Page 27

“Yes.” I cringe.

He pats the space next to him.

Well, it’s not like I’m getting back down very easily, so might as well.

I carefully tuck my skirt as I sit.

The sounds of cars driving below grows distant as I take in the view surrounding us. Buildings glow in the night light, full of people still flitting about. But up here, it all feels disconnected. Like I’m watching it all through a screen.

“Peaceful, isn’t it?” Beau’s voice is gravelly.

I sigh and lean back on my palms. The pavement is cool to the touch. “Yeah, it is. You do this often?”

He shrugs. “Only when I need some actual peace and quiet. You’ll find, Briar, that it’s hard to come by in my world.”

His neck cranes, face tilted toward the stars. Moonlight kisses his cheekbones while his lashes cast shadows beneath his eyes. With a deep exhale, his shoulders relax, and with it a sense of calm seems to cloak him like a second skin. As I get comfortable, I notice his body radiating heat against the crisp night air.

“Did you know that Hydra, the largest constellation, takes up over three percent of the entire sky?”

I blink in surprise. “Um, no?” I chuckle. “And I’m shocked you do.”

“Why?”

“Because what do the stars and constellations have to do with running a country? I’d think princes would focus their studies on more practical things, like politics, history, linguistics.”

“Oh, they do.” He sighs and leans back, bracing his palms next to mine. “But I still preferred my astrology course to any other in university.”

I look up at the night sky, the endless abyss stretching as far as the eye can see. “I don’t recall even considering taking a course like that.”

“What was your major?”

“Human Relations.”

He snorts.

“It was supposed to help prepare me,” I say, and I can’t help but chuckle with him. “You know, for all the talking you royals do.”

“We do like to hear ourselves speak. My mother especially.”

“Mine too.”

The laughter we share is effortless, and when it dies down, the silence is comfortable. Far more comfortable that I ever would’ve thought it could be with another person. Beau seems content, shoulders relaxed and face slack as he looks up.

“What do you like about space so much?” I ask.

“What’s not to like? The vastness, the unknown, the fact that we all share the same sun, the same moon, the same stars. It doesn’t matter that I’m born into all this.” He waves a lazy hand at the buildings surrounding us, as if they all belong to him. Which they probably do. And one day they’ll belong to me, too. “I still watch the same sunrise as the widow down the road, the farmer getting up to tend to his land, the child running to school in countries across the seas. All the invisible lines we have around us, and yet we all wish on the same stars.”

His words grip my lungs like a vise, trapping the air inside. I’m breathless as I’m barely able to choke out, “That’s beautiful.” The word seems too simplistic for the feelings he just evoked. So poetic. So unexpected. Especially coming from him.

Although maybe it’s time I stopped believing Beau is a shallow stream of pretty hair and lucky blood.

“It’s the truth. The only thing that separates me from anyone else in this country is my birthright, and that was pure chance. I could’ve just as easily been born to a single mother, a farming family, a lawyer or teacher.”

“I don’t think many in your position would consider something like that.”

“Most don’t. But I think being the spare came with a little more sense of awareness compared to someone like my grandfather, my father, or Lock. They feel entitled to everything they have because that’s what they’ve been told since the day they were born.”

I shoot him a doubtful look. “And you have never felt entitled to any of it?”