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“Why?”
“Because everyone can see you!”
“I’m trying to work this knot out.”
“Flora, please.”
“I’m not bothering anybody, and this song will last an hour. You can’t expect me to stand through the entire thing.”
This. This is why I don’t like to be put in charge of my siblings. I am not their parent. But I’ve more or less been forced into that role from the time we were all children.
And now, I’m 35, and it appears the only way out of this parental role is to get married, move out of the palace, and begin bossing around a family of my own. Oh, joy.
“Flora,” I growl through gritted teeth.
With a dirty glare and a hissed, “Why don’t you get laid already and leave the rest of us alone,” Flora stands but refuses to set down her handmade wooden needles, a precious gift sent to her by an adoring fan. It’s sweet that she’s taken such a liking to such a simple present. I give most everything away to charity, whatever they will accept. Not because I’m such a goody-goody, but I don’t like to be reminded that I havefans.
Not that I’ve earned admirers. I was born in the public eye, and I’m doomed to remain there.
I lack Flora’s sentimentality, and it’s one of the things I admire in my sister.
She waves at the crowd, joining in on the third verse of the Gravenland national anthem.
The cameras will only show the happy, smiling faces of the six members of the royal family, all basking in the good wishes of their citizens.
What they don’t see is Flora quietly in a snit. Sig barely controlling his temper. Me, exhausted and searching for new excuses about why I’m not interested in this or that nobleman’s daughter on this, my 35th birthday. Etienne, halfway to being drunk off his ass and smirking. The queen, having had it with all of us. And the king, down at the other end of the balcony box? The king is happily oblivious to all of us.
Because he is bound and determined to marry me off, once and for all.
By the time the crowd below us has gotten around to the fifth verse of the world’s longest national anthem, something snaps on either side of me. Etienne makes a big show of joining the crowd in song, lifting his goblet above his head merrily and pumping his fist. The crowd goes nuts at his antics, not knowing he’s mocking the entire thing. In his state of compromised judgment, he looks past me and thrusts his goblet on the long high note. Wine splashes out, spilling deep red drops all over Sig’s face and beard.
Sig loses it. He hurls himself over me in one rather impressive leap, grabbing Etienne by his overcoat lapels. The impact knocks the golden goblet out of Etienne’s hand. I lunge for it as it tumbles over the balcony’s edge. But it’s too late. I watch in horror as the bejeweled vessel falls to the ground below, spilling wine all over the fascinator hat of a visiting dignitary.
Haplessly, Etienne stretches his arm over the railing toward the goblet. Sig’s face gets in the way of Etienne’s reach. In seconds, it’s a fully involved fistfight.
Where are the security guards? Probably rushing to the aid of the poor woman with the wine-soaked fascinator.
Not that they’d be any help up here; they usually let me break up the fights between siblings because they’re all too scared to lay hands on the royal family.
In my attempt to separate the two brothers, I tug too hard, and Etienne stumbles backward, then overcompensates and stumbles forward again drunkenly, dangerously close to tumbling over the edge.
Grabbing a fistful of his cloak, I wrench the fool back from the edge, sending him tumbling to the floor of the balcony box.
And in my attempt to hold the drunkard back from the edge, I fail to notice what is happening to my right.
A feminine shriek makes my blood run cold while Etienne looks past me in horror.
The final note of the Gravenland national anthem is quickly drowned out by astonished shouts as the crowd nearest us catches on to what’s happening.
I whip around. My brain registers that Flora no longer stands where she’d been, but it doesn’t connect that fact with why Sig leans dangerously over the balcony’s edge.
The queen lets out a bloodcurdling scream. The king bellows angrily, like he’s being merely inconvenienced, “What is it now?”
I rush to the ledge, only to see Flora hanging on by a thread.
Literally.
One of Flora’s hands clutches a thick wooden needle, around which a loop of yarn is cinched in a jumbled knot. At the other end of that thread is our brother, Sig, holding on for dear life. I scan the horrifying tableau, and my stomach threatens to send my dinner back up. At my feet, the half-finished sweater sits in a pile.
