“Well I pulled my lovely hair out and commenced losing my mind. She said she was four months pregnant, she had the stomach to prove it, and the paternity tests, which she left in my care.”

He frowns thoughtfully. “Wait. How on earth did she get your DNA for a paternity test?”

“She said her father had it on file.”

“That’s simply not true.”

“I know. I know that now. Thanks to Ottar who took the documents and examined them closely. Heidi isn’t very smart, and she isn’t very thorough. Conniving yes, but that’s not the same thing. They were forged.”

“What about her stomach?”

“Well aside from wanting to punch her in the gut to find out, I’m guessing she was just sticking out her stomach. The bump was there but it wasn’t huge and it’s not like I got a chance to inspect it.”

My father shakes his head. “This is unbelievable. I’m sorry you had to go through that Magnus. But surely this isn’t the end of the world if Ella knows it was all fake.”

I sigh and rub my hand down my face, suddenly so tired. “She doesn’t know because she’s not talking to me. According to Jane, she’s in Liechtenstein, but Jane hasn’t been able to talk much to her either.”

“So, did you tell Heidi?”

“I marched right down to the prime minister’s office and told him.”

My father grows silent. Then, “You what?”

“I know it’s not the protocol with dealing with him, but he has to know what his daughter is up to. And I refuse to be bullied and intimidated by him. I am your son. One day I will be king. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, but there should always be respect, and that man has no respect for me. But I think he does now.”

I can tell my father is thinking the worst. That I went into his office and embarrassed myself. But I didn’t.

I go on. “I owned up to my mistakes, but I refuse to own up to things that aren’t of my own making. I chose Ella and we are married and that’s the life I want to pursue. The man I was before isn’t gone, but I feel the king in me is stepping forward. People can deal with that however they wish, but it’s the new truth.”

My father sighs. “Well then. I see.”

I swallow hard, feeling pained for bringing it all up. “I didn’t want to make you upset, but I had to be honest with you and let you know. I’m sorry for the things I’ve done in the past, I’m sorry it took me so long to live up to my potential. But it’s better late than never.”

“Oh, Magnus,” he says to me. “You’re my world, you really are. My world, my son, my heir and you’re exactly who you’re meant to be and where you’re meant to be. I’m very proud of you for standing up to him, and her, and I’m grateful that you chose to tell me the truth when I probably would have had no idea. I don’t like to rule like that. Ignorance is no way to run your life, let alone a country.”

I give his hand a squeeze, feeling overly emotional for the second time today. “Thank you,” I whisper.

He smiles but his breathing suddenly becomes more labored and his face seems to pale.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, my pulse quickening.

He nods, takes in a few deep, shaking breaths and clears his throat. “I’m fine, Magnus. I just feel…anyway, I’m happy that everything is sorted.”

“Well, I still don’t have Ella.”

“I’m sure she just needed time to think.”

“I found her wedding band by the sink.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

I feel like if I mention it, it will come true, but I can’t ignore what’s really worrying me. “Father, the clauses she put in the contract. What if she’s going to use them?”

“And ask for a divorce?”

“Yes.”

“Over a fake pregnancy?”

“No. But she never really got to know me before we married. There’s so much baggage behind me. What if something else one day raises its ugly head? What if she discovers that she can’t handle being with me? What if she decides that marriage with me was a mistake?”

My father chuckles softly, which then turns into a wheezing cough. When he finally recovers he says, “That’s called divorce, Magnus, and it’s available for everyone. Not just you. Those clauses are there because Ella had to have some sort of control over this situation. You can’t blame her. And she’s young. She’s so young to be thrust into this new role, she has no idea how to handle this and neither do you. You just have to trust that what she feels for you is genuine and let everything else go.”

I look down at my hand on his. “What if she stops loving me after this?”

“She won’t. I promise. It’s a hurdle that will make your love grow stronger. Take it from me. You’re going to have a lot of hurdles.”

“What if…?” I trail off. I could go on and on.

