Princess and the Popstar

Got the whole world tied around my feet

Keefe realized something, as he tried to find his way back to his room in the dark of the palace.

He actually had no clue who the princess was.

Like, sure, okay? He'd been invited to play at her party. He hadn't bothered to do any real research. Sue him.

So he did the only thinkable thing, once he finally shut the door to his room.(His mother was gone. He didn't know where she was and he didn't care. It was too late to care.)

He googled her.

The whole shabam. Typed: "Princess Sophie Haliona" into the search bar. Like a good kid. Who makes friends with the princesses who fucking invite him to their palaces instead of insulting them constantly and making them angry-- He derailed that train of thought before it went somewhere unpleasant.

Several million results appeared. Mostly tabloids and news with the princess mentioned in the footnotes and pictured next to her parents. He scrolled past those. The farther back he went through the search results, the more he noticed something odd.

Her highness, before a certain year, didn't exist.

There were no baby photos. No mentions of her when she was little. There were no royal birth announcements. In fact, the princess didn't start showing up until seven years ago. That didn't make sense. The princess was turning eighteen. They were the same age.

Logically, she should have existed the year she was born.

She should have had pictures taken of her when she was little.

He couldn't find any.

He kept digging, hunting for something to prove his strange findings wrong.

He went to the very last page, having sorted them by date, and he found--

He found an article titled, "What This Means For The Halionic Monarchy."

Keefe tilted his head to the side, wondering why this was the first mention of her.

It didn't even have her name in the title.

So, he clicked on it.

He read the first sentence.

"Never before has the government of Haliona adopted an heir apparent. Everyone is asking the same question, and the people want to know. How did this come to be? And what does this mean for the monarchy?"

The next words, although they were brash and distant enough to offer slight respect, still made him flinch.

"Sophie Elizabeth Foster, the newly adopted heir apparent, was pulled from an ill-maintained orphanage after the proprietor was dismissed. The orphanage proprietor, Madam Vespera Folend, is now facing trial due to accusations of embezzlement, child endangerment, neglect, and abuse. Sophie Foster was adopted by their majesties promptly following the dismissal of Folend."

"Holy crap," he breathed, "What the hell?"

She wasn't a born royal.

He kept reading. The words stuck in his head like they'd been tattooed there.

Abuse, he thought, Neglect. That explained the night terrors.

Sort of.

If they even were from that. He still didn't know why she'd been given to the orphanage anyway. Either way, she knew what it was like to hurt.

Or she'd been the only one in a decent mental space after being removed, which was why the king and queen had taken her in. Because she was the only one who hadn't been through the mill.