Page 189 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

Livia let out a wry laugh. “I’ll get the same official information as everyone else, probably just before the press release.”

“You don’t have to marry him. Really. We can figure out something else.” Her sister’s voice was quieter now. More serious.

“I can handle this, Adele. I’ve held off both Father and Edvin this long, and I can figure out how to do it for another eleven months. Royal weddings take ages to plan and execute.” In less than a year, her sister’s life would be her own. Livia had put all the money she had saved from working at her father’s real estate business into a house on a remote island in Greece. Her current savings would be enough for them to take care of themselves for a year, while they got on their feet. Most importantly, their futures would be their own.

“But you know Mother won’t accept the delay now that she’s seen how quickly her plans could be thrown into chaos.”

Livia didn’t like the way her sister was sounding more and more worried.

“She won’t accept a delay from me, but she will if it comes from Edvin,” said Livia quickly. Which was why she needed to talk to him as soon as possible, to head off this problem immediately. “Mother will calculate that it’s too late to change the royal marriage plans simply because the engagement date isn’t to her liking.”

At least, she hoped so.

“I’m going to try to negotiate in person,” she added. “I’ll let the palace know I want to see him as soon as possible.”

Edvin had always treated her with condescending politeness—the default tone of adult royalty, it seemed. Livia found this preferable to dealing with Marika, though the bar was admittedly quite low. The crown prince had never approached this so-called relationship as anything but transactional. Livia supposed this was how many marriages in his world worked. Still, she couldn’t help but suspect that he saw her as lower class, a status that an elite boarding school could never erase, especially when her father had worked there. Despite the fact that her family had promised the money to hold up the royal house’s way of life…at least until Edvin and his father blew through that, too. She had spent enough time in their world to know that money lay behind the entire artifice of prestige. Edvin belonged to one of Europe’s oldest if not largest monarchies. Out of necessity, its survival depended on strategic alliances, not romance. Still, she knew Edvin had at least taken stock of her credentials.

I believe my younger brother attended the boys’ school for a period, he had commented on their first meeting.

She had given him a bland smile, even when her heart had jumped in her chest.

Did you know him? he had asked.

Lying was out since he might ask Gustav the same. She found herself thinking about that last night by the river. After he had returned to his dormitory, rumors from multiple sources had said he had destroyed everything in his room in a fit of frustration. The next day, he was expelled. In retrospect, Livia supposed she understood his position a little better. She might have kept her own identity quiet, too, if the darker parts of the internet called her the Bastard Spare.

Had she actually known him?

A little, she had hedged, which was true.

But Edvin seemed to know more than he let on because his eyes narrowed, as if he had seen through this lie. As if it was a test and she had just failed.

“I have to go,” Livia said to her sister, forcing herself back to the present. “I need to message the palace.”

“Don’t forget to do yourself up like a princess.” Livia could hear the smile in her sister’s voice. Another bit of evidence that Adele’s stress level wasn’t dangerously high, she noted.

“Don’t I always look like a princess?” Livia absently patted her hair, currently twisted in a messy knot on top of her head. Yikes.

“Always. Love you.” The sound of her sister’s kiss came through her phone.

“Love you, too.”

Livia quickly messaged the palace’s communications office, then lay her phone on the glass coffee table and flopped back onto the sofa. She stared up at the decorative plaster moldings that surrounded the antique brass chandelier. Her parents had bought the apartment as the first step in this arrangement, as a place for Livia to stay on her visits from Geneva, and she had to admit it had been the loveliest of purgatories, even if it was just a part of the fiction they had all been creating. Window boxes overflowed with flowers, and her balcony was just big enough for a café table and two chairs. On the days when she stayed here in Isrikesland, she sat on her balcony every morning, drank her coffee and gazed out at the Baltic that shimmered and sparkled in the morning sun.

Though her father’s wealth had exploded soon after the Incident and she had spent her adult life amid the luxuries that her boarding school classmates casually mentioned, Livia couldn’t escape the feeling that none of it was real. Each lovely element of her life in Isrikesland was a prop in this theater created by her father and the crown prince, chosen carefully to indicate wealth and taste but not excess. The apartment, her furniture, her wardrobe—all of it was a setup for a future PR exercise, not a show of actual restraint.

Livia rubbed her eyes, trying to process the news. Edvin had returned, and she needed to somehow get his attention, then convince him that it was to his advantage to push back on her parents’ demands for an immediate engagement and a wedding that followed shortly after.

A sharp rap echoed through the hallway, and Livia bolted to sitting. Who, in this day and age, showed up on the doorstep of an apartment without warning? Who had the code for the front door of this apartment building? The other residents, but she knew none of them, and the building had been very quiet this summer. There was another possibility, and it made her stomach clench. Edvin.

The rap on the door came again, and she started through the living room and into the hallway. As she passed the windows that looked out onto the rooftops of the centuries-old buildings, she mentally scolded herself for spending precious minutes dwelling on the past when the current situation presented an array of problems to worry about. She still had no strategy.

Livia came to a stop in front of the door, took a deep breath and opened it. The royal guard poured in, giving her quick nods before they spread out through the apartment. The place wasn’t large, just a two-bedroom down a narrow stone street inside the walls of the Old City. Livia listened to the clatter of footsteps on her wood floors and the murmur of voices as her own heart thudded in her chest. Any minute, Edvin would walk in the door.

It was ridiculous to dread this encounter, she told herself. She would find a way to gently suggest that he delay the marriage, and her escape plan would work. Even if, at the moment, she could not think of a single argument why he should agree. Even if eleven months was a long way off and her plan had felt more and more precarious over the last eighteen days. Even worse, she genuinely had no interest in seeing the man she was supposed to marry, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. She had tried to figure out why Edvin had not pushed them toward the altar—and her father’s money—before now. He had responded to Livia’s request to take their relationship slowly by saying he would enjoy the time getting to know her better. Though he was making no effort to do so.

Was he doing his own behind-the-scene maneuverings? Or was he just enjoying the kinds of indiscretions his father was known for? Livia supposed it didn’t matter.

She tugged at her hair tie, letting her dark hair tumble down her back, then glanced down at her outfit—an oversized jumper in her favorite shade of green and silky gray lounge pants. Comfortable? Definitely. Ideal for her fourth-ever face-to-face meeting with Crown Prince Edvin af Isborg? Not at all, according to her royal tutor. But it didn’t matter. He was marrying her father’s money, not her. Even if she showed up in a gorilla suit, Edvin would likely give her the exact same haughty politeness he always had. But as much as Livia wanted to test that theory, she needed to play along for now. Even if it was painful to pretend.