This ball is a farce, and my tailbone hurts. At least the property is stunning, everything dripping with gold leaf, wine purple, and velvety red. Not to mention enough marble to set a sculptor up for life. The mansion my friend invited me to is huge to the point of obscene, as no one needs a house so large that it can fit half the city’s population with little fuss. I wonder as I fiddle with a silk napkin what it’s like to have money to burn. 

People around me are just as bored and twice as expectant. With bated breath, they wait for the main event to arrive. The buzz of the crowd brushes my skin, raising the hair on my arm and at the back of my neck. 

Older people had migrated to their usual company, the luster of the party a pretty-face they’re conditioned to. The younger folk, though, are skipping and strutting around tables and pockets of people. Especially the new-money, dressed to impress. They remind me of deer, thin-legged and hard-headed, with energy in reserves. Beautiful—and ten seconds away from jumping off a bridge in fright.

“You’re too young to be looking at the newbies like that,” a chipper voice says next to me. 

“And you’re too old to be listening in on my thoughts.”

Nick scoffs, swirling the toothpick in his drink, the olive long gone. “If I could read your mind, we wouldn’t’ve gotten into half of the bullshit you dragged me into.” 

“Like a ball where a princess presents her fiancé? Like that’s my scene?” Leaning back in my chair, I interlace my fingers and rest my hands on my middle. “I’m starving, by the way. What’s with you rich people and your allergies to food?”

“Ha-ha,” he drawled. “Don’t quit your day job.” 

“I’d never quit bothering you, buddy. It’s too fun.”

Nick pushes up his horn-rimmed glasses… with his middle finger.

“Love you too.” 

He stabs his toothpick at me, then swirls it in the air. “I’m doing you a favor, dumbass. What better place to get a sugar mama than a palace full of cougars?”

“I do not need a sugar mama,” I hiss at him, and the meddlesome man flinches back. “I need these people,” I wave a hand at the flock of white hair, clothes worth more than a year’s rent. “To hire me already.” 

Nick quirks the side of his mouth, and a dimple reveals itself. “Rich people love investing into their toys’ projects. They consider it charity.” 

“I’m no one’s toy,” I growl with a snarl. He raises his hands in defeat and blissfully doesn’t push it. “How’d you convince me to come here, anyway? I stick out like a sore thumb.” I pluck at a loose thread on my red suit, the fabric obviously cheap. I feel like a chicken in a flock of peacocks. 

“My charming good looks and alluring personality?”

I side-eye him. “That’s definitely a way to describe you.” 

“C’mon,” my friend moans. “This is the perfect opportunity to network. There are people who would kill to be in your shoes right now. And I’m not even exaggerating that much. I don’t get why you’re not excited.”

“Because, unlike those people, I still have my dignity.” I rest my head on the chair’s back and watch a hundred identical gold watches skitter past. I hear the faint ticking of the one closest to me, and the older man attached to it catches my stare. He sneers and shoves a hand into his pocket, hiding the watch, the implication crystal clear. I bare a canine at him and he scampers off with his fellow gold watches.

My friend smiles and waves his hands at me. “See? You fit right in. Pompous jackass is so in right now.” 

“How about annoying sidekick?” He presses a hand to his chest in feigned offense, adding a gasp for good measure. Warm humor trickles at the back of my throat like champagne, and I let it.

Speaking of alcohol, I wave down a server and replace my flute with a full one, enjoying the taste of sweet strawberries and tickling bubbles. “I will say, I’d come back to this fancy hellhole just for this.” I lift the glass for emphasis.

He snags the fragile stem of his half-full one and clinks his against mine. “Amen to that, sister.” Nick sucks down the other half of his drink, cheeks puffing up as he swishes the alcohol around. I grimace and sip on mine. 

Swallowing down a cheek’s worth of gin, he speaks around the other full cheek. By the grace of the gods, he doesn’t spit out any of it. “Hey, maybe you’ll finally find a girlfriend.” 

With a roll of my eyes, I sigh. “For the last time, I do not need a girlfriend. I’m fine.” 

“Fuck yeah you are, hence why you being single is an anomaly.” He winks at me and gulps down his full cheek. That would make it his fifth martini. I close one eye and peer into my flute, wondering what’s the alcohol content of this stuff.

