“Think of it more as a calling than a career,” Genny suggested dryly.
Restless, and eager to lay it all out and have her sister diagnose how to fix it, Kelsey got up and paced across the thick rug. “I don’t know how to leave my life behind. To see it erased as if it never happened, as if it didn’t matter. I don’t want my parents vilified by strangers who don’t know the full story. Idiots on social media whipping up a storm when they don’t understand what was sacrificed to save a helpless baby and raise me.”
“Is that all of it?”
“Aside from the fact I spent all this time worrying about the wrong thing.” She’d worked it out after the third phone conversation with her parents. The one where they said a police car had parked in front of their house. Not to arrest them again, but for their protection until this crisis passed.
“I’m going out on a very short limb to say you worried about lots of wrong things.”
Kelsey rolled her eyes. Guess she’d been right about Genevieve not sugarcoating her thoughts. “This one is bigger than any of my petty personal concerns. My being here has led to danger.” She pointed at one sister, and then across the room at the other. “For you. For Mallory. For everyone related to me. I’ve stirred up trouble. I’m the problem.”
“Do you have a solution?” Genevieve circled her finger through the air as if to fast forward. “Or may we jump to where I tell you just how deeply wrong you are?”
“The solution is to leave. To go home. As soon as Mallory can get on a plane, I’m taking her back to America and safety.”
After choking back a laugh—and the coffee she’d almost spit out—Genevieve said, “There is no such thing as safety for royals. Merely the illusion of it.”
“Oh, I felt very safe my whole life, until I came here. Until I acquired a title that can rile people to violence. I can’t, I won’t”—she cut her arm down through the air like a sword—“bring that danger to people I care about.”
Genevieve pointed out the window that showed the faint pinkening hint of dawn. “And returning to a city full of muggings and murders will solve everything?”
It’d be a start? “I need to fade back into the background, where I’m comfortable. Where I won’t be noticed or cause any more problems.”
With a crook of her finger, Genny indicated that Kelsey should come back to the couch. Once seated, she ordered in a very imperious and regal tone, “Don’t. Go.”
She didn’t want to. Not after finally deciding, less than a day ago, to stay. Not merely deciding. Embracing the idea. Still… “It’s for the best.”
“Have you really been angsting over this since you arrived?”
How was it a surprise? “Yes. The king said I had to choose by tomorrow. You were there when he said it.”
“Papa and his pronouncements.” Genevieve started to put her hand over Kelsey’s heart. Then she frowned at the smears of dried blood, plucked a fresh tissue, and used it as a buffer. “You’ve been overthinking it. There is no choice to be made. Just as you know exactly who you are.”
“I don’t.” That was kind of the thesis sentence to her whole rant.
“You are Kelsey. It is that simple. Inside.” She patted once more, then leaned back. “Where you live, your job—those are facts that change for people all the time.”
That thought hung in the air like an iridescent bubble of possibility. “Well, that’s true.”
“You love your family, your sister. Now you just have more of us to love.” After a lightning-fast flash of an almost-smile, Genevieve said more softly, “Especially if you’re willing to make a fresh start with me.”
“I can’t help but love the Villanis. All of you. You’re a part of me, my heritage, my blood.” Surprising, how that felt so natural to say. She’d fought against it, worried about being untrue to the parents who raised her.
But family had always been her touchstone. Had her heart skipped ahead, from day one, to accepting the Villanis as her family long before her brain had?
Genevieve patted her leg this time. Without a tissue. “You’re kind to people. Interested. Curious. No matter where you go, you carry that inside you.”
“It’s been wonderful meeting everyone. That part I’ve enjoyed.” Because people were interesting. Universally. At least, they interested her. She hadn’t seen the wide swath of stories that would’ve played out in Manhattan, but Kelsey had been confined to the palace.
“You’ve been worried about logistics and details. Things like a new language and wardrobe and even food.”
“Yes.” Not as interesting because of the way her control had been stripped away by it all. Kelsey pointed up at the television. “There’s a national emergency going on, and I don’t have the faintest idea of what’s happening because I don’t speak the language. I feel helpless. A tidal wave of changes that I haven’t figured out how to swim through.”
“You will. You’ll learn.” Genevieve firmed her lips into a thin, serious line before giving a sharp nod. “Because you have to. Because there is no other choice.”
“There is. I can go home.”
“This is your home. If you go back to America, the danger won’t disappear. You’ll forevermore be a Princess of Moncriano. You’ll still need security. It will simply be more complicated in a foreign country.”
The decision had seemed so obvious at midnight. Now, it seemed almost obviously wrong.
How had she thought people would ignore her, ignore her title, just by switching her address?
Wishful thinking, that was how.
Kelsey scrubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes. “I…it…you raise a good point.”
“I am your older sister. Being smarter comes with the extra two years of life experience I’ve racked up.”
In some ways, all big sisters were the same. She’d been hearing that nonsense from Mallory her entire life.
“Your pep talk was having a real impact until that last sentence,” she snarked.
“You simply have to accept that things are different now, and will remain that way. No amount of hiding or wishing will change the fact that you are, indeed, a princess.”
If she did that, if she stayed, it would mean confronting her broken heart every day. It meant seeing Elias, interacting with him, but not in the ways she craved.
She’d give up easy access to nachos and holiday TV marathons. Give up the career she’d trained for, albeit to be handed a new one on a doily-lined, actual silver platter that came with unbeatable job security. A million little things Kelsey couldn’t even name yet that would be different here than in New York. She could stay and adapt and figure out a way to be herself in the process.