Page 1 of Omega’s Fealty

1. Aurelio

The beta dresser pins the sash to my shoulder, then steps back to check the line of it in the hotel room mirror.

I’m wearing a navy suit tonight with a silver sash. My cufflinks are the plain ones with the mountain crest. I have a ridiculous number of medals attached to me.

None are earned. Some are simply decorative based on my rank. Others were handed out to me with this centennial celebration or that opening of parliament recorded speech.

They all get pinned. The combination is heavier than you might expect.

This is the ninth city in our tour. I’ve lost count of the number of suits. It’s a different one every time. Can’t have the heir to Monteverra wearing the same suit twice. That would just be embarrassing.

The dresser stands back and looks at me frowning, then leans forward again. I stand still and let her work.

I am good at staying completely still. It is the first thing an omega of Monteverra learns and the thing I do best: hands clasped together, eyes downcast, mouth shut. Don’t move.

As a child I stood for portrait painters for hours at a stretch, and I learned to leave my body there holding its pose and go somewhere else in my head where nobody could follow.

The television is on low in the suite’s living room. I can hear my own voice drifting through the open doors.

The evening broadcast, right on schedule, between the weather and the sports.

“Monteverra is a small country with a rich history. We have not always been open to the outside world. That is the Monteverra way,” the me on the screen says. “We open our doors slowly. But we do open them, and we are opening them now.”

I taped that in the palace library a month before we flew. Prime Minister Reinhardt stood behind the camera and mouthed the pauses at me. The network plays it as if I am sitting in their studio right now, being charming live.

That was part of the deal. They got to have the first interview with the famously reticent crown prince and none of us let on that it wasn’t live.

The dresser murmurs an apology in French as she moves upward to my hair, grazing the skin on my neck. Under Monteverra law, touching me is a death sentence so technically she has just committed treason.

I don’t know this beta. She smells of nothing at all. She is on loan from the consulate in Zurich and I don’t have any particular feelings toward her at all. Still, the touch makes me want to lean into her. I remember being touched long ago when I was still little and my mother was alive to hug me.

The majority of my staff are betas and even then they are practically drowned in scent blockers.

She finishes up, giving me a last spritz of hair spray then bows deeply.

“The blinds, Your Highness?”

“Leave them open.”

She bows and leaves, walking backward so as not to be so rude as to turn her back on me.

I sigh and turn to the mirror. I look perfect. The face from my country’s stamps, tourist coffee mugs and shortbread tins looks back at me.

Sometimes I don’t feel like a real person at all.

Forty floors down, the lights are coming on across Chicago. Headlights crawl the avenue and the river shows green between the towers. It looks pretty down there. I wonder what it’ll be like to actually walk the streets, go into stores, smell the air without it being air-conditioned and behind security glass. Maybe try some of their famous deep dish pizza.

I know better than to ask for it.

Tomorrow we fly to Washington, and I will get the air-conditioned version of that too. Still, I am loving this. It is the first time I have been out of the country. It is the first time I have been out of the palace.

Everything is new and wonderful. I want to drink it all in and never leave, even as I know I am seeing such a small, carefully curated part of it. It is more than I have ever had.

We have the top ten floors. I have the biggest suite on this floor. My security is in all of the other rooms on this floor. My staff sleep on the floor below. The remainder of floors are kept empty. This tour is costing my country a fortune.

When I came up from the motorcade this afternoon, the corridor was so quiet I could hear the ice machine working behind its cabinet at the far end.

Tonight’s schedule sits on the desk, one page, palace letterhead. 18:40, LOBBY (SERVICE). 19:00, DEPART. 19:07, ARRIVE, WNN PLAZA. I will see the plaza from the car door to the studio door. I can’t wait.