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“Adelaar. Miss.” We both forced ourselves to smile and nod back at them, making conversation that early in the morning that I would not remember.
How pitiful that this was the state of the monarchy?
This was the life of the great House of Monterey?
“She is unhappy,” Wolfgang lamented next to me with a deep frown as we watched the couple in front of us greet all the guests in the Victory Garden.
So is he, I thought but did not speak, only scanned the crowd. Though everyone was of some level of importance and had been cleared, then double-checked for today’s event, their close proximity to the royal family was unsettling. The fact that anyone could just walk up to them and talk was unsettling.
“What are we going to do to help them?” Wolfgang asked, and I just turned to him.
The desire to hit him was so strong that my hand even rose, but I regained my composure and reminded him. “Wolfgang, I am working.”
“These are the most affluent people on the continent and not just the nation. Who are—”
“This is yet another reason why you did not make the royal guard,” I replied, stepping forward as a man approached from the left somewhat drunkenly. The event had only just begun, and there was this foolishness. I reached up to my ear.
“We have a duck,” I said.
“I have eyes on him. Blocking view now,” Thelma stated from her place a few feet behind Odette. She stepped farther to the side, so no one behind her would see the fool.
“We got him.” Two other undercover security men, dressed in suits and not their uniforms, said, coming up beside the man as if they were his long-lost friends, guiding him away from the Adelaar and Adelina.
“Be prepared for others,” I said, and they nodded. There was no way in hell I was going to let anyone ruin today, not after so much had been sacrificed for it.
“What is a duck?”
My shoulders slightly rose at the whisper behind my ears. I gritted my teeth. “You are about to become a duck, Wolfgang. If you are not needed at your post, find someone else to disturb.”
“And here I thought we were friends. Buddies brought together by our mutual desire to protect these two.” He pouted, watching the pair in front of us again. When they moved, we moved as well.
“We were brought together by a work order form,” I replied, even though I did not want to respond, nor would have had it been anyone else.
“So, you do not care about them?”
I stopped talking, hoping he would get the hint. But it was Wolfgang. Hints flew over his head like planes over the ocean.
He leaned in to whisper, and I stepped farther away. “Iskandar, you know you are the only person I can talk to about this stuff. We are the only ones who know—”
“I. Am. Working,” I repeated because he did not understand the words coming out of my mouth the first time.
He looked up at me for a long time then shook his head as if I were the unreasonable one. Oh, the man-child infuriated me.
“Careful.”
My head whipped back to them, already walking forward, only to see that Odette had caught the little girl from falling and helped her stand. How she managed to move so gracefully in those death contraptions they called heels, all the while keeping her dress unstained, was beyond my logic. I also noticed that everyone within viewing distance had stopped and were now openly staring, not pretending like they once were to have conversations as they tried to get a glimpse of the future queen.
“Are you all right?” Odette asked in perfect Ersovian.
“Yes, I am sorry, Your Highness,” the little girl said as she curtsied.
“There is no need to apologize. And even though you curtsied very well—much better than I do, I must say—I am not Your Highness yet. You may call me Miss Odette. What is your name?”
Once more, I was surprised by her fluent speech already. I looked at Prince Galahad, and he also seemed a bit stunned.
“My name is Lady Ramona Marlowe of Bothwin.”
“Lady?” Odette questioned before curtsying. “You must forgive me, Your Ladyship, I was not aware.”
