Page 18 of Reign

“To me?”

“I thought you two were friends again, right?”

“We were,” Nina said slowly. Her eyes were still fixed on her phone, making Sam wonder if she was texting a guy. “But…um…”

“You hooked up again, didn’t you?” Sam guessed.

Nina looked up sharply. “No! I mean, we kissedonetime, the night of the League of Kings banquet, but that was it.We’re done now.”

“I don’t think you and Jeff are ever done.” Sam’s mouth lifted in a hint of a smile. It was just so comfortingly familiar, being back with Nina, teasing her about Jeff. It made the world feel temporarilyright,just for a moment.

“This time I think we really are done.” There was a funny note in Nina’s voice as she held her phone toward Sam. “Look.”

Sam blinked at the headline on the news website:Prince Jefferson and Daphne Deighton Engaged at Last!

“This is just another clickbait rumor.”

“Look at the press announcement,” Nina insisted. Sam followed the link, and swallowed when she saw the announcementon the palace’s official website, stamped with the royal coat of arms. This wasn’t a joke.

“Oh my god. Are you okay?” she asked Nina.

Her friend made a strangled, almost amused noise. “You’re the one whose sister is in the hospital, remember? That’s a way bigger problem than my ex-boyfriend getting engaged to someone else.” She seemed to pause over that word,engaged,as if she couldn’t quite believe it.

“I can’t understand why he’s doing this, especially after he kissed you as recently as the League of Kings!” Sam scrolled through the article without actually reading it. “What is he thinking? Beatrice is in the hospital!”

“He’s probably doing thisbecauseBeatrice is in the hospital.”

It was a surprisingly cynical comment from Nina, but she had a point. The palace’s PR team were experts at deployinghappy stories when they needed to distract the media from anything negative or damaging.

And now that Beatrice was hurt, there would be a whole different kind of pressure facing Jeff. Their mother had probably pressured him to get married, to secure the all-important line of succession. After all, that was what had happened to Beatrice when their father was diagnosed with cancer: he’d asked Beatrice to announce her engagement to Teddy, to reassure America of their family’s future.

“We need to go talk some sense into him! Just because Beatrice is hurt, it’s no reason to rush into a wedding.”

Nina laughed weakly. “Yougo talk sense into him. I refuse to venture anywhere near that situation. Even if he is marrying someone who doesn’t love him.”

“Okay, that’s a bit harsh,” Sam protested. “I know Daphne can be a lot. But she genuinely cares about Jeff.”

Nina seemed like she was biting back an angry protest. It made Sam doubt her claims of being completely over Jeff.

“Oh, before I forget—” Nina dug into her bag, then tossed Sam a set of keys. “I’ve had Albert all this time. You left some stuff in the backseat, too. A laptop, an old hoodie, a pair of spin shoes…”

Albert was Sam’s nickname for her lemon-yellow Jeep, which she’d lent to Nina before the League of Kings conference, since Nina didn’t have a car.

She placed the keys back in Nina’s palm. “That’s okay, you keep Albert. He’s a little flashy for going incognito, and according to my family, I’m not even in town.”

Her words sounded mournful, even to her own ears.

Sensing her mood, Nina leaned back and reached for the remote. “Should we watch the hot-but-terrible new Darcy and see what we think?”

“Absolutely,” Sam agreed. If only for a little while, she wanted to hold off the tidal wave of emotion that threatened to crash over her.

“I’m so sorry, Bee,” Sam whispered, alone in Beatrice’s hospital room the next morning.

The figure in the hospital bed was a pale shadow of her sister, like a pencil sketch that someone had blurred and smudged. A breathing mask was fastened over Beatrice’s nose and mouth, and various tubes and IVs were hooked into her arms. There was something almost translucent about her skin, as if Sam might be able to peer through her eyelids and see the dreams flickering over her brain.

At the sound of voices moving down the hall, Sam looked up. She knew who was coming. Only one person in America was always at the center of a crowd, the planet around which the rest of the world quietly orbited. The monarch—or, in this case, the Acting King.

The group turned the corner, and a half dozen conversations fell silent as everyone saw her through the glass windows. Sam realized, belatedly, that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, like in her old walk-of-shame days. Her cheeks grew hot.