“Where would I have time for a partner?” I put an elbow on the table and rest my chin on the palm of my hand. “The only thing I can have with anybody right now is friends-with-benefits. If I wanted that, I’d call you.” 

Nick wiggles his eyebrows.

“No.”

“Eesh.” He puts the back of his hand on his forehead, closing his eyes with a dramatic sigh. “At least let a man have his dreams.”

I purr, “I live to crush your dreams.” 

He opens his eyes and frowns at me. “Why am I friends with you again?” 

 “My dazzling personality.” 

My tablemate snaps his fingers. “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Never a dull day with you, mi azuca.” 

“‘My sugar’?” I translate with a snort. “At least try to be original.” 

“Hey, my Spanish is ‘caca.’ Go easy on me. Pretend I’m some five-foot-three red head.” He flutters his eyelashes, then purses his lips and makes loathsome kissing noises.

“Your head’s gonna be red if you keep on talking. I hear blood makes a great hair dye,” I rub the side of my head. “Please tell me you didn’t drag me to this gilded shitshow so I could get laid.” 

“Nooo. I dragged you into this gilded shitshow so you can get paid and get laid.” His eyes sparkle as he thrusts his chest out, proud of his little rhyme.

“I despise you.”

“I worship you,” Nick retorts, and I can’t tell if he’s joking. “I didn’t leave you when you kissed that girl at the homecoming party—”

“Ah, freshman year of high school.” I shake my head. “Worst possible time to tell the whole damn world you’re limp-wristed.” 

“—I’m not ditching you now. C’mon,” He makes a wild gesture with his hands. “What’s the worst that can happen? A pretty rich lady tells you no and talks shit to her friends? You don’t care about these guys’ opinions, anyway. Who knows? You might find someone who wants to cover you in silver wrapping paper and ship you to their vacation home in Crysti.” 

I glare and stab a thumb towards the glittering crowd. Another man covered in a ridiculous amount of rings, necklaces, and not one, but two watches, walks by. “The only time these richies give a shit about people like me is when they need a tax write-off.” 

“In case you forgot, sis,” he points a finger at himself. “I’m one of those richies.” He tries to flag down another server, only to be ignored in favor of an old widow. 

My stomach chooses that moment to grumble, and I swear I can feel my blood sugar dropping by the second. I tug on a sleeve then rub my eyes, the black gloves oddly soothing. “No, you’re worse. You’re daddy’s money and too stupid to do anything with it.” 

Nick scoffs. He tries to sip out of his glass, scrunching his face when he realizes it’s bone dry. “Yeah, I’m so stupid that I brought you to this instead of, I don’t know, a model.” 

“Pfft! Ha! What model would tolerate your annoying ass?” 

My friend uses his empty glass like how a king his scepter and aims it at me. The lonely toothpick clinks against the rim. “A smart businesswoman model who doesn’t bitch about the opportunities I drop into her lap?” He raises a brow, lips pursed, and spins the delicate glass neck of his martini between his fingers. The toothpick now bounces and twirls with the speed and grace of a ballerina as he jostles it around.

“Touché,” I relent. Yet another man, younger this time, runs past us and I blink at his ridiculous outfit. Like every other man who’s run past, he’s dripping with gold and precious stones. He’s wearing a suit of vibrant purple, and it looks positively cartoonish with his… are those snake skin boots? Good gods, they are. 

“Hey,” I spin a finger in the air, stare dancing around the domineering crowd. The relentless noise and sheer heat emanating from the groups of bodies fills my lungs like molasses. I swallow around the sticky lump in my throat and say, “Don’t you feel… underdressed?” Nick almost always wears vibrant, goofy patterns. Somehow, they suit him, even though he stands out like a scarab beetle in a jar of rollie-pollies. Now, though, he borderline fits in with how ridiculous everyone else looks. Unlike him, though, their gold-plated clown suits do not become them. Not at all.

His brows climb higher and I swallow down a comment about how his face is going to stay that way if he keeps it up. “Since when do you care about dressing up? It took me twenty minutes just to get you to put on the gloves I gave you. You would’ve come here in tennis shoes and a T-shirt if you had it your way.” 

“I’m not talking about that.” I spin my finger faster this time. “Look around. These guys look ridiculous. And I mean more so than usual.” 

