Page 95 of Order

“You’reserious.You’re, like, a royal guy.”

“‘His Serene Highness, Prince Maxence of Monaco.’ I kid you not. Oh, hey. I’m also the Duke of Mazarin and the Count of Polignac. Look me up on your phone.”

“The WiFi still doesn’t work for me,” Dree said.

“Fine. When you get somewhere. But it’s true. It’s horribly, undeniably, unbelievablytrue,”he sighed.

“Maxence, Augustine, I don’t know what to say.”

“I went from thinking I was about to be executed—”

“Wait,what?”she asked. “You were serious about that?”

Max nodded. “Oh, yes. Quentin would have killed me if Pierre had ordered him to. Wouldn’t you have, Sault?” He glanced over.

Quentin Sault was staring out the windows, his jaw set hard.

Max threaded his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“So, everything you told me was true. Like, when you were kidnapped and the pirates and the tanker boat?Thatwas real?”

From over at the counter, Quentin asked, his voice sharp, “You told her aboutthat?”

“Ican tell people.” He turned back to Dree. “Anyway, my morning has gone from my imminent execution to my life upended. I am at an absolute loss for what to do.”

Quentin spun and stared at him. “You’re going back to Monaco and calling a Crown Council to elect and certify a new sovereign prince, and you’re going to make sure it isn’t Prince Jules Grimaldi.”

Maxence shot back at Sault, “What if I don’t go back? What if I take Holy Orders like I planned?”

Dree’s fingers tightened on his arm, and he pressed his hand over hers.

Quentin sighed. “Then everyone will assume Prince Jules threatened you in some manner, and you ran.”

“Why would he—” Max stopped.

Max’s uncle, Prince Jules Grimaldi, had over a billion reasons to remove or kill anyone between him and the princely crown of Monaco, and Max was the first of three people who stood in his way.

Dree was still peering at him, her head tilted, like she was dissecting him with her gaze. “Why would a guy who is aprincewant to be apriest?”

He sighed and flipped his fingers in the air. “It’s a complicated story.”

“Tell me.”

Her questioning had become more brisk, even efficient. He was reminded of their conversations in Paris about Flicka, when Dree had said out loud what Max had not admitted to himself.

Afterward, his mind and soul had felt cleaner.

So, Max did his best to answer her. “I’m drawn to the church.”

“Like a moth to a flame?” she asked, her clear blue eyes examining him.

“More like a prisoner to freedom. I’ve wanted to be a priest from the first time I read about the second sons of monarchs becoming priests. King Henry the Eighth planned to join the Church and take a run at the papacy until his older brother died, and thus he became the King of England. The sacerdotium was my entire ambition. I never wanted to rule anything.”

“Was that just because your brother would have to die for you to be the prince, or did you really not want it?” she asked.

“You did psych rotations, didn’t you?” Max asked her.

She nodded again, briskly. “Psych rotations are standard in nursing school, but when you’re a nurse, you see a lot of people who are fooling themselves about what is making them sick. I can detect anybody’s bullshit at five hundred yards. I am a living, walking, breathing bullshit detector.”