Casey Anderson isn't expecting much from her Mark - but when her soulmate turns out to be Prince August, the boy next in line for the throne, everything changes.
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In a world much like our own, Casey Anderson is trying to navigate her senior...
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There are things that one just can't really be prepared for. Sitting in a literal palace, facing off your soulmate's parents - who just happen to be the Queen and King of England - is definitely one of them.
Oh, I'm sure that some people are suited to this sort of thing. Some people have years of etiquette lessons and experience, the ability to turn a conversation whichever way they like.
I am not one of those people.
I am far more likely to sit in silence then take control of a conversation, never mind the veritable land mine of a situation I'm currently working my way through.
Leah's show of support - and doesn't fist bumping someone in front of the King and Queen just feel like utter blasphemy, for some unknown reason - allows me to make it through the rest of the night with some measure of composure.
I think I might have passed some sort of a test, when, at the end of dinner, the King looks at me with his dead-shark eyes and simply says, "Being Queen will be harder than anything else you have had to do. This is one test you cannot fail, Miss Anderson."
I realize that that sentence doesn't sound super accepting and comforting, and the way August's shoulders tighten beside me makes me think there might have been a conversation I wasn't aware of, but at least he's talking to me. He's given me a goal, and I will reach it. I am, if not anything else, a perfectionist. A harder worker. Someone who always gets top grades - as long as it isn't math. I mean, I'm good at math, and I like it, mostly, given the business and accounting career choice, but I'm not a genius.
I can do this. I'll do anything to prove to the King - and the Queen - that I am the right match for their son.
Because I can't accept anything else.
Leah walks me to my room after dinner. August had stayed behind, to bid goodnight to their parents, I assume.
I'm not sure why so much of the relationship between parents and children falls on August, instead of Leah - maybe it's the whole heir to the throne thing. Even with stuff not to do with me or the throne at all, it's clear that August bears the brunt of conversations and duties.
Maybe it has something to do with the poisonous disapproval that is apparent any time either of them look at their daughter.
I'd ask Leah about all of this, but I really don't think we're close enough for that yet. The last thing I want to do is overstep.
"I'm really glad you're here," she says, when we're standing at the door to my room. "Really, Casey. I don't - I think you could really change things."
I swallow. "Thanks," I say, uncertainty bleeding through into my voice. "I - I'm going to try."
She smiles. "That's all you can do," she says. "Believe me, I know." There's something sad in her smile. I'm sure mine looks much the same.
