“The ranch can’t move to Denmark.”
“Can’t… uh, Avery, is it? Can’t he move?”
She gives a delicate cough. “He has the ranch. We can’t move the ranch. His family relies on him to run it and the rescue. And… there’re admittedly a few charges in Avery’s past, from when he was working for an environmental charity, chaining himself to trees and heavy equipment and things?—”
“Freja.”
“I’m very, very sorry,” she says again, her voice faltering. “The charges were a bit of a surprise to me as well. Let’s talk again soon. I miss you.” And she hangs up.
I stare at my dark phone.
“What the actual fuck?” I sputter, breathless like someone’s kicked me in the gut.
My future plans in no way ever entertained the idea of becoming King.
When I wake up later, possibly face down in some strange man’s bed, it’ll be back to the usual scheduled scandal and the inevitable hangover. And all of this will be some kind of bad dream brought on by all-too-familiar poor life choices.
Chapter Seven
The thing about being told I’m now destined to become the Danish King is that it’s a solid distraction from my other myriad problems. Which I have ample time to think about when I can’t sleep that night. I toss and turn and kick off the blankets and tug them back up again. The room’s chilly in the dead of night, and by 3:00 a.m., even Gossip Girl can’t lull me to sleep again.
I skip the nightcap, have a hot shower, haunt the flat pacing over the old floors restored through sweat equity and a little help from Ethan on a Saturday afternoon a while ago, when he stopped in to find out what I’d been up to all week after he saw my socials with the project. The floors are done, the walls painted. I don’t have any furniture to restore. Everything’s decorated. There’re no distractions. I make one by ending up searching online for the right vintage knobs for a cabinet of mine by 5:00 a.m.
Still no sleep.
Not even by 10:00 a.m., when I call my mother without texting first because I can’t talk to anyone else about Freja’s news. Because what the actual fuck? Privately, I vow to any sort of god who might be peering down over a cloud right about now to will Freja to come back to her senses and leave me out of this royal life. Reason being, I have my own life—messes and all—that I enjoy very much.
Well, sometimes.
“Mamma,” I burst out immediately when she appears on my video call, “you won’t believe what Freja’s done.”
She tucks long silvering blonde hair behind her ear, blue eyes like mine mirrored back. Her lips tighten, her gaze sympathetic. “Darling. She told me.”
My eyes widen. “Why didn’t you stop her?” I demand in a rush. “She’s wanted to be Queen all her life. Why would she throw it all away for nothing? What about what I want? I don’t understand.”
My face is hot, and there’s an uncomfortable sting in my eyes. Then, I realize I’m crying—crying!—and mortification washes over me to be caught crying, least of all by my mother.
“Theo,” she says gently, “I asked her to call you first.”
“What? What do you mean?” I scrub my face viciously with the terry-cloth cuff of the dressing gown. Then, as I stare at my hands, they shake.
She sighs, leaning back in her chair by the window. The day is bright behind her, seated in her study, the shelves behind her lined with books, with the perfect corner to curl up and read in a plush armchair overlooking the gardens.
“Freja told me last week when she returned from America about what she’d done and her future plans.” At least Mamma doesn’t look happy, which is some small comfort. “She told me she fell in love with her soulmate. He has an animal rescue.”
“She’s running away with a ferret fancier,” I say darkly.
She laughs, then quickly claps a hand over her mouth and tries to look stern. “You don’t know that ferret breeding weighs into the equation.”
I cough, sitting down at the kitchen table and propping the phone against a crystal vase that overflows with tulips. I hug myself at the table.
Mamma shakes her head, turning slightly from where she sits at her broad desk, where she loves to write. From the armchair as a boy, I sat there in time-outs, with her and books for company. Which is where I learned to love reading as much as she does. Then, I’d choose to sit in her armchair for hours, disappearing into story worlds as a reward instead of a punishment.
“Have you been getting enough rest?” Her maternal instinct kicks in. Probably, I look a wreck, which doesn’t help my case.
“Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know.”
“Theo. You can’t burn the candle at both ends without it catching up with you eventually.”
