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“People would be…happy to see the change in your personality. But if you turn around and fire Katie, all that goodwill would go right out the window. It’ll look like you fired her for allowing the girls to play with commoners—or, at least, that’s how the anti-royalist press will frame it. The Defender, for instance.”
Armin glanced down at the photo. “At least they look happy in the picture.”
This was a disaster.
Katie paced back and forth in her room while the girls had their piano lesson. The copy of the paper had been delivered by an unseen hand—she hadn’t ordered one—but it was clear why it had come to her in the first place.
They were all in the picture on the front page. It looked to have been taken at the moment Katie went to coax the girls down from the play structure. She had her hands raised toward them and a big smile on her face.
Katie thought they all looked quite happy in the photograph.
But that didn’t mean it was a good thing. Quite the opposite. It had been taken from the vantage point of the bench where Papazyan had been sitting and harassing her. It was a completely creepy feeling, knowing that he or one of his associates had snapped a photograph the moment she’d turned her back.
Katie read the article over one more time. The tone seemed unfailingly positive, so that was a plus…and a little odd. Knowing Papazyan, it could have been some kind of expose or scathing critique of Prince Armin.
She got back to the bottom of the columns and beamed to no one in particular. “My Stolvenian is really coming along,” she said to her own reflection. “I read that entire article.”
It had been slow going, the past few weeks. Katie knew from the moment she was hired that she’d have to lean more than just hello and goodbye. It didn’t matter that everyone spoke English. She was looking after two girls who were part of the royal family—it was part of her job to make sure they knew the history and traditions of their new country. That meant she needed to know them, too, so even though her eyes burned at the end of the day, she made herself study the language for a few sessions. There was an app on her phone, thankfully, that helped her do it. She felt a flash of pride when she glanced at the article one more time. It wasn’t a short piece, and she hadn’t found any impossible words this time.
Katie was still trying to decide how to feel about the photograph and the article when her phone buzzed with an incoming batch of emails. She opened her mail app quickly, out of habit, and scrolled through the subject lines.
One of them was a forwarded message from a long-abandoned work email from her disastrous previous job. She’d forgotten the password, but the forwarding was still set up, so Katie had received—and deleted—an alternating bevy of hate mail and SPAM.
But the message wasn’t either of those things. It was from Papazyan. And he was demanding a meeting.
Katie’s thumb hovered over the screen. Deleting it would be the best choice—she knew it. But the more she thought about the way he’d acted in the park, the more she wanted to know what the hell was up with the man. Had he taken the photo? Why had he made it part of such a positive article if his goal was to turn people against the monarchy? What was he really after? Curiosity was a journalist’s biggest curse—and greatest asset. Katie didn’t know how to turn hers off, and the only way to satisfy it was to go to the meeting.
But Prince Armin would hate it…if he found out.
She glanced at the time.
There was just enough of a window to go and come back if she hurried.
Under the spell of her own adrenaline, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door.
The shop that Papazyan had named was a café about five blocks down from the castle. Katie arrived out of breath from having speed-walked all the way to the café. She had to be back soon for the end of the piano lessons.
Papazyan sat right in the front window, raising a cup of coffee to his lips. He raised his hand in a greeting that struck Katie as bizarrely casual, given their limited past history.
She slid into the seat across from him. “I don’t have much time. I only came to find out why you sent me that newspaper—why you published the picture of the prince’s daughters. Was it some kind of threat?”
Papazyan shook his head furiously. “Making things difficult for innocent children is not on my agenda. But my people and I—we want to see equality come to Stolvenia.”
“Equality?”
“The way you have it in the United States. You’re an American. Of course you understand the need for democracy and equality.”
Katie blinked at him. It was an extremely simplified view of how life actually worked in the United States. “Sure? But it’s not my place to topple monarchies. And besides, you guys have a parliament. Stolvenia is hardly a dictatorship.”
“You’d know about dictatorships, wouldn’t you? Abo
ut having an arbitrary power decide your fate. Isn’t that what happened to you? Doesn’t it ever make you angry?” He considered her from across the table.
Katie knew she shouldn’t take the bait. She did it anyway. “About what?”
“That you’ve searched and searched for a new job as a journalist, but nobody’s giving you a chance.”
She frowned. “You’re creepy.”
