When extraterrestrials made contact with Earth, life changed forever for everyone on the planet— but Ilana's life had to have changed more than anyone else's. Her divorced mother had married one of the aliens, Romlijhian B'kah, who'd turned out to be a king— the ruler of the entire galaxy. Even seven years after the fact, it still sounded bizarre. It probably always would. But Jas was happy, happier that Ilana had ever seen her, and Ilana loved her stepfather for that. Rom had no children, but treated Ilana and her twin brother Ian as his own, even going as far as choosing Ian as his heir. Which meant Ian would take Rom's place someday. Her dorky hunk of a brother ruler of the galaxy. Fact, not fiction.
    Ilana's lips thinned. She stared at the sealed envelope in her hands. Now another extraterrestrial was joining the family.
    Ian's fiancee was a head-to-toe rebel who'd knocked the stuffing out of his shirt— a lot of it, anyway— and had showed the guy how to live, something Ilana had never been able to do for her dear, way-too-serious, four-minutes-older big brother… though not for lack of trying.
    Ilana's stomach clenched. Her brother's marriage would take place in the same palace on Sienna where her mother had exchanged vows with Rom. Ilana hadn't returned there in all the years since. When she'd landed back on Earth, she could have kissed the ground. That the "ground" was the greasy, sun-baked tarmac at LAX said it all. Barfing for a week each way while stoned on valium and seasickness patches had been a singularly horrific experience that she didn't care to repeat. Ever.
    Fortunately, politics brought Jas and sometimes Rom to Earth and Los Angeles at least once a year. From those visits and conversations using the three-dimensional image-phone installed in her condo, Ilana kept in touch with the family she missed… the family who thought that her budding career didn't allow the time off that a trip to Sienna required. The family that thought she was a workaholic and didn't know the pitiful truth. The family that didn't know Ilana Hamilton was a fear-of-flying school dropout.
    She tipped her head back, digging her fingers into her hair and holding it away from her face. She had to get over this; she had to. She wasn't a sissy about anything else in her life. She was in control, even daring. But not when it came to boarding a spaceship. She'd tried hypno-therapy, clinics, and classes— even "Fly Without Fear For Dummies." What fearful flyer could resist a sixteen-week class with a name like that?
    It was with high hopes and a dry mouth that she'd gone to that first meeting. All was fine until the instructors began to describe the end-of-course field trip, a flight out of LAX, gushing on and on about how much fun the class would have celebrating their newfound guaranteed-in-writing ability to survive airplane flying. Ilana was close to hyperventilating.
    Flying the friendly skies of United was a completely different ball game from launching her puny, candy-ass, five-foot-seven body into space in something that looked like a triangular, stainless-steel Frisbee. But she didn't see the point in hanging around to explain, so she left.
    Er, fled, actually. Dashed to her car, where she'd huddled until she'd calmed down enough to drive home. The memory alone made