Page 36 of Reign

“I don’t think a pregnancy bump would help my cause,” she said drily, and Caleb smiled.

“Fair enough. The main thing is to avoid eye contact. People are inherently self-absorbed; half of them walk through life staring at their phones these days anyway. If you’re somewhere crowded like a metro car, just keep moving, and look down. You’ll be fine.”

“What if I used a British accent?” Sam asked, speaking in what she liked to think of as a plucky Eliza Doolittle voice.

Caleb was visibly fighting not to laugh. “Maybe stick to the haircut.”

Sam hurried down the corridor in the direction of the Media Briefing Hall, marveling at how eerie the palace felt withoutthe usual bustle of tour groups. It was too quiet, like being on a school campus when everyone had gone home for the holidays.

When she heard voices coming from around the corner, Sam started forward, hoping to find Beatrice—but it was Jeff, and their mother.

“Oh, Sam.” Queen Adelaide rushed forward, pulling her daughter into a hug so tight it nearly crushed the air from Sam’s rib cage. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Her words were muffled into her mom’s chest.

Adelaide took a step back but didn’t let go. She kept a hand on Sam’s elbow, as if afraid that the moment she released her, Sam would sprint off into hiding again. “Why haven’t you gone to Loughlin House? It’s so much safer there than Nina’s dorm room!”

“Can I please just come home?” Sam replied. The question was plaintive and raw, causing her mom to shift her gaze uncomfortably.

Jeff let out a heavy breath. “It’s not that simple. With everything going on…we need some time before we can figure out how to handle your return.”

“I didn’t realize I was something that had to behandled,” Sam shot back.

Her mother flinched. “Please, Samantha, just until after the engagement party. Then we can find a way to ease you back into things, okay? It’s simpler like this, I promise.”

When her mom’s meaning had sunk in, Sam drew in a breath.

“You and Daphne are having an engagement party?” she asked Jeff. He flushed, but nodded. “And I’m not included because I’m notroyalanymore?”

“Sam, it’s not really up to me, okay? It’s a state occasion—”

“I’ve been to hundreds of state occasions,” she reminded him, but Jeff cut her off.

“That was before!”

Before she’d run off, and lost her HRH, and become the black sheep that her family no longer knew how to handle.

Sam retreated a step, then another. “Fine. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Sam, please,” Jeff started to say, but she turned and ran off, just as everyone apparently expected her to do. She took the stairs two at a time and hurtled down the hall to her room—her old room, she supposed, since she wasn’t welcome here anymore—and threw clothes into a suitcase, just wanting to getaway,out of this nightmare world where nothing made sense and no one seemed to care about her. She had become a ghost in her own life.

It wasn’t until she reached the door that led to the royal family’s private garage that Sam remembered her car was still parked at King’s College, in Nina’s student spot.

She slumped against the back of the door and pressed her hands to her eyes, fighting an onslaught of tears.

“Are you okay?”

The young man who stood before her wore the palace valets’ uniform of navy pants and a white shirt, but Sam would have recognized him anywhere. “Oh my god,” she said slowly.“Liam?”

A light danced in his brown eyes, which glowed with mesmerizing flecks of green. “I wasn’t sure you would remember.”

She wiped quickly at her eyes and stood up straighter. “As if I could forget breaking out of the palace in a garbage truck.”

“Garbage-truck joyrides, you never forget your first,” he deadpanned.

Sam had met Liam the night she and Jeff graduated high school. He’d helped her sneak out of the palace and taken herto his band’s concert—and then Sam had left on her gap-year trip the next morning, and never saw him again.

They had kissed that night, too. It felt a bit like cheating, that she was standing here remembering the feel of Liam’s lips on hers, but she couldn’t help what she’d done before she and Marshall started dating.