Putting down his empty glass, Nick sighs and takes in the room. He blinks. He sees what I see. “You’re right.” My friend puts an arm over the back of his chair and strains to look behind him at another group who are peacocking to the servers paid to smile at them. “That’s weird. Father said this wasn’t going to be that big a deal.” I give him a look. “Bigger than usual. Royals get married all the time, what with all the cousins and whatnot. Everyone here looks like they dunked themselves in glitter and rhinestones.” 

He grins, his eyes wistful. “Hehe, remember that group project we did in art class? With Miss Nickelson?” 

I smirk, then puff my cheeks to hold in a laugh. A poster board smothered in gold and silver glitter. Pipe cleaners twisted into eldritch-looking reindeer with plastic pink gemstones for eyes. “Last time I ever let you lead a group project.” 

He sticks out his tongue. “That’s because you ‘have a tendency to see your fellow classmates as inconveniences instead of help.’” Nick turns up his nose and talks in a fake snooty voice. He picks his glass back up and swirls it around like it’s a wine glass and he the all-knowing patriarch. 

“You are not quoting Principal Leon at me right now.” I lean over and whisper, “he got arrested for embezzlement the year after we graduated.” 

“I like to call it ‘The opportunistic investment of one’s self.’”

“I worry about you sometimes.”

“Sometimes? I need to step up my game.”

“I’m going to hurt you, Nick.” 

“Harder, mommy.” I swing at him from across the table and nearly knock over an innocent candle. He jerks his chair back before my fist lands, though, cackling. Another group of young men stampede past our table. They race towards the staircase, likely trying to catch a glimpse of the Princess and her fiancé before everyone else. All of them, young and old, have the desperate air of bachelors as they leave whimpering mothers and sisters behind. A perfect opportunity for a businesswoman to strut in and pitch a few ideas to them.

I smile at my friend, and the corners of my eyes crinkle. As much as I hate to admit it, there are people who would kill to be in my place. Lucky is not strong enough a word for this stroke of good fortune. “Thanks for this, man. I know you’re trying.” 

A server sweeps in at that moment and hands him a full glass of champagne, which he accepts with a sly grin. My friend raises the flute to his lips and grins at me with a nod. “Anything for my favorite person.” He heaves a dramatic sigh deep from the belly. If only he learned how to use his breath like that when he was in choir. “Such a shame I’m not your type.” 

“Keep dreaming, pendejo.” 

Nick winks at me. “Don’t tempt me, puta.” 

We fall into our banter with ease, ignoring the hordes of men running past every few minutes like clockwork. My friend is in the middle of reminding me of an embarrassing incident involving a calculator and a vibrator, and I am howling so much that I almost miss the blare of horns. 

An older lady, her neck studded with rose gold and black opals, shushes us with a shake of her head. Nick and I stare at each other, then at the grand staircase, perfectly in sync. It isn’t every day one sees royalty, after all. Not one who isn’t behind a TV screen. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer calls through the speakers after the horns have their fun. “I present to you, for your viewing pleasure, our soon-to-be bride… Princess Sierra of The Golden Isles!” Uproarious applause meets the statement, yet it goes in one ear and out the other. I’m still picking my jaw off the floor.

“‘for your viewing pleasure’?” I mutter to my friend, eyes wide. “What the fuck, dude?”

He jerks his hands up, his face matching mine. “Don’t look at me. My father said this was just going to be an introduction, not a… an… um.” 

“Auction,” I hiss. The men standing in front of the dais are all but drooling as they wait for her. They pack themselves at the base of the stairs like sardines, and I doubt all those sweaty bodies smell much better. I don’t understand how they can stand it. My stomach rolls at the thought of being in there, crowded from all sides by heat and wet and loud. 

Men are rarely the shining stars at affairs like this. It is the women who don far more precious metals and gems to show how ‘well’ their wealth nourishes them. This time, though, it is the patriarchs and future patriarchs who show off the family riches. An eager attempt to show they can gift a princess with the princess-treatment.

It clicks why everyone is so dressed up. All the alpaca wool suits and silk ties, thick blood diamonds and pure-gold wrist watches. The men are birds of paradise, shaking their lustrous, freshly preened feathers at the other males. Baboons, pounding their weak fists against padded chests, vying to prove who has the biggest, reddest ass. 

The King and Queen, along with any other sponsor, have invested a treasury’s worth of money into this. In response, the contestants met them coin for coin in jewelry, colognes, and clothes. After all, no sacred jewel or alpaca wool scarf could compare to the prize that is a princess attached to their arm, bound with a circlet of gold around her finger. A living trophy.

