When the door closes behind her, Callum leans forward. “Is it just me, or is she growing more terrifying?”
“It’s not just you.” But it’s hard to be angry or upset when I know her intensity is at least in part a coping mechanism as she deals with my father’s decline.
“If the rubric fails, take comfort. You’ll always have the Cinderella ball,” Callum says with a smirk.
“Shut up.”
“It won’t fail,” Claudius says.
I wish I shared his confidence, but this whole morning is leaving me with lingering doubts. And a headache.
Callum pulls the folder out from beneath his thighs and, as I knew there would be, a damp sweat stain mars the front. “Sorry,” he says with a grimace, placing it on my desk.
“I’ll get it disinfected”—or incinerated—
“So, tell me. Have you narrowed it down to a short list?”
“A very short list,” Claudius says. “One woman.”
“Impressive,” Callum says. “Tell me about her. I’m dying to know what kind of woman captured your attention.” He pauses. “Or, I suppose, the kind of woman chosen by your magical rubric.”
I expect Claudius to point out how rubrics actually work, but he says nothing, training his gaze on me. I realize that I am the one who needs to answer.
What kind of woman has captured my attention?
Callum interrupted this morning before I was able to study the final dossier … which is in the now-sweat-soaked folder. When Claudius hands me a clean copy, I decide to make sure I send him home with a generous bonus.
“Thank you.” I scan the dossier. It is full of concise, bullet-point information and a single photograph.
“Her name is Alessia,” I say. Ah-less-ia. It is the first time I’ve spoken the name out loud, and it tastes like music on my tongue.
My finger follows the bullet points down the page. “She is from a small village called Repestro on the western coast of Italy. She didn’t attend university and has been working in her grandfather’s restaurant for years.”
“As a chef?”
“As a waitress,” Claudius says.
Callum smirks. “Quite a contrast to the women Mum and Dad have suggested. I approve. What about her family? Any beautiful sisters I need to know about?”
I scowl, already feeling a protective urge that surprises me. Pulling the paper closer, I try to read, but the letters swim in front of me.
“You don’t know if she has sisters?” Callum asks.
“I know very little—yet.”
But I vow to memorize every bit of information on the page as soon as we’re done here, then ask Claudius to find out even more. As much as he can. A single sheet of paper with bullet points is nowhere near enough.
“Her parents are dead,” Claudius says, and my head snaps up. “No siblings. It’s just Alessia and her grandfather, Enzo. Her paternal grandparents are estranged. They’ve never met.”
A tightness moves from my chest to my throat. Alessia is an orphan. More than that, her mother’s death is listed on the paper as Alessia’s birthday. Childbirth? Her father’s date of death was five years later. And here I am, thinking of time being short with my own father. She only got five years. How has this impacted her? How have these losses shaped her into the woman she is now?
Family is something I have no shortage of with Callum and my two younger sisters, Henri and Juliet. And despite Callum’s accusations about me being a hermit, I’m grateful for our large, loud family. I always hoped to have my own. As infuriating as he can be, Callum is my closest friend.
Alessia has only her grandfather.
Would she want to leave him? If it were me, I wouldn’t. But she could bring him here. We would make a place for both of them.
If she accepts my offer of marriage.
For once, my younger brother probably is correct. This idea is ridiculous. Being set up by my parents makes more sense. The ball makes more sense. Even Callum’s first thought about me taking part in a reality show probably makes more sense.
Panic seizes me. Machines and computer programs I understand. Matters of diplomacy and policy I’ve learned.
Relationships, women—these are like subjects I’ve failed in school. This is why the idea of asking Claudius for help made sense in my head. Choosing a woman based on specific characteristics, then presenting her with a proposal resonates with the logical part of my brain. It reduces a complicated issue into rudimentary math.
Two plus two equals four.
Well-suited woman plus offer of marriage and title equals a happily ever after. Or, at least, a hope for the best outcome.
And yet … faced with the reality of this woman, of Alessia, it all feels very different.
“This won’t work.” My voice is quiet as I set the paper on the desk in front of me. When this was an idea in my mind, it made sense. But I think Callum was correct when he accused me of plugging in the right code to result in the right woman.
Alessia isn’t a number. Even from this single sheet of paper with the most basic details about her life, that is abundantly clear.
My gaze falls on the single page in front of me. More specifically, to the black and white photograph of Alessia. Perched on a crumbling stone wall on a cliff, she is overshadowed by the sea and sky stretching before her. Her dark ponytail is blowing over her shoulder in wild waves. Her chin is lifted, as though accepting some silent challenge from the wind, meeting it head-on.
Who are you? I find myself wondering as I study the picture. To have lost so much but not break under the weight of it.
She also looks nothing like my parents’ suggestions—with her t-shirt and dark pants, ponytail, and light—if any—makeup. I see strength and a simple, raw beauty in her dark eyes and the curve of her cheek. Maybe I’m reading too much into the single photograph, but Alessia looks far from broken.
Either way, there is definitely something here, something in Alessia’s face that intrigues me. She possesses something else, something more, and I struggle to name it.
Arresting, I finally think. That’s the English word for it.
Fiele, an Elsinorian word, is a better fit. It is used to mean beauty, but literally translated, it refers to the captivating light from a distant star.
“May I?” Callum reaches for the page I’m still staring at.
I hesitate only for a moment, giving her photo one last glance, then slide the page his way. “Just keep this one away from your sweaty thighs.”
Callum’s eyes rove over the paper, and I struggle not to snatch it back.
“She’s pretty,” Callum says. “She seems very … unassuming. A waitress. Not much family. No higher degree. No driver’s license. No social media. No mobile phone? That can’t be right.”
“It is,” Claudius assures, and I wonder at the man’s thoroughness.
Callum shakes his head. “Rubrics and algorithms aside, I don’t know how you and Claudius possibly chose this one woman in all of Europe.”
Claudius takes his glasses off and begins cleaning the lenses, looking bored.
“It’s Claudius,” I say, as though that explains it. I reach for the sheet of paper.
Callum hands it back. “Even so, it seems unlikely that—”