The Star Princess Read Online Free PDF

Ilana's breathing shallow and fast. Pride kept her from admitting that to anyone.
    She slid her hand onto the passenger seat, searching for a bag of nacho-cheese-flavored Corn Nuts like a chain-smoker groping for a pack of cigarettes. The salty snacks looked and tasted like fossilized com, but they were healthier than other vices she could name and lower in calories than a container of Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.
    Eating them soothed her nerves. Nerves, she knew, that were going to be further frayed once she opened the wedding invitation.
    It was time.
    She opened the car door and swung her legs out, sitting there for a moment until the butterflies in her stomach settled. Then, glumly, she stood and climbed an iron staircase that scaled the outside of a renovated warehouse, her backless, red patent leather shoes clanging as she did.
    On the second floor, she flung open the main door to SILF Filmworks— the film company she owned with three friends: Slavica, Leslie, and Flash— and walked inside. The scene that met her was typical, everyone busy with post-production tasks related to the short film they'd recently wrapped. Ilana had a pile of possible future projects waiting on her desk, : but she'd get to that later.
    After her private pity-party.
    Her shoes click-clacked over a polished, high-gloss concrete floor that screamed the truth of the studio's warehouse origins and yet made it trendy. But it also made it very hard to walk in flat, slippery-soled mules without mincing like a geisha.
    Ilana clutched the envelope and bag of Com Nuts to her chest, her eyes focused on the quiet comer where she planned to indulge her bad mood. She wasn't about to feel guilty about it, either. She was entitled to a little moping. It wasn't as if she did it very often. She was impulsive, volatile, and fickle, according to a now ex-boyfriend, but not moody.
    She climbed onto a tall seat that had been a bar stool in another life. A stool in a biker bar. In the bad part of town. When they'd first rented this studio, all she and his friends could afford were garage-sale and bankruptcy-liquidation furnishings. No one felt they'd made enough profit yet to justify giving up the original furniture, although they'd probably keep most of it for sentimental reasons once they moved on to a bigger and better space. "Never forget your roots," Slavica always said.
    Roots. Ilana frowned. Hers had been ripped out and transplanted. Her father lived in Las Vegas, her mother and brother in space.
    Space, she thought, glowering at the envelope. With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair out of her eyes, blowing away any stragglers with pursed lips. Her earrings swayed as she shook her head, fluffing out the rest of her hair. Then, taking a deep breath, she tore open the envelope. The ornate gold-engraved invitation lay open in her lap like a cracked oyster with no pearl:
     
    His Majesty King Romlijhian B'kah
    and
    Her Royal Highness Queen Jasmine Boswell
    Hamilton B'kah
    request the honor of your presence at the Marriage
    of
    Ian Hamilton B'kah, Crown Prince of Sienna
    with
    The Princess Tee'ah Dar
     
    Ilana read through the entire invitation, from the gorgeous royal seal on top to the last of the events on the bottom of the second page that she'd be required to attend as sister to the groom, days before and after the actual ceremony. But those events weren't what upset her; she'd been through them before. She could deal with the receptions and the receiving lines, the constant changing of outfits and the hobnobbing with galactic royalty and diplomats, some of whom even spoke English. It was the getting there that she didn't want to think about.
    She sagged in her seat. The wedding was in early December. It was already July. The clock, as they say, was ticking.
    Her stomach did a somersault. Quickly she tossed a Corn Nut into her mouth, careful to suck off the salt before chewing. Repositioning her backside on the stool, she