1
ALEX
The helicopter shuddered as it cut through another bank of snow, the rotors thumping so loudly that even inside the cabin it was more sensation than sound—a steady vibration in Alexandra’s bones, a tremor in the soles of her boots.
“Hands in your laps, please,” Erin said for what had to be the sixth time.
Three small pairs of hands obeyed for exactly three seconds.
Matilda’s fingers crept toward the window latch.
Florence’s hand hovered over the little strip of LED lights along the bulkhead.
Frank had somehow found a way to poke an entirely innocuous piece of plastic with the kind of intensity that made Erin’s eye twitch.
Alexandra watched them from her seat and felt something soften in her chest. This, she thought, was what everyone had failed to warn her about—that motherhood would be equal parts terror and helpless adoration, and that no amount of protocol could make it neat.
“Matilda.” Erin’s voice cut cleanly through the rumble, a tone Alexandra knew from a thousand security briefings and late-night crisis meetings. “Leave the latch alone, sweetheart.”
“I’m just looking,” Matilda protested, wide-eyed and unrepentant. “I’m not touching.”
“You are very much touching,” Erin said, leaning over from her harnessed seat opposite to gently redirect their daughter’s hand away from the window. “We do not open things in helicopters.”
“We’re not going to fall out,” Matilda said confidently. “Because Mummy Erin would catch us.”
Alexandra bit down on a smile. That much, at least, was true.
“Mummy Erin,” Frank repeated, delighted. “Mummy Erin can fly.”
“She can’t fly in a blizzard while holding three wriggling children,” Alexandra said mildly, and carefully didn’t look at Erin’s face when she said it. “We’re going to let the pilot do his job, all right?”
“He has a name, you know,” Matilda muttered.
“So he does,” Alexandra replied. “What is it?”
Matilda deflated a little. “I forgot.”
“That’s because you were too busy touching the latch instead of listening during introductions,” Erin said, but the edge had worn out of her voice, replaced by an exhaustion so familiar to Alexandra it ached. Erin rested her gloved hand lightly on Matilda’s small knee, thumb rubbing absent circles through the thick navy wool of her tights. “He’s called James.”
“James,” Matilda echoed obediently.
“James the Pilot,” Frank decided.
Florence leaned forward, her nose almost touching thetiny oval port as another swirl of white rushed past. Her breath fogged the glass. “It looks like we’re inside a snow globe,” she said softly.
Alexandra’s heart squeezed. Florence’s voice always did that to her—soft, observant, slightly off to the side of the chaos, as if she saw a world no one else did.
“It does,” Alexandra agreed, looking past her daughter’s messy blonde fringe to the world outside. The snow was thick and drifting, clouds hanging low over the Cairngorms. Somewhere beneath them, the great dark shape of Balmoral waited, shrouded in white.
Her childhood memories of the estate were stitched with contradictions: the rigid choreography of royal holidays, the scent of wet dogs and peat fires, the sharp sweetness of cold air in her lungs. The sense of being remote and somehow freer, even when surrounded by traditions older than she was.
This time, it felt different.
This time, she was coming as Queen.
As wife.
As mother.
