Page 29 of The Unlikely Spare (Unlikely Dilemmas #3)

Chapter Sixteen

Eoin

Darwin’s heat is a different beast altogether, wrapping around you like a damp wool blanket you can’t shrug off.

We’ve been in Darwin for three days. It’s the last stop on the Australian leg of the royal tour before we head to New Zealand.

This stage of the tour has been jammed with events.

Nicholas has opened a new cyclone shelter where they demonstrated the emergency warning system, accidentally triggering every car alarm in the parking lot.

He’s launched a barramundi breeding program where he had to wade into muddy pools wearing rubber waders that were clearly three sizes too big.

Every step made obscene squelching sounds that had the school kids in the audience in hysterics.

He named his fish Gerald and gave a solemn speech about Gerald’s future contributions to Australian aquaculture while the fish immediately swam away and hid under a rock.

He’s unveiled a new coastal cleanup initiative and demonstrated the correct way to use one of those grabby-stick things to collect rubbish.

And throughout it all, he hasn’t looked at me properly once.

After what happened at Ulu?u—after I essentially told a member of the royal family to back off—I’d been bracing for consequences. Sharp comments. Renewed antagonism. Those unnerving blue eyes dissecting my every flaw with surgical accuracy.

Instead, I’ve gotten…nothing. He’s been unfailingly polite. Professional. Distant.

It’s fucking unsettling.

I expected Nicholas to double down, find some cutting way to put me in my place.

And instead, I’ve got this careful avoidance that feels like someone’s replaced him with a well-mannered doppelg?nger.

And although I meant every word I said, there’s something else swirling inside me besides relief.

It gnaws at me like hunger, this strange hollowness where his barbs should land.

I’ve grown accustomed to being his target. Without that familiar friction, it’s like I’m left shadowboxing with air.

Adding to my confusion, there are all the other small moments of Nicholas I’ve glimpsed in the past few days.

Like when he was judging a solar car race and one team’s car died halfway through. Instead of moving on to the winners, he walked the entire length of the track to shake hands with the devastated teenagers, then helped them push their car across the finish line.

At the veterans hospital yesterday, after all the cameras had packed up, he sat with an old digger who’d been wheeled out too late for the official meet-and-greet.

The man was rambling about his time in Vietnam, stories that looped back on themselves, repeating the same details about monsoon mud and tinned peaches.

Nicholas just sat there in the sweltering courtyard, nodding along to the third retelling of the Battle of Long Tan like he hadn’t heard it twice already.

Then there was the school, where, after the press had got their photos and moved on, Nicholas let a kid called Jarra drag him around for half an hour, introducing him to every bleeding chicken in their garden. “This is Bertha. She’s a diva. That’s Kevin, he’s a bit thick but means well.”

I watched Nicholas crouch in the dirt in his expensive clothes, seriously discussing chicken politics with a ten-year-old like it was a UN summit.

All these incidents add up to a pattern I can’t ignore, something I started to suspect after witnessing him with the koala in Sydney and with Archie in Alice Springs.

Deep down, at his core, Nicholas is kind.

And for some reason, he hides this part of himself under his arrogance and practiced charm and cutting wit like it’s something shameful, only letting it leak out in unguarded moments. Light shining through cracks in armor.

It’s yet another layer to him, yet another side to the man. He’s like one of those shapes that has so many sides you can’t even begin to count them all.

But I still don’t understand why I care so much.

Today, we’re at the cultural center, which is jammed with people all craning their necks for a glimpse of royalty experiencing First Nations culture.

The performer, a Larrakia Elder named William, settles onto a raised platform, cradling the didgeridoo like it weighs nothing despite its impressive length. The painted patterns along its surface seem to shift in the afternoon light, the ochre and white telling stories I can’t read.

Cameras stay off until William finishes the Welcome to Country—nonnegotiable, the Larrakia hosts said, and the palace actually listened.

I take up my position near Nicholas, close enough to intervene if needed. Every instinct is focused on scanning for threats, identifying risks, maintaining security.

Except when my eyes keep drifting back to him.

He’s wearing a green button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, showing off forearms that are more defined than you’d expect from someone who’s never done a day of manual labor in his life.

Fuck. I’m doing it again.