A chorus of Ooos and Ahs sing as the Princess steps from behind a pillar and reveals herself to the world. Even from here, I can tell her face is flushed, no doubt from the announcer presenting her as a ‘viewing pleasure.’ My friend and I gape. 

Nick eyes me. “Lookie there, a five-foot-three red head.” 

I mumble, dazed, “More like five-foot-six.”

“Still shorter than you.” My head nods before I can think better of it. 

The Princess truly is beautiful. Stunning. Thousands of shimmery scales shape her strapless dress, the low neckline mere inches from being scandalous. Long, golden gloves cover the entirety of her arms, and the nimble fingers hold a variety of rings. Her ring finger is pointedly empty.

She holds her hands in front of her, a soft smile on her face as the rings catch the chandelier’s hundred lights. Her hair is a complicated mess of braids, held up with gold pins crowned with what I swear are real pearls. A blood-red curl falls from her hairdo and tickles her nose. The Princess’s face scrunches a bit and my heart aches. 

They turned her into a work of art. A thousand fragile pieces forged with fire and emeralds, sewn together with a meticulous hand. And the crowd beneath her is too busy barking and howling at her to appreciate the work. The Princess cowers from her place on top of the stairs. Guilt curls in my stomach from my staring and I tear my eyes away. 

My friend points a finger into his mouth, pretending to gag. His eyes, though, are sad as they check on the Princess being hounded by the bachelors. I pick up a polished spoon and stare into my own eyes, finding the same sorrow. Angling the spoon, the glossy metal reflects Princess Sierra. Her arms are wrapped around her middle, and fear twists her face into something truly heartbreaking.

“She’s scared,” I say, and place the spoon back down. 

Nick leans forward, placing his forearms on the table. The corners of his mouth turn down as he picks at his cuticles. “Princesses aren’t supposed to be scared,” he whispers. No. They’re not. 

He yelps when I stand up, the chair scraping along the pretty tile. The chair’s legs gouge scratches into the swirling marble. Shame. “What are you doing?” Nick asks, catching my flute when it teeters.

“What’s it look like? I’m helping her.” 

“How the hell are you—” The carnal hollers of a hundred men drown out the rest of his sentence as I march toward them. I blink and I am suddenly standing at the edge of the crowd. Gold, black, and silver shift in a dizzying display, like a herd of prissy, ravenous zebras. Bile rises to the back of my throat and it burns. 

I should not want her. The Princess is everything I despise in the world, inlaid with enough money to feed the forgotten children of The Golden Isles for a year. A living statue of superiority. She has the air of innocence, despite appearing as old as me, encased in the bubble wrap of private tutors and planned meals. If we were to meet at a party or at a bar, I’d eat her alive. 

Yet there is a softness in her eyes. An echo of a feeling I knew all too well once upon a time, surrounded by inherent expectations. Kindness turned to heartlessness when those expectations were not met. Finding out that unconditional love did, in fact, have conditions. Before my heart gave way to the cruelty of that callous repetition and I smothered the fear and pain. Replaced it with cold fury. Wielded it like a knife.

The beasts stand in wait. They growl and hope they can drop the pretense and simply snag their prize before a contender does the same. As my feet carry me towards where the stairs are, I look for any guards. I’m no royal, but this seems to be the absurd and crass behavior these richies pretend to be above, let alone subject a sheltered princess to. There should be guards dragging these fools by the scruff of their neck like naughty schoolboys. Thrash them around until they limp back to their mothers, lesson learned. 

Instead, the well-dressed guards stand back, arms crossed, uncaring. Four stand at the doors the Princess entered through. The message is loud and clear: the Princess can either run to the greedy arms of the best mate, or be torn apart by the crowd until one of them wins. They will allow no scenario where she runs to the safety of her rooms. Her parents. Her home. 

Fuck that noise. 

Swallowing down the bile like the nastiest cough syrup, I throw my body into the swarm. A well-placed fist here and a foot there clears the way, as the only metal these people have is the metal on their wrists and lapels. In five minutes, I fight my way to the front of the crowd. My hand latches onto the staircase’s railing, and I pull myself the rest of the way. A young man, more of a boy than anything, squeaks out of my way, eyes as big as the twin moons outside. “Get lost,” I hiss at him, and he obeys without hesitation. 

