Page 25 of Reign

“Bee…you and Connor ended things.”

Beatrice’s heart skipped and skidded in her chest. Samanthaknewabout Connor? She considered denying it, but felt too flustered to lie right now.

“How did you find out?” she asked instead.

Samantha looked awkward. “You told me, Bee.”

“What? No.” Sam was the last person with whom Beatrice would share something this sensitive, this explosive.

Sam laid her hand on Beatrice’s. “You may not remember, but you love Teddy now. The two of you—”

“Stop it!”Beatrice pressed her hands over her ears. “Just stop! Leave me alone, okay? You’re such a liar!”

Sam opened her mouth as if to say something else, then seemed to think better of it. “I’ll give you some space. I really am sorry,” she added, forlorn.

When Sam had left, a nurse knocked tentatively at the door. Seeing Beatrice’s tear-streaked face, she gasped. “Your Majesty, is everything all right?”

Of course it’s not all right,Beatrice wanted to scream.I just woke up from a coma and my father is dead and I’m apparently Your Majesty!

“I need my phone” was all she said aloud.

The nurse, who’d been sorting bottles of medication, fell still. “Dr.Jacobs wanted you to recover in peace. I know he’s worried about you reading the news.”

“I’d like my phone, please,” Beatrice repeated. Despite the politeness of her tone and theplease,there was no mistaking it for anything but a direct order.

The nurse retreated into the hallway, returning a few minutes later with a plastic bag labeledHer Majesty.“Your personal effects, from after the accident,” she mumbled, before quietly shutting the door behind her.

Beatrice sorted through the bag with a dazed sense of wonder. Her thin evening bag contained nothing but a lip gloss and comb, which was no surprise, since Beatrice didn’t exactly need to carry a wallet or ID. She opened a smaller pouchto find a stack of pavé diamond bracelets, a pair of droplet earrings, and two rings.

A diamond engagement ring, presumably from Teddy, and a heavy signet ring. Not the one Beatrice usually wore as Princess Royal, but a grander one—one that she was used to seeing on her father’s finger, because it belonged to the monarch.

She stuffed them back into the pouch and zipped it shut.

Her phone still had a sliver of battery left; someone must have turned it off when they put away her belongings after the accident. Beatrice watched its screen come to life and frowned, because this wasn’t her phone. The quilted navy case was hers, but she didn’t recognize the home screen—

Except it was her phone. It must be, because the photo on the home screen was of her and Teddy.

Beatrice’s grip tightened until her fingers turned white beneath their nail beds. She tried to study the image abstractly, the way she used to in art-history class.

She and Teddy seemed sohappyin the picture. They were both laughing, their eyes bright. The photo was a selfie, spontaneous and carefree, which was surprising in itself because Beatrice never took selfies. The sky behind her and Teddy was an impossible blue, palm trees swaying in the background. Wherever this was, it wasn’t at the Washingtons’ beach house on the Virginia shore.

It was surreal, looking at a picture of herself that she didn’t remember taking. Again Beatrice felt like she was caught in a dream, maybe in someone else’s dream. The cool hospital air seemed to settle around her, lifting the hair on her arms.

Then her eyes snagged on the calendar app in the corner of her home screen, and she forgot all about the mystery photo. Today’s date was November15.

The reality of it crashed over her then, in a way it hadn’t before—that she truly had lost nearly a year of her life.

Her fingers shook as she flicked open her contact list,ignoring the tiny blue bubbles alerting her to thousands of unread messages and emails. That could wait, all of it. Beatrice dialed a number, holding her breath.

She was immediately greeted by a three-tone alert. “We’re sorry,” a robotic voice informed her, “but the number you have dialed is disconnected or is no longer in service. Goodbye.”

Beatrice stared at her phone in disbelief. Connor had changed his number.

She longed to call her dad, but apparently that wasn’t possible either.

Finally, the threads of Beatrice’s self-control began to snap. She closed her eyes, let her head fall against the thin hospital pillow, and cried.

“Disguise is a powerful and recurring theme in Shakespeare’s works.” Professor Larsen paced the front of the lecture hall, twirling a piece of chalk in his hands. “InKing Lear,for instance, there are noblemen posing as servants, and daughters who disguise their true intentions….”