Page 59 of Omega’s Fealty

He has taken Roan’s child before I have even felt it move.

On the TV, they’ve dug out some so-called expert on Monteverran law. She’s appearing via Zoom with a bookshelf before her.

The anchor asks her if the country will accept the marriage. She says that the country will accept whatever the King blesses. Apparently, we are very loyal to the crown.

I’m not so sure. If everyone were so very loyal, they’d not need to watch us all so closely.

All I need is for them to stop watching just for a few minutes. A few minutes would be all that I needed to run down the stairs and out the hotel lobby and into the street.

It’s never going to happen.

Without thinking, I press my thumb to the ridge on my neck through the collar of my shirt, rubbing it until it stings.

Then the door opens.

My dresser from Zurich comes in backward, pulling a rail. Two of the security men bring in a long box behind her and set it on the bed in the other room and go out without looking at me.

She bows. She does not look at me either.

“Your Highness.”

“Madame.”

I follow her into the bedroom because there is nothing else to do and because I want to see what is in the box.

She lifts the lid.

It is a deep black and the collar stands up stiff on its own, a full four fingers high, edged in gold.

There is gold at the cuffs and gold frogging down the front, the kind I have only ever seen in the portraits along the long gallery at home.

On top of the coat, there is a folded gold sash, the one that has been in a glass case in the palace since my parents’ wedding. I did not know they had brought it to America.

She dresses me. She is quick and careful and she does not touch my skin, not once, not even at the collar.

She pins the sash. Then she stands back to check the line of it in the mirror, exactly as she did a month ago. I watch her face in the glass, and I see her mouth move.

It is a very small movement. She looks at the gold and then she looks at me, at my face, for perhaps half a second, and then she looks down again.

I don’t know what it was. Pity, perhaps.

“Congratulations, Your Highness,” she says to the floor.

“Thank you.”

She pins the medals in their order, the heavy star last, then she steps back and bows and gathers the empty box and the rail, and goes out backward through the door.

I look at myself for a while.

Is this it? Am I being taken to my wedding right now? I would have thought they would have taken a little more time.

The whole point of this tour is the pageantry. I am here to be a fairy tale prince and wow the Americans so that they give us good trade deals.

Right now, that seems a little pointless. I could just as easily film everything that I am doing right now from Monteverra.

I stare at myself in the mirror. I’m not used to wearing gold.

I look like a king but then that’s the point. Reinhardt doesn’t look like a king. He looks like an old man, a prime minister. I’m the one who is supposed to dazzle everyone. It’s my face that goes on the postage stamps and the coins.