He trips over the leg of an older man and, like dominoes, half the swarm falls to the ground in a heap of arms and legs, gold and silver. I press the knuckles of a clenched fist to my mouth to stifle a laugh, but someone doesn’t. I jerk my head up. 

There she is, a hand over her mouth as she giggles at me and the mess I made. Her bubbling laugh is a ringing contrast to the chaos of indignified bodies below her. I grin stupidly and shrug a shoulder. 

“Cute laugh.” And that’s the first thing I say to a royal. Holy hell. Abort mission. Abort. 

The Princess laughs again and bites a painted bottom lip. Her makeup suits her, letting the sharpness of her cheeks and her plump bottom lip shine. Her emerald eyeshadow highlights her light brown eyes. Gold eyeliner and a soft blush frame it all. All of her. 

I’m staring. I know I’m staring, but I can’t tear my eyes away from her own, which shine honey in the bright lights. To prevent further humiliation, I say nothing else. My legs carry me the rest of the way up the stretching staircase. I pause a few steps below her and offer my arm with a raised eyebrow. 

She takes a hesitant step down, then stops. We both hear it. Silence. As deep as the green of her dress. The Princess looks up and all the blood drains from her face at whatever greets her. I refuse to turn, though. The prickle of a thousand eyes undressing me, skinning me, is enough. 

I don’t care what a thousand strangers think of this. If they want to play their games, fine. They can gawk and squawk till the cows come home when their ‘fun’ bites them in the ass. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. 

My hand reaches out to her, and I tap the tip of her gloved finger with my own. “Princess.” She sucks in a gasp as she jerks her stare back at me, a deer in the headlights. “It’s okay,” I whisper. My pointer finger wraps around hers, and her warmth seeps through the fabric of my glove. Like lava, it crawls and flows through the cracks in my skin. Uses my veins as highways. The heat melts some of the ice encasing my bones, my heart. Not every speck of crystallized water, no, but enough. Enough that breathing felt… easier. 

I breathe in a lungful of air and taste the sweet, minty fragrance of her perfume. “It’s okay,” I repeat, head foggy. The thought of sirens enters my mind, and I wonder if this is how sailors disappeared. Not diving into the waves for the siren’s song, but the promise of her eyes, the color of whiskey on a winter’s night, and scales the shade of seaweed. After all, if she was beautiful, the gods must have crafted her for them. Entitled to her beauty, they dove right into the sea, only to drown from their own hubris. 

“I-I…” She covers her mouth with a hand, eyes falling back to the silent crowd. “I can’t.” 

“You can,” I assure her. My hand stays where it is. An offer, not a command. She can rip her hand away from mine if she so chooses. I hope she doesn’t, though. One dog barks at her, demanding she let go of ‘that bitch’ and come to one of them. How audacious one has to be to command a princess, I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t want to find out. 

The Princess’s eyes dart to the man who yelled at her. The pointed tips of her gloved fingers dig into the soft skin of her cheek. Honeyed eyes dissect her surroundings. Hundreds of judgments and demands whisper at her, and they order the royal back to her cage. A prison cell made of bricks of silver and palladium, where chains drip from her neck in rose gold links. Meals prepared with the purpose of keeping her ‘perfect’ for as long as possible. A king sized bed, wrapped in sanitized silk sheets. 

I can see the hate in her eyes, and it burns like ice. Burns with the desire to fan that hate into an inferno and melt the precious metals down to molten slag. And I thought she was gorgeous before.

The Princess’s fingers interlace with mine, then her hand slips from my hold and brushes against my wrist. Her fingertips trace a pattern on hidden veins, as light as a feather. She rubs the cheap crimson fabric of my suit between her fingers, and I cringe, a blush staining my cheeks. 

For fuck’s sake, it sounds cheap. The polyester of my suit insults the expensive silk of her gloves. It crinkles like a candy wrapper—or maybe that’s only in my panicked mind.

I flashback to Nick offering to have a suit tailor-made, fitted perfectly to my body type and with a far better fabric. It could even be in red, he said. It wouldn’t be alpaca wool, but it’d be better than the plastic I smother my sensitive skin in. I told him to piss off, and that I didn’t need him to dress me up like a doll, pride stinging. Gods, I’m an idiot. 

