“Do you want to try it on?”
“Yes,” Gabriella breathed.
Daphne tried not to look at the prince as she slid his mother’s bracelet off her wrist and passed it to Gabriella, who clasped it on with a voracious, greedy excitement.
The other girls immediately formed a cooing semicircle around Gabriella. Daphne turned aside, feeling weary and sick.
“Daph—I’m going to head home,” Jefferson told her. “I’m actually kind of tired.”
Daphne heard the silent question folded into his words: Did she want to come back to the palace and put this all behind them?
She should go back. She wanted to go back. There was nothing she liked about this place or these people, except the opportunity that she could get out of it, if she played her cards right. If she could reel Gabriella in, slowly, an inch at a time.
Behind her, Gabriella was quiet, clearly watching their exchange. Daphne swallowed.
She needed to choose Gabriella over Jefferson, to prove her loyalty.
“I think I’ll stay out. This place is fun!” She laughed hollowly.
Jefferson’s eyes flashed with hurt, but he nodded. “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
Then he was walking out the door, still looking resplendent in his military outfit. The room felt a little dimmer when he left, as if there had been a spotlight trained only on him, and now he’d taken it with him.
Daphne felt short of breath. A current of fear roared up within her, threatening to engulf her completely. But she looked up and saw that Gabriella was watching her with an alert, curious expression.
“You’re staying,” Gabriella repeated flatly.
Like Nina had said, Daphne needed to really sell this—to be so convincingly in awe of Gabriella that Gabriella would stop viewing her as a threat, and start seeing her as another of her minions.
She smiled hesitantly, the way she did when she was trying to charm the surliest paparazzi. “Of course I want to stay. It’s been ages since I had a girls’ night out!” She looked at Gabriella with rapt attention. “Gabriella, tell us more about the photo shoot. Who was there?”
Gabriella stared at Daphne, assessing her. Then she waved at the girl on the neighboring barstool. “Stephanie, you stand. Daphne is taking your seat.”
To Daphne’s surprise, the girl didn’t argue, just did as she was told. “Thanks,” Daphne murmured, taking the abandoned barstool.
Gabriella snapped at the bartender. The queen’s bracelet glittered ostentatiously with the gesture. “Michel!”
He hurried over, poured Daphne a glass of wine, then retreated. Gabriella glanced back at Daphne, her tone briskly matter-of-fact.
“You’ll be at the League of Kings final banquet, right? We should coordinate our outfits.”
“Coordinate?” Daphne had the bizarre mental image of her and Gabriella showing up in matching gowns, like twins from a horror movie.
“Yes, coordinate,” Gabriella said impatiently. “We can’t wear the same color, of course.”
Daphne took a sip of wine to keep from choking with laughter. “Of course.”
“I don’t know which gown I’ll wear yet, but most likely a purple one that Nigel designed for me. He says it’s my color.”
Gabriella tilted her head, looking expectantly at Daphne. Belatedly, Daphne realized that Gabriella was waiting to be flattered. “Oh, definitely. You look fantastic in purple!”
Gabriella nodded, pleased. “Well, Nigel always tells me that, but I’m not sure I’m convinced, you know? So I also had him make a gown in red, green, blue, black, and silver. Which means you really shouldn’t wear any of those colors,” Gabriella commanded. “We wouldn’t want people comparing us.”
It took every ounce of Daphne’s willpower not to laugh at the absurdity of this demand. “Of course not,” she said soothingly.
Now that she had Gabriella’s attention, she needed to get closer—and find out when she and Nina could lay their trap at last.
“I’m sure I’ll see you before the banquet, though, right? What are you doing this weekend?”
Gabriella shrugged. “I’ll be at Lord and Lady Dalton’s End of Session party. Maybe I’ll see you there?”
Bingo. Lady Dalton was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; she and her husband threw a huge party every year when the court went on recess. Daphne hadn’t been invited, but that wasn’t a problem as long as she showed up with Jefferson.
Royalty had an unwritten standing invitation to every party.
As Gabriella chattered on, Daphne stole a few glances at her phone. Jefferson hadn’t texted her good night, the way he always did. She had a sinking, panicked thought that she might have risked too much. That in trying to take down Gabriella, she might have driven a very real wedge between her and Jefferson.
It would be okay, she told herself, as long as her plan worked.
And her plans always worked.
“Hey, Louise.” Beatrice answered the phone with one hand as she finished getting dressed for breakfast. She couldn’t believe they were nearing the end of the conference, that the farewell banquet would be in just over a week’s time.
“Béatrice, I just got a call from my father’s doctors in Paris.”
Beatrice fell still. “Is everything okay?”
“He may be improving,” Louise said, and Beatrice realized that the tension in Louise’s voice wasn’t sorrow, but a raw, anxious hope. “I need to go see him right away.”
“Of course.” Louise would miss a day or two of the conference, but everyone would understand—
“Will you come with me?” Louise begged. “I know it’s a lot to ask this late in the conference. I should probably just call Siri or Bharat or Alexei. But they wouldn’t understand.”
Of course. Beatrice knew, to her own great sorrow, what it was like to lose a parent—and then succeed that parent as ruler. To feel like you were stepping out onto a vast stage, alone and terrified.
“Please,” Louise said again, clearly unnerved by Beatrice’s silence. “I can’t do this without a friend.”
A friend. Beatrice had never had one of those, not the way Sam had Nina. To be honest, she’d always been jealous of those two: the way they could talk about anything without explaining the backstory, could launch into an anecdote with oblique references that no one else understood, yet that made perfect sense to the pair of them.
“Of course I’ll come,” she promised.