Stay with me

✧A perfect match ✧

The contracts wouldn't be signed for a few more days. It didn't matter. Queen Narissa had already built the future in her head, brick by brick, and sitting in the sunlit dining room with her silver-streaked hair pinned into place, she looked like a woman watching that future arrive right on schedule.

"They'll be visiting us soon." She said it lightly, almost singsong, eyes flicking to her son. Pride dripped off every word.

Prince Hans went rigid across the table. He set his napkin down with a precision that had nothing to do with manners and everything to do with control. His jaw was already tight.

"Mother." He kept his voice level, or tried to. "Did anyone plan on asking me before signing a marriage deal?"

She waved a hand like she was swatting away a fly. "Don't be dramatic, Hans. It's already the fifth month of the year. It's time."

His eyes darkened. He leaned back in his chair, frustration rolling off him in waves. "But moth—"

"You will marry her."

His father's voice cut through the room like a blade — flat, final, immovable. Nobody spoke for a long moment after that. Nobody dared.

Hans turned to face him, disbelief written plainly across his face. "You *signed* it? Already?"

"I did." King Lancelot didn't blink. "It's done. Sealed in word and ink. You will marry her."

Hans knew there was no point arguing with his father directly — the man rarely raised his voice because he never had to; his word carried enough weight on its own, inside the palace and out. Still, something in Hans burned, low and stubborn.

"Fine." A bitter scoff. "So when exactly do I get to meet this mystery woman you've decided is my future?"

"Tomorrow." The king said it without so much as a flicker of hesitation.

"*Tomorrow?*" Hans's voice climbed. "And you're telling me this now? A day before? How am I supposed to—"

"Which is exactly why," Queen Narissa cut in smoothly, lifting her teacup for a sip, "we're telling you now, rather than giving you time to talk yourself out of it."

Hans shoved back from the table and started pacing, the way he always did when the walls felt too close. "I don't know anything about her. Not her name, not her family, not what she looks like. And you've already tied my life to hers?"

"She's the daughter of one of my dearest friends." His mother's voice softened, gentled, the way it always did right before she delivered something he wasn't going to like. "A noblewoman. Raised with elegance, with grace. I've known her mother for decades — I trust the bloodline, the values. You'll come to love her, Hans. Give it time."

He turned toward the windows instead of answering, staring out at the palace grounds, fists curling at his sides.

"You don't know that." His voice cracked at the edges, just slightly. "This isn't the Tudor era, Mother. You can't just assume I'll fall in love with someone because her blood happens to be the right shade of blue."

His father rose from his seat, unhurried, certain. "Love grows where duty plants it. You don't see it yet. But you will."

Hans didn't believe that. Couldn't. Not when his heart already belonged to someone else — had belonged to her for months now, fully and without his permission.

He'd met Jane by accident, of all things. A market stall beyond the palace gates, golden afternoon light, the smell of cut flowers and fresh bread. She'd been selling bouquets, laughing at something one of the other vendors said, and when she'd turned and caught him staring, she hadn't bowed. Hadn't stammered. She'd teased him — actually teased him, about his posture, about the way he held himself like he expected an audience. And something in his chest had just... shifted. Immediately. Irreversibly.

She wasn't just another girl from the market. She was the first person in years who'd looked at him and seen the man underneath the title, instead of the other way around.

That connection had never faded. If anything, it had only gotten sharper, more electric, over the months that followed. She never bowed to him, never pretended to be impressed by any of it. She challenged him constantly, saw straight through the performance, and loved whatever was left standing once the crown came off. He loved her back with a kind of ferocity that scared him a little, if he was honest — deep, hopeless, entirely out of his control.

And none of it had a place in this room. In this court. In any version of his life his parents had planned for him.

Under the table, his fists stayed clenched. His plate sat half-finished, forgotten. Every word of the conversation scraped against him like static. All he wanted, sitting there in his own dining room, was to be somewhere else entirely — running down the palace corridors, out past the gates, straight into Jane's arms, where none of this would matter for a while.

—————————————————

Across the city, Danica sat at her vanity while her maid worked her hair into elegant coils, pin by careful pin. Her gown caught the light like something out of a storybook, every seam stitched by hand, every detail handled by her mother's personally chosen seamstress. In the mirror, she looked exactly like what she was supposed to be: a noblewoman, polished and ready.

Inside, though, she felt like she was wearing someone else's skin.

She still couldn't quite believe it. “She” was being considered — actually, seriously considered — as a bride for Prince Hans. The prince. The one every girl in Beaumont had a poster of somewhere, metaphorically if not literally.

So why wasn't she excited?

She adjusted the bodice of the dress and let out a slow breath. This wasn't a fairytale, whatever her mother wanted to believe. It was a performance, dressed up in silk and pretending otherwise. She was being presented tomorrow like a piece on a shelf — pretty, quiet, decorative. Not a meeting. An inspection.

She got up and started pacing, the way she always did when her thoughts outran her.

Would he even like her? And more than that — did it matter if he did?

She grabbed her phone out of habit and scrolled through a handful of articles with titles like *How to Impress a Prince,* every single tip reading like a list of instructions for disappearing quietly. Smile. Agree. Sit up straight. Say less. It didn't feel like advice. It felt like a cage with good lighting.

She wasn't built for that. She was an artist — a visionary, if she let herself use that word out loud, which she rarely did. Her fashion line was the one piece of her life that actually belonged to her. She'd built a small but real following online, mostly out of New York, and given a little more time, a little more room to breathe, she knew she could grow it into something bigger. That dream was hers. Solid. Tangible. It had absolutely nothing to do with tiaras.

But none of that registered with her parents. All they saw when they looked at her was status. Security. A future stitched together out of somebody else's last name.

She caught her own eyes in the mirror and whispered, almost like a warning to herself: "Don't lose yourself tomorrow."

• • •

That night, Hans's phone lit up on the nightstand.

"Don't cause trouble tomorrow," Jane said the second he picked up, her tone teasing on the surface, worry humming underneath it if you knew where to listen.

"Can't promise that." He dropped back onto his bed, exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with his body. "They're acting like my entire life hinges on tomorrow going perfectly."

"Maybe it does." Her voice gentled. "But we'll figure it out. Just — go, meet her, get through it. Then we deal with the rest."

Something in his chest loosened at that, just slightly. "After this whole circus, I want to see you. I've got something for you."

"Oh?" A smile in her voice now. "And what would that be, Your Highness?"

"You'll have to wait and find out."

She laughed, warm and familiar, the sound doing exactly what it always did to him. But a beat later, the laughter faded, and quiet took its place. Quiet, and something heavier underneath it.

"Do you even know who she is?" Jane asked.

"No idea. Just that she's the daughter of one of my mother's oldest friends. It's basically already decided."

Something twisted low in Jane's stomach.

She'd always known this was coming, some version of it — the day Hans would be handed off to someone of his own class, someone who looked right on paper in every way she never would. A perfect match, at least on paper. Maybe that was all it took, in a world like his.

As he kept talking, voice low and warm through the phone, murmuring promises she desperately wanted to believe, Jane felt the ache settle deeper. She wanted to trust that they could survive this — the palace, the laws, the entire machinery of his family's legacy grinding steadily toward a life without her in it.

Was what they had enough to survive all of that?

She didn't know.

But she wasn't ready to let him go.

Not yet.