A soft smile blooms onto her features, and it soon opens into a toothy grin. Her smile reveals two adorable dimples and a crooked front tooth. Another layer of frost thaws off my heart. My chest puffs out as her hand rests on the crook of my arm. More of her heat seeps into the rime lining my veins. I bow my head and say, “My lady.” I have no idea what to say to royalty, but that sounds right. Right?

She giggles and places her other hand over the one resting on my arm. “My lady,” she whispers back to me with a huffed laugh. We walk down the staircase, and it widens as we descend. I resist the urge to scoot to one side of the steps and grab a railing. We are walking right down the middle and the image of slipping and taking her with me repeats on a loop in my head. Princess Sierra floats down while my steps clop, the hard sole of my boots not a help. 

“Princess Sierra, is it?” I say under my breath. The last thing I have cared about was the royal family and all its dramatic dullness. Prince What’s-His-Name got all of my peers’ attention, way back in school. All the girls would gossip about how they wrote letters to him. Tagged him on their socials, dying to catch the heir’s eye and become a princess, like in their childhood books.

I thought they were silly. Not for falling in love with a pretty face and a sweet smile, though. But for deluding themselves into believing that someone so high up would ever ‘lower’ himself to a commoner. That was the real fantasy in all those old stories.

The Princess nods, and her Adam’s apple bobs with a nervous swallow. I cover her hands with mine and rub my thumb across her knuckles. “It’s easier after the first time.”

“First time doing what?”

“Walking with a woman, arm-in-arm.” 

She narrows her eyes. “Women do that all the time.”

I squeeze her hands. “Not like this.” The Princess’s lips firm an ‘O’ shape. She nods as her eyes water. Her tears sparkle like diamonds, beautiful and rare, yet I’ve never hated diamonds more than at this moment. Never have the precious stones looked so hideous and wrong as they do clinging to her eyelashes. 

“It’s okay.” I clutch her hands tighter. One of her rings presses the imprint of its stone into my palm. 

She shakes her head. Her eyelashes flutter as she blinks away the visible signs of her pain. “No, it is not.” The Princess rests her head on my shoulder. “And it will never be okay again.” 

I can’t help a grin, morbidly nostalgic. “Ya know,” I brush a stray lock of her cherry hair away from her eyes and behind her ear. “I told myself just that when I came out. Did it in the worst possible way too: kissed a girl in front of everyone at a party. Thought the ‘good vibes’ would, I don’t know, sweeten the news a bit.” 

“I am assuming it did not go well.” 

“Pah!… No.” 

We finally step off the staircase, and it’s like the world around us fades away. The horde stumbles away from us, and a thousand voices whizz and buzz around like a swarm of mosquitoes. 

We pay no attention to them. I’m far too focused on her. She’s far too focused on me.

My neck tickles with her breath when she asks, “What happened?”

Nick jumps up from his seat like it’s on fire, and he stabs his pointer fingers toward stained glass double-doors nearby. Outside the glass panes, snow carpets the grounds. The entire scene is a white canvas with bold black shadows in the shape of dormant flora. Not a soul seems to be out.

I gently tug at the Princess’s glove and jerk my head to the doors. She gets the hint and we head for our escape. A young man—I think he’s the same one from before too. Hard to forget that ‘salmon’ tie with silver stars—squeaks as he jumps off our path. She repeats her question, not noticing my friend as we pass him and his still gobsmacked expression. 

I clear my throat. My hand leaves hers and picks at imaginary lint on my jacket. “The same depressing story, I’m afraid. Friends turned out to be backstabbing jerks. Parents disowned me, and I had to move out as soon as I was eighteen. If we had the money for a conversion camp, woof. Last time I spoke to my mother was when my father died. Heart attack. She told me not to bother coming to the funeral.”

She stares at me with wide, sorrowful eyes. “I am so sorry.”

I wave her sympathies off with a, “Nah, don’t be. My love for them had died far before my father did. Turns out, though, I wasn’t the only gay kid in that hellhole. A couple of old dudes saw me getting kicked out of a restaurant and offered me a place to stay.”

The memory warms me up and my lips quirk into a half-smile. “Their names were Steve and Bob, if you can believe it. Both of them were too young to drop dead, but too old to work or clean the hard spots. I got to live off their retirement funds if I helped around the house, in the garden, and got a job of my own at some point.” I huff. “To say I was lucky would be a drastic understatement.” 

“Where are they now?” 

