“So,” he asked, “why didn’t you go to school in Venice, if you’ve read so many books about it that it sounds like you have been there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe…” This was hard to admit, but Nina forced herself to say it. “Maybe I was being cowardly. I’ve never traveled that far from home before.” She folded her pizza over on itself so she could take another bite. “It’s okay. Venice isn’t sinking all that fast; it won’t have changed much by the time I get to see it.”

“But that’s not the point of studying abroad,” Ethan argued. “You don’t go to Venice because it’s changing; you go because you would change, living there. When you came home you would see everything in a new light. You would notice things—and people—that you hadn’t paid attention to before.”

There was a significance to his words that made Nina wonder if he was talking about the two of them. If he noticed her, now, even though he hadn’t before.

She set the half-empty pizza box on the edge of her desk. “That was…surprisingly profound, for a late-night pizza conversation.”

“Pizza and philosophy, my two specialties.” Ethan grabbed her pillow and placed it behind his head, then leaned back with a contented sigh.

“You can’t steal my pillow!” Nina cried out.

“I need it more than you do. My head weighs more,” he argued. “It’s full of beer and profound thoughts.”

She tried to pull at the corner, but it didn’t budge. “A gentleman would never do this,” she scolded, laughing.

Ethan’s eyes were still half-closed. “Sorry, I used up all my gentlemanliness walking you home.”

“Give it back!” Nina tugged at the pillow, just as Ethan yanked it from behind his head and threw it at her.

“Oops,” he said cheerfully.

Then they were whacking each other with the pillow, just like when they were little and would all chase each other around the palace, shrieking with delight, with Sam always in the middle of the melee, leading the great girls-versus-boys joust of pillows.

Eventually they leaned back, both of them breathing heavily. Nina felt almost sore from laughing so hard. The laughter was still fizzing through her, dissolving into a bright, heady afterglow.

Suddenly, she realized how very close her face was to Ethan’s. Close enough that she could see each freckle that dusted his cheeks, could see the individual lashes curling over his deep brown eyes.

He reached out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

Nina’s entire being centered on that point of contact, where his skin touched hers. She knew she should move, should remind Ethan that this wasn’t fair to Jeff and they needed to call it a night. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to say Jeff’s name, and break the magic that seemed to have spun itself around her and Ethan.

Ethan’s touch grew firmer, his hand moving to trace the line of her jaw, her lower lip. The air between them crackled with electricity. Very slowly, as if he wanted to give her time to change her mind—which she didn’t—he brushed his lips against hers.

Nina leaned deeper into the kiss, her grip tightening over his shoulders. She felt heat everywhere they touched; his hands seemed to singe her very skin.

Ethan abruptly pulled away, his breathing ragged. “I should get going,” he muttered, sliding off her bed.

As the door shut behind him, Nina fell back onto her bed and closed her eyes, wondering what the hell had just happened.

When Sam saw that the ballroom was still dark, she heaved a dramatic sigh. She had meant to show up late to this stupid wedding rehearsal, but it would seem that Robert had outsmarted her, and sent her a schedule with a false start time.

She wondered if he’d done the same to Marshall. Last week, when she’d informed Robert that Marshall was her wedding date, the chamberlain had sniffed in disapproval. “He’ll need to attend rehearsals. Please make sure he shows up,” Robert had said ominously.

“Fine,” Sam had snapped, though she wasn’t sure she could make Marshall do anything. He was like her in that regard.

She sank onto a velvet-upholstered bench and stared at the painting on the opposite wall: a full-length oil portrait of their entire family, the type of formal, choreographed picture that was intended for the pages of future textbooks.

In the portrait, Queen Adelaide was seated with four-year-old Jeff in her lap. Light danced over the latticed diamonds of her tiara. The king stood behind them, one hand on the back of the chair, the other resting on Beatrice’s shoulder. Sam’s breath caught a little at the sight of her dad. It felt like she was looking through a spyglass that sent her back in time, to before she’d lost him.

She glanced to the opposite side of the painting, where she stood, detached from the rest of her family. It almost seemed like the rest of them had posed without her, and then the artist had painted her in at the last minute.

“Do you remember sitting for that?”

Sam glanced up sharply. Beatrice hesitated, then sat next to Sam: warily, as if unsure whether she might bite. She was wearing a long-sleeved dress that buttoned at the wrists, which looked especially elegant next to Sam’s frayed jeans.

“Sort of.” Sam remembered the hypnotic sound of the artist’s pencil, remembered being so impatient to see herself—to witness this transformation of blank canvas into an image of her—that she kept trying to wriggle from her mom’s lap. When Adelaide had snapped at her, the artist had suggested that Sam and Jeff trade places. Don’t worry if she won’t stand still; I’ll fix it in the painting, he’d assured the queen. That’s the benefit of oil portraits: they’re more forgiving than photography.

She remembered seeing reprints of that portrait in the palace gift shop, and realizing that complete strangers were paying money for images of her family. That was the first time that Sam truly understood the surreal nature of their position.

“I miss him,” Beatrice murmured. “So much.”

Sam looked over at her sister. Right now she didn’t seem particularly majestic. She was just…Beatrice.

“I miss him, too.”

Beatrice’s eyes were still locked on the painted figure of their dad. “This doesn’t even look like him.”

“I know. He’s way too kingly.”

The George who stared back at them from the portrait was grave and resolute and stern, the Imperial State Crown poised on his brow. No one could doubt that he was a monarch.

But Sam didn’t miss her monarch; she missed her dad.

“He always made that face when he put the crown on. Like the weight of it forced him to be more serious,” Beatrice mused.

“So do you. You have a constipated crown face,” Sam deadpanned. At her sister’s expression, she huffed out something that was almost a laugh. “I’m kidding!”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” Beatrice replied, though she ventured a smile.

Sam realized that this was the most they’d spoken in weeks. Ever since the Royal Potomac Races, she’d gone back to avoiding her sister, the way she had for so many years. Beatrice had made a few attempts at reconciliation—had knocked at the door to Sam’s room, texted asking if she could get lunch—but Sam had answered them all with silence.

She glanced over at Beatrice, suddenly hesitant. “Nice pitch at the Generals game, by the way.”

“You saw that?”

The surprise in her sister’s voice melted Sam’s animosity a little further. “Of course I saw. Didn’t you know it’s a meme now? It’s pretty badass.”

“Thank you,” Beatrice said. “I…I had some help.”

Sam started to answer, only to fall silent as Teddy turned the corner.

And just like that, the fragile moment of truce between the Washington sisters was shattered. Everything Sam wanted to say would have to remain unspoken. The way it always did in their family.

There was a moment of chagrin, or maybe regret, on Teddy’s face, but it quickly vanished. “Hey, Samantha,” he greeted her, as easily as if she had never been anything to him but his fiancée’s little sister.

Sam braced herself for a wave of longing and resentment, but all she felt was a dull sort of weariness.

They were saved from further conversation by the arrival of everyone else: Queen Adelaide and Jeff, followed by Robert. The chamberlain gestured for Beatrice to lead them all into the ballroom—as if it were crucial that they follow the order of precedence, even in a casual setting. This was precisely why Sam had always hated protocol.

“Thank you all for being here,” Robert began. “I know it might seem early to be rehearsing, but we can’t afford any mistakes. We’ll have two billion people watching the live coverage of the ceremony.”

The wedding of Sam’s parents had been the first royal wedding broadcast on international television, a decision that had been controversial among the Washington family. People watched it in bars, Sam’s grandmother always said, her voice hushed with disapproval.