Stay with me

Danica paced the sitting room like the floor owed her an answer, arms crossed so tight her nails dug half-moons into her skin. The afternoon light coming through the tall windows should have made the room feel warm. It didn't. It just made everything look staged, like a photograph of a life instead of an actual one. Danielle watched from the couch, calm in the way only someone who wasn't the one being sold off could afford to be. "Very soon, little sis," Danielle said gently, like the words might land softer if she whispered them. They didn't. Danica knew her sister meant well, but she also knew Danielle couldn't possibly understand—not really. Not what it felt like to be handed over like a signature on a contract. Not what it felt like to be a pawn dressed up as a daughter. Danielle had grown up in the same house, under the same roof, listening to the same parents talk about legacy over dinner like it was a shared family hobby and somehow it had never touched her the way it was touching Danica now. Maybe that was just luck. Maybe it was something else. Either way, it didn't make the knot in Danica's chest any looser. "You have no idea what you're saying, Danielle." Her voice cracked on the way out. "I'm not ready to get married. And if I am going to, I want to marry someone I choose not some stranger my parents picked because his family owns half the coastline." Danielle didn't answer right away. She didn't need to. They both already knew their parents weren't going to budge, and no amount of shouting in a sitting room was going to change that. The decision had already been made weeks ago, in a room Danica hadn't even been invited into: she was to marry the Prince of Beaumont. A man she had never met. A man she couldn't even picture. Beaumont had a way of being beautiful and merciless at the same time glass towers stitched into old stone streets, history dressed up in glossy modern skin. Tourists photographed the fountains and the cathedral spires and went home thinking they'd seen the city. They hadn't. Not really. But everyone who actually lived there knew the truth underneath the postcard version: money ran the city, and everyone without it was furniture. Danica had grown up watching her parents play that game like professionals — every dinner a negotiation, every friendship a transaction wearing a nicer coat. Now, apparently, it was her turn to be the move on the board. She let herself wonder about him, just for a second, even though she'd promised herself she wouldn't. The prince. What did he actually look like, up close, without the filtered magazine spreads and the carefully angled portraits? Was he kind, or just good at pretending to be the two things looked identical from a distance, and Beaumont had raised a whole generation of men who were excellent at pretending. Did he care about the people he'd one day inherit, or only the crown that came with them? She had no way of knowing. Not yet. And some small, stubborn part of her almost didn't want to find out, because not knowing at least left room for hope. --- Across the city, Prince Johannes Lancelot was getting ready for the festival everyone expected him to enjoy the one where he'd smile at a parade of hopeful maidens and play the part of Beaumont's most eligible bachelor. He had other plans. He was in love. With a girl the palace would never approve of. Jane Walker was nobody, by Beaumont's rules — the daughter of a delivery driver and a janitor, a girl whose name would never appear on a guest list. Not even her own parents knew about the two of them. It had to stay that way. If the king found out, it wouldn't end in a scandal. It would end in a funeral for whatever future Johannes thought he had. He rode toward her cabin anyway, pulse climbing with every second closer, fully aware of exactly how much he was risking. "Your Grace." Raymond's voice, steady as always, cut through the wind behind him. "His Majesty was clear — you're to return to the palace directly after the parade." Johannes didn't slow down. "I'll be back when I'm back, Raymond." Raymond said nothing else. He never did. He'd found out about Jane a month ago, the same visits to the same sub-district, one too many times to be a coincidence and he'd made his choice: silence. The prince was reckless in the specific way people are when they've decided a person is worth the risk, and defying him outright had never gone well for anyone. If the king ever found out, it wouldn't just be Johannes who paid for it. Raymond would lose everything he had too. Jane opened the door before he even knocked, like she'd been listening for his horse the whole time. Her whole face lit up. "Missed me?" he asked, that same crooked smile he only ever gave her. "Always," she said, barely above a whisper, and pulled the door open wider. He didn't wait. He crossed the threshold, pulled her in, and kissed her the way he only ever let himself when no one was watching — like something forbidden and fierce that got stronger every time they got away with it. Standing there, wrapped around her, he made himself a promise: this wasn't going to stay a secret forever. He was done hiding. He'd risk the crown itself before he let her go. • • • Back at the estate, Danica finally gave up and sank into the couch, all the fight drained out of her at once. Danielle sat beside her, quiet now, watching. "I can't do this," Danica said, voice smaller than she meant it to be. "I can't marry a man I don't love just so our family looks good at dinner parties." Danielle took her hand. "We'll figure it out. We always do." Neither of them believed that, not completely, but it was kinder than the alternative. Danica stared past her sister, thoughts tangled somewhere between panic and resignation. The future didn't feel like a future. It felt like a room with the door already locked. Danielle's own story hadn't gone this way. She'd met Shawn at a ball, both of them nobles, both of them already fluent in the same unspoken language — and it had been easy, the way things are supposed to be when two people actually fit. They'd married not long after, and no one had blinked, because that was the rule everyone in Beaumont lived by without ever saying it out loud: nobles married nobles, commoners married commoners, and the lines between them weren't lines so much as walls. Centuries old. Rarely questioned. And never broken without a price.