Page 1 of The Royal in Room 3

PROLOGUE

SOREN

They didn’t call it a deposition. They called it a session, and that was the first lie, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I stood alone at the center of the council chamber, which hadn’t changed since I was a boy. Same pale stone walls, same long table polished to a shine, same flags standing at attention behind the dais. The kingdom of Belvaria had always loved continuity. It honored tradition and pretended that the old ways were noble, rather than simply old.

When my valet had laid out the court uniform for me this morning, I’d balked at wearing the uncomfortable clothes. But Alan had politely reminded me that today wasn’t the day to test the court’s already thin patience with me as crown prince. I was never meant for this position in the first place, being neither the heir nor the spare.

So I’d stood there while he dressed me like the heir impostor that I was, fastening me into a midnight-blue jacket, stiff with silver embroidery at the cuffs and collar, polished buttons stamped with the Belvarian crown, and epaulets that sat too heavily on my shoulders—not so much the actual weight of them as the responsibility they represented. The sash of the royal house cut across my chest in blue and silver, my medals, which were lacking when compared to the former crown prince’s, pinned over my heart.

By the time he was done, I looked exactly as they all wanted me to look: flawless and obedient.

All I felt was trapped.

And yet, as the oppressive silence fell in the council chamber, eyes stared directly at me, assessing and finding me wanting. My throat was thick with the possibility that I might actually lose it all. I never wanted to be the crown prince, but I didn’t want to leave this way either, with my dignity in tatters and branded a traitor.

I kept my hands folded behind my back because they felt too heavy at my sides, like they were pulling me down to the floor, to my knees to beg Father’s forgiveness. Again.

Across from me sat the Council of State, consisting of twelve familiar faces, and at the center was my father. At the same time, he wasn’t the dad who’d tucked me into bed and read to me.

The king of Belvaria did not look at me, and that hurt more than I expected.

My father might have moved on and remarried after my mother’s death, but he’d always treated me the same way he did his child by his second wife. Some would have said that as the last child of his first wife, whom he’d loved very much, he’d spoiled me, which led to the current predicament. To have that affection removed from me at a time I needed it most—when my heart was broken, and all around me, even the servants whispered—was worse than a stab in the back.

In just thirty-six hours, my whole life had changed. I was no longer just the accidental heir, Soren Maximilian Aurelius Leontes, His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, Prince of Belvaria, Count of Veyr. Now, the whole kingdom whispered of Soren the Spy for a foreign land.

“Prince Soren, thank you for attending,” Chancellor Edmund Presley said, his voice smooth, measured, and filled with malice. He’d been my harshest critic since I’d stepped into the role because his daughter had been engaged to the late crown prince, which meant she would have been Belvaria’s future queen.

The chancellor never quite forgave me for refusing to accept my brother’s intended as my bride. Not only did I have no romantic feelings for Isolde, but I was gay. And even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have married her. Filling in for my brother as a crown prince was bad enough. I refused to take the woman he’d loved too, no matter how much everyone, including my father, had tried to convince me that it was what Marcel would have wanted.

I inclined my head in a nod of acknowledgment more out of protocol than respect.

“We are here,” he continued, “to address breaches of conduct incompatible with the role of crown prince.”

The words echoed in the chamber, bouncing off stone that had watched centuries of men from my family rise and fall. I wondered how many of them had stood where I was now, facing a similar predicament.

I was to be punished for having loved someone who’d betrayed me.

The chancellor gestured to an attendant, and a slim dossier was placed on the table in front of him. I recognized it immediately. I’d seen copies of it in briefing rooms before.

Except this one was mine.

“Over the course of the last six months,” he said, “you maintained an undisclosed relationship with the son of a senior figure from another state. Is that correct?”

He didn’t say the country’s name, but he didn’t need to. Rosenmark and Belvaria had a history of strained relations, built on generations of territorial disputes, fragile alliances, and the constant fear that one wrong move could turn centuries of tension into war.

“Correct,” I said, wishing my voice came out stronger.

I’d always been soft-spoken, but after I became crown prince, even my voice had been treated as property of the state. Coaches had drilled me on intonation, enunciation, projection, and the precise placement of pauses until speaking no longer felt natural. It was another performance, one more royal duty I was expected to execute flawlessly in front of a public waiting for me to become the beloved prince they’d lost.

“During that time, information pertaining to Belvarian economic positioning, diplomatic intent, and internal stability was leveraged against us,” said Chancellor Presley.

Leveraged because of me, because I’d been taught a lot of things in the past eighteen months, but no one had ever taught me just how difficult it was to love when you were the crown prince. They didn’t understand that my brother had had his whole life to perfect being the next king, while they’d expected me to learn everything in eighteen months.

I’d thought Felipe was the universe’s way of helping me to cope with the changes. Instead, the universe had played a cruel trick on me.

“You might not have personally handed him classified documents, and I am certain you did not act with malicious intent, but that does not negate the consequences we suffered as a result of your disregard for protocol.”