Page 18 of The Dandelion Princess

I wake to Clara leaning over my bed, her nose scrunched up. “You look awful.”

I sit up, clutching my head, and my gaze drifts to the floor. Marc left no sign of his stay.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Marc van Heyden knocked on my door around seven. He said you needed to be checked at,” she looks at her watch, “nine. So how are you?”

Clara is clad in workout attire and her high ponytail swings as she adjusts her laces. It takes a second to realize that the faint irritation I feel is being cheated out of brushing my teeth with Marc this morning and roasting him for how anxious he was.

“The headache is manageable.” I reach for my forehead and feel the stomach-sliding sensation of encountering skin where there shouldn’t be.

“Great. Now, on a scale of one to ten, how excited would College Ella have felt about Marc sleeping over?” My sisters know about the old crush, too.

I don’t even consider telling her the truth. “Negative four. I almost barfed down the back of his shirt.”

“Ew. Are we hiding this from Mama?” She looks doubtfully at my forehead.

I reach for my phone and scroll to my calendar. “My next engagement isn’t for days.” We might be able to keep this secret.

“Alright,” she agrees, stretching her quad, “I never saw you. I was never here.”

Clara jogs off and my phone vibrates. I swipe on Marc’s text and grin.

“No filter, Ells. What are you wearing?”

6

No Choice

MARC

The Han Heyden office tower casts a long shadow. An armored Mercedes pulls up in the chilly forecourt, and when Thor opens her door, Ella steps out. The way she does it isn’t like any other woman in the royal family—neutered, bloodless, brisk. Ella moves like Italian cinema.

She waves, setting off a cheer from the small crowd gathered outside, and I take a long look.Vede.She’s dressed wrong. I know the palace dress code as well as she does. I know that white trainers, glasses, a tailored jumpsuit, and a navy blazer breaks it in a dozen ways. And I know that I like it.

It’s a good thing that she doesn’t work for me. It wouldn’t take more than a week of steady employment before there would be meetings organized around getting me to stop leering at the new web dev. My VPs would stage an intervention, demanding that I keep a two floor buffer zone around her cubicle.

I bow over her hand.

“This is new,” I murmur. It’s been a long week, every second filled with meetings and emails to get me back on track after my leave of absence. I’ve barely had time to catch my breath, and when she looks up at me, I can’t breathe again. “Did you have to scramble over the palace wall to avoid Queen Helena’s inspection?”

“Mama is busy,” she answers, smiling her princess smile. It has ceased to be strange to me, this habit the Wolffes have of transfiguring into living embodiments of the nation in the blink of an eye when the cameras demand it, but I miss my own, personal Ella.

After greeting a row of giddy executives, I escort her down a wide, wood-panelled hall where a line of script reads, “The Story of Han Heyden”. What follows is a series of quotes and photos charting the progress of the company over more than a decade. Ella halts in front of an enlarged image.

“This is new,” she says, eyes roving over the picture of four recent Stanford alums standing in a spray of champagne, celebrating their first venture capital deal. I’m holding a yellow legal pad and I’ve got my arm around a girl who disappears into the frame. The only sign of her is a shoulder and a sliver of a hip.

“I didn’t crop you out,” I say.

She laughs. “I’m not offended.” She points to one of the figures in the background. “Isn’t this that awful girlfriend you had? What was her name? Maple? Evergreen? Something unshaved and smelling of patchouli.”

“You know it was Willow. And Ididn’tcrop you out.”

The dimple flashes. “I don’t blame you. I was more harm than help in those days.”

I point at the frame. “I had them print the whole picture but wrap you around the back to preserve your privacy.”

Ella glows with pleasure and moves on to another photo. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”