This obsessive cataloging of his every gesture, expression, and movement is a problem. A serious, professional problem. I should be watching the crowd, not noticing how the sunlight catches the blue of his eyes or how his dark hair curls slightly at the nape of his neck in this humidity.

I force my gaze away, sweeping the perimeter with renewed focus.

The forensics on the funnel-web spider incident came back yesterday.

Definitive evidence that the security footage had been tampered with—a three-minute loop inserted during the exact window when someone would have entered Nicholas’s suite to plant the spider.

Which means someone with access to our security systems is involved. Someone on our team.

The suspicion sits like acid in my stomach. These are people I’ve worked alongside for weeks now. Who are trusted with Nicholas’s life.

I catch myself again. He should be “the prince” or “His Royal Highness” in my head. Not Nicholas.

That mental slip is a warning sign I can’t afford to ignore.

The first note from the didgeridoo fills the space like thunder making music. Low, impossibly deep, coming from the earth itself rather than the instrument. The sound moves through my bones.

And my traitorous gaze can’t help but return to Nicholas to see his reaction.

His lips part slightly, those impossibly blue eyes widening as the sound washes over him. The golden afternoon light catches in his dark hair, and for a moment, he looks less like a prince and more like someone discovering magic exists.

His eyes flick up, accidentally meeting mine. He quickly looks away.

Fuck. I scrape my hand through my hair.

William draws the demonstration to a close, the last note hanging in the air like smoke.

The silence holds for a heartbeat before applause erupts. William acknowledges it with quiet dignity, then his eyes find Nicholas.

“Your Royal Highness, would you honor us by having a try? I promise the ancestors are very forgiving of beginners.”

“I’d be delighted,” Nicholas replies smoothly. “Though I feel I should warn everyone that the last time I attempted a wind instrument was a recorder in primary school, and they asked me to mime thereafter. Something about dogs howling in a five-mile radius.”

Nicholas’s quick wit makes the crowd laugh. And it stirs something inside me as well.

Something that I’m desperate not to name.

“When this center opened, we had twenty kids learning the language. Next term, it’ll be fifty—so I’m making every visitor earn their media clip,” William says, a glint of mischief in his eye.

“I have no doubt my musical ability will make something go viral,” Nicholas says as he joins William, folding himself to elegantly sit beside him.

“The breath is circular,” William demonstrates, his cheeks puffing slightly. “Never stopping, like time itself. Here”—he positions the didgeridoo—“lips loose, like letting air slip around them.”

Nicholas listens intently, mirroring William’s mouth position.

His first attempt produces only air.

“Feel the vibration,” William encourages, adjusting Nicholas’s grip. “The didgeridoo will teach you if you listen.”

The second attempt births a sound—brief, rough, but undeniably a note. Nicholas’s eyebrows shoot up in genuine surprise. For a split second, delight flashes across his face. Then, as if remembering his audience, he schools his expression into something more media-friendly.

“Once more,” William says. “You’re thinking too much. More breath.”

Nicholas’s third try is almost musical, wavering between notes like it’s searching for home. When it finally breaks, Nicholas pulls back laughing. But it’s his public laugh now, the one that invites everyone to share the joke.

“I do believe I’ve just set diplomatic relations back several decades,” he says as he returns the didgeridoo with both hands, a gesture of respect he would have been briefed on.

The crowd eats it up. Another perfect Prince Nicholas moment. He thanks William with exactly the right words, probably memorized from his briefing papers. The photographers get their shots of cross-cultural connection.

He smiles his practiced, polished smile that never reaches his eyes.

I’m so fucking tired of watching him perform.

The realization hits me with unexpected force. I’m tired of seeing the mask, the calculated charm. Tired of knowing there’s a real person beneath all that royal conditioning who only emerges in rare, unguarded moments.

William stands, moving to a table where several didgeridoos rest on stands. He selects one painted with looping crocodiles in deep reds and golds.

“A gift.” William presents it to Nicholas. “So you can practice. My auntie says the old people love a trier.”

“This is extraordinarily generous. I’m deeply honored,” Nicholas replies.

The crowd applauds. More photos. Nicholas holds the didgeridoo like he’s been handling priceless artifacts his whole life—which, I suppose, he has.

Though they’re usually ones his ancestors stole from other countries rather than what has been freely given.