“Gone.” The word tastes bitter as I open one of the double doors and let the Princess walk past me. No one follows as I walk behind her after ensuring I shut the doors tight. The clean, cold air slows down my heart rate and cools my heated skin. I have half a mind to slide something through the doorknobs, but I don’t want to give the guards reason to shatter the glass and then shatter my spine. I’m afraid I have a horrible allergy to broken vertebrae. 

Princess Sierra’s outfit was not made with snow in mind, and mine isn’t much better with the poor material. Despite that, she appears at home in the frigid air as snowflakes form a fragile tiara on the top of her head. Wish I can say the same, almost falling on my ass on a slick patch of ice. She cackles as she leans her forearms against an icy rail.

Scraping whatever I have left of my pride, I adjust my jacket, smooth my hair back into its place, and stride to her. I mimic her pose, placing my forearms on the railing and leaning my weight on them. My chin rests in a hand as the snowflakes race each other to the ground, last one there a dirty raindrop. 

“Bob and Steve,” I say, and pause to see if I still have her attention. “Left me in their will. Took maybe a year before I had to sell the house ‘cause no one wants to hire a gay writer beyond a ‘Poor me. We live in a society’ piece that gets paid quarter-coins. We’re a wonderful sad story, didn’t ya hear?” 

The Princess chuckles, the sound a little sad and a little sardonic. She purses her lips and turns to me. She asks, “How did you… How did you know I was… I am—”

“Gaydar.” I say, eyes playful. The Princess snorts and attempts to hide it behind a cough. She fails miserably, and she doesn’t even know how cute that is. Tragic. “But in seriousness, I recognized that look you had in your eyes. Seen it a thousand times. Had it myself.” I fill my lungs with the chilled night air, enjoying the cloud of mist which forms on the exhale. “Let me guess: your parents caught you with the maid and you could either get married to a jackass stat, or be disowned?” 

She scoffs and places her hand on my arm. Her nails slightly poke into the fabric. Suddenly, I’m not that cold anymore. “Close enough. I suppose this is me choosing disownment.” Her breath mists with every word, and more snowflakes add to her tiara. 

“Can you disown a princess?” I ask. “You royals have a hundred rules on how to sit with a perfectly good as—Er, rear. Surely there’s gotta be something about chucking heirs and ‘just in case’ heirs to the street.” 

“For a prince? Yes. A princess…” 

I roll my eyes. “Say no more.” My brother robbed a store and my parents still cooed and defended him to the end. I kissed a girl and I’m chased out of my own home. “Funny how disposable we are when they can’t benefit from us, huh?” Diamonds flood her eyes as she smiles, and sadness tinges the curl of her lips. She licks them and her tongue smears some of the lipstick. 

On impulse, I bring her hand up to my lips and press them against her knuckles. Not a true kiss, yet her eyes widen like it is her lips I’m tasting and not silk. Though maybe her lips aren’t far from silk, come to think of it. “My place is free if you don’t mind sleeping on the couch. Not quite clouds stuffed with swan feathers, but it’s warm. Has a roof and four walls.” I wiggle my eyebrows and joke, “And I make a mean breakfast burrito.” 

Her eyes widen as her jaw drops to the floor. She brushes a stray curl behind her ear. “Really? Y-You’re serious? Just like that?”

With a shrug, I say, “Would be far from the first time. If we don’t have each other’s back,” I jerk my head at the doors, no doubt a stunned crowd behind them. “We go to the wolves.”

Pain, sharp and scalding, wraps around my heart and lungs and I bite the inside of my cheek. The subtle metallic tang that follows is a good distraction against the flood of wholesome, torturous memories. My eyes sting for a second before I squeeze them. “One of the things Bob and Steve told me before they died was, um… to pay what they did for me forward. Help as many as I can.” 

I rub my brow. “They saved dozens of idiots like me over the decades. All of them bleeding from the heart as well as the skin. Yet, for some fucking reason, they put me as their successor.”

I put a hand over my mouth, trying to stem the flow to no avail. It’s like a dam patched with bandaids, the flimsy bits of glue, gauze, and plastic giving up. Princess Sierra only listens as I dump this on her. 

“I got the house, and the garden, and everything else that was left after the others picked up what Bob and Steve left for them. People I had never even met, but I never saw a dry eye when I answered the door. Then I had to sell the chairs, and the fridge… and then the door.” I bite my cheek harder this time, and I can almost hear the skin crunch as the taste of copper floods my tongue. “I’m just… passing it along, is all.” 

