“No, to Queens. I’m craving pizza and your drafty window.”
As we hail a cab, I get a text.
From: Jax
Target destroyed. Frederick threw a bread roll. Alistair is singing ‘My Way.’ Max is hiding in a plant. The Archbishop won $500. Mission accomplished. You owe me pizza.
I smile.
“Driver,” I say. “To Queens. We need rations.”
There is noCattleyaorchid in Sal’s Pizzeria. There is, however, a neon sign that buzzes like an angry hornet, a faded poster of the 1986 Mets, and a smell of yeast and garlic that is honestly better than any perfume my mother owns.
We are the only two people in the shop. Sal is ignoring us to watch a telenovela on a tiny TV mounted in the corner.
Luke slides a paper plate toward me. It creates a grease stain on the Formica table that is shaped vaguely like Italy.
“Pepperoni,” Luke announces. “The great equalizer.”
I look at the slice. It is floppy. It is greasy. It is the size of my head.
“I am wearing a seven-thousand-dollar tuxedo,” I note, picking up a plastic fork.
“Don’t you dare,” Luke warns. “If you eat pizza with a fork in Queens, Sal will ban us. Use your hands, York. Fold it.”
“It’s a structural nightmare, Luke. The cheese integrity is compromised.”
But I do it. I fold the slice. I take a bite. It burns the roof of my mouth, and it is magnificent.
Luke watches me eat, a small, tired smile playing on his lips. He has taken off the velvet jacket—draping it carefully over the back of the booth—and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. He looks less like a Prince now and more like the guy who saves lives for a living.
“So,” Luke says, taking a massive bite of his own slice. “The Gala. On a scale of one to ten, how normal was that?”
“For a Friday night? Solid six,” I admit, wiping my mouth with a rough napkin. “We didn't have to call a lawyer, and noone was arrested. The Russian bots were a new touch, but otherwise, standard operating procedure.”
Luke shakes his head, chuckling. “Your brother… Max. I always thought he was just, you know, the Ice King. Robot Surgeon. But tonight… watching him lie about the soup spoon? He’s actually funny.”
“Max is hilarious,” I correct. “He just hides it deep down under layers of repression and classical music. It’s a defense mechanism.”
“Against what? Alistair?”
“Against the chaos,” I say. “Growing up, Max was the Heir. He had to be perfect. Which meant I, as the Spare, had only one job.”
“Which was?”
“To test his blood pressure,” I grin. “I was a menace, Luke. When I was eight and Max was twenty-one and back from school for the summer, he went through this phase where everything had to be labeled. He had this label maker he guarded with his life.”
“Let me guess,” Luke says. “You stole it?”
“Better. I re-labeled everything in his room. I labeled his biology textbook ‘Nerd Bible.’ I labeled his cello ‘Sadness Box.’ But thecoup de grâcewas the cat. We had a Persian cat named Baroness at the time. I put a label on her forehead that just said ‘Dog.’”
Luke bursts out laughing. He nearly chokes on his crust.
“He didn't notice for three days,” I continue. “But when he did? He chased me through the East Wing shouting about ‘taxonomy.’ It was beautiful.”
I take another bite of pizza.
“That’s my role, Luke. I poke the bear. I break the tension. Max builds the empire, and I make sure he doesn't stroke out while doing it.”
