She throws me a sidelong glance. “What do you want to know?”
“What’s Henry’s deal?”
“With the monarchy or with Theo?”
“Both. And why has he been flirting with me?”
She sighs in exasperation. “How dense are you? I bet it drove Henry nuts to watch Theo pretend he’s not in love with you. That’s a major chip on his shoulder.”
“What is?”
“The fact that Theo doesn’t go after what he wants or appreciate what he has.”
“Like what? His title?”
“What else? Mum never gave Henry the attention she gave Theo, so Henry made himself into the perfect little royalist. Helearned everything there is to know in every boring English history book. He thought that she’d love him more that way.”
“How’d that work out?” I ask, although I can already guess the answer.
Victoria slants me a look. “How do you think? She was a busy monarch and a widow with six kids. She had so little attention to give, and she gave it all to Theo. It didn’t matter that she was critical of him most of the time, Henry was still jealous. And now he’s frustrated that Theo doesn’t even want to be the king. Henry wants him to appreciate it.”
“‘It’?”
She waves her unchained hand in the air. “The Crown. The title. The influence. All of it.”
“Meanwhile, Theo thinks Henry would make a better king,” I say.
“He would think that,” she says with an exaggerated eye roll. After a beat, she adds, “They’d both be a lot bloody happier if that was the case.”
“Would you want it?” I ask.
She crooks an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
She considers this for a long time. “We’re not strangers to the criticisms of the monarchy, and to be honest, I don’t think it will last forever. It’d be brilliant to be involved in shaping the future of it, but…” She trails off with a shake of her head. “I don’t know why I said that. What I really want is for my family to be happy again.”
“I want that too,” I say.
We fall into silence again. There must be a timeline out there where Theo and his siblings aren’t royalty; where instead of going to state dinners and royal balls, the six of them spend theirweekends playing “football” together before Theo bakes them a banoffee pie (football and banoffee pie being the two most British things I can imagine while stuck in a hole in the ground, with an arm throbbing in pain, chained to a princess with a grudge). If Theo and I met in that timeline, I think he’d have brought me home to meet them, and I bet Victoria and I could have been friends. She’s pretty funny when she’s not trying to make me cry.
“What did you do during Comet Week?” I finally ask.
“The same things as everyone else, probably.”
Probably not, considering she had a bunker to hide in while the rest of us only had existential dread.“Humor me. If we’re going to die in a freaking lava tube, I’d like to know something about you.”
She closes her eyes and takes several shaky breaths. “I’ll127 Hoursyour hand before I let us die down here.”
I grab her hand. “Are you okay?”
She pulls her fingers from mine and opens her eyes. “You went a bit blurry there, but you’re back now,” she says, and it’s obvious that she doesn’t want me to press further.
“Okay, so you watch survival movies. That’s something I didn’t know before.”
She sighs and picks at the fraying hem of her skirt. “I run a lot, but I hate it ninety-five percent of the time.”
“When do you like it?”