She strokes a spot under my wrist, and I shove down the urge to shiver at the feel of her nails grazing across the glove. “You do realize the paparazzi are going to follow wherever I go, correct? And I doubt Mother and Father will send any guards. We might be okay for the first week, but they will find me eventually. They always do. They will swarm us.” 

Ugh, celebrity journalists. I’d call them snakes, but at least a venomous snake is honest about its bite. I click my tongue, rubbing the pads of my forefinger and thumb together. “Maybe I’ll finally get a decent paying gig. A disowned princess is still one hell of a connection. We can go somewhere more private.”

We both still. I stare resolutely at the tree in front of me. The fairy lights the gardeners covered it in sparkle like their namesake. “Uh.” I swallow. “Separate rooms, of course.”

“Of course.” 

…

“Can we please forget I said that?” 

Her lips purse, and she squeezes her eyes. Her shoulders shake with stifled laughter while I hide my face in my hands. My groan is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and she howls with laughter. The Princess holds her sides with the strength of her unladylike cackles. Tears stream down her face, though I don’t mind them this time. Maybe diamonds can be pretty, in the right light. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasps between hiccups. “I’m sorry, that was just..” She wipes the tears from her eyes and snorts against her will. “I… Gods, I needed that.” 

“I can tell.” 

Another giggle escapes Princess Sierra, tired this time. Her outburst must’ve drained whatever fumes she was running on. She looks at the night sky, the thousands of stars masked by the fake ones on Earth. The few dying dots are all we can see against the wall of ink, and only time will tell if those few dots survive. 

I turn my back to the railing and spread my arms along it. My eyes meet her gaze and I smile. “Maybe we’ll go somewhere where we can see the night sky in all its glory.” 

“Hmm.” The Princess does the same, turning her back towards the railing. She crosses her arms and leans against me. She sighs, and a mist cloud billows forth. The teensy ice crystals reflect the moonlight and fairy lights, a pretty sight. “Less light pollution would be nice. Fewer cars. Fewer people too.” 

“Definitely less people.” 

“Heh, not a people person?”

“Like a snapping turtle.” 

We both snort, then sigh. I twist my neck and check on the patio door. I freeze. “Uh, Sierra. Might want to take a look at this.”

She does, stepping around me far too gracefully for someone in heels. She narrows her eyes as her jaw drops. Every hundred or so man who ogled her and preened for her attention are now standing in front of the door. Behind them, at least another hundred or so people, jumping up and down to snag a peek. “Honestly,” I quip to her. “Do these people not have anything better to do?”

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I cannot even say I am surprised.” 

“Well, I can.” I wave a hand at them, my face twisted with disgust. “Bunch of fucking rubberneckers. Aren’t you richi—Um, I thought upperclass people were… higher class, is all. Had more class.” 

Her lips quirk, and she shakes her head. The Princess crosses her arms and taps a gloved finger on her upper arm. “On the contrary, you would be surprised by how many people think you can buy class.” 

“Now that wouldn’t shock me, actually.” 

Indeed, it wouldn’t, as I spot at least one hundred phones, half of which needlessly have their flash turned on. Apparently you can’t buy shame either. Hope the door’s reflection ruins all their photos.

Nick somehow fought to the very front of the group, or maybe he was the first to stand there. His dumbfounded peers surround him. He jumps in place, aggressively waving around two thumbs-up with a grin that could light up a room. My unexpected plus-one suddenly wraps her arms around mine, and she rests her head on my shoulder. 

Nick is far happier than the crowd of men at the front of the horde. The older men glare with the promises of hitmen. The youngest sport heated cheeks and shiny eyes, like children denied their promised toy. I swear to the gods, the few older women I can spot actually clutch their pearls. 

I lean over and whisper into Sierra’s bejeweled ear. A part of me delights in her pleased shiver. “My, we’re in such trouble.” I take a chance and kiss the apple of her cheek. She flutters her eyelashes and presses her cheek into my lips, which soften under her warmth. I pull away and admire her snowy tiara. I think it suits her far better than pearls. “Happy Winter Solstice, by the way.” 

The beautiful honey of her eyes twinkle as she reaches for my hand. She bumps her nose with mine and whispers, “I think they chose right.”