Nina feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”
“If you were dealing with a problem, you’d let me know?”
Jeff had clearly sensed that she was troubled about something. For a moment, Nina was tempted to tell him everything—about her financial aid, and Daphne’s plan, and Gabriella.
“Everything is great, I promise,” she assured him. “Now, are you going to put the game on or what?”
Jeff relented with a smile. “You have no idea what game it is, do you?”
“Not a clue,” Nina agreed. “Baseball? Wrestling?”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “All the years we’ve been friends, and you still don’t know that wrestling is a match, not a game?”
Friends. Now he’d said it, too. Hopefully it would get easier and easier to say.
Nina leaned on the pillow between them, relieved that they’d retreated to their usual safe banter. This she could handle. There was nothing wrong or illicit about this.
“Fair enough. Why don’t you tell me about the game.”
Jeff turned it on and began naming football players, as casually as if that charged moment between them had never happened.
Which was exactly what Nina had wanted.
Wasn’t it?
The upstairs ballroom had been transformed for the heirs’ info sessions, filled with wooden tables where everyone sat behind name placards. Sam was at one of those tables now, staring up at the screen, which read: The Law of the Sea: Oceans Beyond National Jurisdiction.
“I think our topics are getting more boring,” she whispered to Alexei, who sat next to her.
Before he could reply, a woman with short dark hair stepped up to the podium and began the lecture on maritime law. Bharat and Sirivannavari, who sat at the next table, flipped a binder to a blank page and began a game of tic-tac-toe. Sam wished phones were allowed in these sessions; it would be so much more bearable if she could text Marshall under the table.
They had been taking things slowly since the photo shoot, spending time in the seclusion of Bellevue rather than going out together in public. No need to draw attention to their relationship, at least not until they’d figured out their next step.
Apparently, when Marshall had explained that he and Sam were back together, his grandfather had pursed his lips but said nothing, as if he could make the problem go away by ignoring it. He was unbearably stubborn—but so was Sam. And she was determined to find a way for her and Marshall to be together, without estranging him from his family.
Sam smiled at the thought of the surprise she’d planned for Marshall that evening. She’d been thinking about what he’d said last week: that he wished they could escape for a while and live like ordinary people, without titles or positions, without the media breathing down their necks. They might not be able to do that for real, but Sam could give them a taste of it.
She clicked her pen absentmindedly, letting the lecturer’s words drift over her.
“The sovereignty of nations extends two hundred nautical miles beyond the shoreline, at which point a vessel enters international waters and is subject to maritime law. As future monarchs, you all have diplomatic immunity in one another’s nations and on the open seas—with the exception, of course, of those nations who chose not to join the League of Kings. So before you follow in Prince Franz’s footsteps and run off to the beach with a bag of mushrooms, make sure you know where you are, or you might end up in jail,” the lecturer added with a sharp laugh.
Prince Franz. It was the second time this month Sam had heard of him.
When their lecture ended, she glanced over at Alexei. “You were really paying attention to this one.” He’d been taking notes the entire session, as assiduously as a high school student preparing for exams.
Alexei shrugged. “Maritime law is fascinating. I learned that the hard way, after my time dealing with pirates.” She thought he was kidding, until he explained that he’d spent two years with the Russian navy, chasing pirates off the coast of Somalia.
“Wow. That’s really impressive. Though I can’t believe your family allowed it, given that you’re first in line to the throne,” Sam pointed out. Beatrice wasn’t allowed to travel without her Revere Guard, let alone enter the navy and take down corsairs.
“I was going through some stuff,” the tsarevich said vaguely. “My father hoped that sending me away would shock sense into me, make me realize how good I had it. I think he worried I would—how did that professor put it?—run off to the beach with a bag of mushrooms.”
“Right! She mentioned Prince Franz,” Sam jumped in. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”
“Probably not, given that he died thirty years ago.” At Sam’s puzzled frown, Alexei went on, “You’ve never heard of Franz? He was the younger son of King Auguste of Flanders, back in the thirties.”
“What did he do?”
“Fell in love with a showgirl from Paris and decided he didn’t want to be a prince anymore, so he moved to Hawaii.”
“Because it isn’t part of the League of Kings?”
Alexei nodded. “Hawaii isn’t hostile to foreign monarchs; they just don’t recognize foreign titles.”
America had approached Hawaii in the nineteenth century and asked if the island nation wanted to join the United States, as Orange had done when Marshall’s family renounced their sovereignty so that Orange could accede to the union. Unlike Marshall’s great-great-great-grandfather, the Queen of Hawaii had politely but firmly declined America’s invitation.
Even now, Hawaii maintained a coolly neutral distance from other nations. It signed the biggest international treaties, and maintained a healthy tourism industry. But every five years, when the invitation to the League of Kings arrived on Queen Liliuokalani’s desk—as it did for every monarch who wasn’t an official member of the league—she ignored it. The Hawaiian queen evidently had no interest in networking with a bunch of foreign royals she didn’t care about.
“What happened to Franz?” Sam asked.
“He and the showgirl lived in Hawaii for the rest of their lives. They opened a bar. It became famous in the seventies as, basically, the international capital of the psychedelic drug movement. Hence that comment about mushrooms,” Alexei joked. “Franz was arrested for possession on multiple occasions, and since his diplomatic immunity wasn’t recognized in Hawaii, he went to jail every time.”
“Wow.” For once, Sam was at a loss for words.
They’d made their way out into the hallway; Siri and Bharat were waiting for them, clearly eager to head to lunch. “Can you imagine?” Alexei added as they headed toward their friends. “Going from life as an heir to living in a beach cottage? I don’t think I could handle it.”