“Ignore the what ifs,” he says. “Ella is complicated and passionate and fierce. Just like you. You have a fierce Viking heart, handed down from your ancestors. So, love fiercely, Magnus. Love bravely. Love her with everything you’ve got.”

It feels like I have a brick in my throat. It all sounds too simple and yet I know there’s nothing simple about love at all. But I can continue to be brave with my heart.

“Thank you for listening,” I tell him, taking in a deep breath. I glance up at him. “It means the…”

Something stops my words.

My father’s eyes are closed.

His face seems more ashen than it was seconds ago.

He’s not moving.

He’s suddenly so unnaturally, eerily still.

No. No. No.

I squeeze his hand. “Father?”

Nothing.

Oh god.

I lean over him, peering at him. “Father? Wake up. Wake up.”

No response.

“No, no, please!” I cry out, feeling his neck for a pulse, trying to see if he’s breathing. I can’t find it. His chest isn’t rising.

“Nurse! Someone! Help!” I start yelling, frantically grabbing his other wrist to check, lightly slapping his face.

No, this can’t be my father dead.

This has to be a dream.

This can’t be real.

“Help!”

The door bursts open and the nurse rushes in, followed by Sven and Tor. Tor pulls me out of the way while the nurse checks for vitals.

“We need an ambulance, now!” she yells, and Sven brings out his phone, dialing it.

Then my mother is in the room, panicking, and Mari, crying, and I’ve never felt so alone so suddenly before, like everything beautiful and light and joyous in my heart was suddenly sucked out like a vacuum, like my father was taken with it.

Mari comes to my side, tears streaming down her face and I put my arm around her, holding her close to me, holding on for dear life.

Soon the medics come, and the stretcher, and I’m escorted out by people I don’t know, and I’m lost and I’m surrounded by people but I’m alone and my father…

God, please don’t take him.

I’m not ready to lose him.

I can’t imagine life without him.

As he’s taken out on the stretcher to the ambulance, I lean against the wall in the hallway and slump to the floor, the sorrow inside me flooding up like a tidal wave.

For a moment the numbness and the confusion fades.

For a horrible moment I feel everything I have lost.

The tears that I had held back can no longer be tamed.

I cry, tear drops splashing to the palace floor.

I never had the chance to tell him how much I loved him.

My father.

My king.

Twenty-Three

Ella

“You’re not wearing your wedding band,” my father comments.

I look over to him in the same daze I’ve been trying to shed for the last twenty-four hours. “What?”

“Your wedding band,” he says again. “Where is it?”

I swallow uneasily. “Oh. It’s by the sink. It’s a bit loose so I always take it off to wash my face.”

“Here?”

“At home.”

Home.

It’s a word I’ve been trying to avoid. It’s a word that I’ve tried to lend to this place I’m in, the Vaduz Castle, the official residence of my father in Liechtenstein and the place where I grew up.

But now that I’m here, I know it’s not home.

As much as I’ve wished it could be since I was thirteen, as much as I’ve glorified and romanticized this place, it’s not at all what I remember it being. They say you can’t go home again, and it couldn’t be more true.

But it’s not because the place you used to call home changes.

It’s because you change.

This place, this castle, it’s the same as it always was. It’s drafty. It’s dark. It’s both gaudy and opulent and dank and depressing. Jane always says this place suffers because men always rule here, not women, and that could definitely be the case. And after my mother died, I guess things just became a little colder.

But when I was growing up, it was the only home I knew, and I loved it as such. When I was sent to boarding school it’s not that my new life was awful, although it was a bit lonely, it’s that I associated home with love and if I wasn’t at home, if I was sent elsewhere, I wasn’t loved. I longed after it, after my family, like someone longs after a lover when they’ve been given no closure. You always wonder what if.

Now I’m here.

I came right here after I left Magnus because there really was no other place to go. The university was no longer my home, which meant this was the only place that hadn’t changed.

But I’ve changed and now I can’t fit my parameters of my new self around this place and it can’t fit around me. I came here looking for support and love, something to bolster me after losing the life I had planned with Magnus. But that just doesn’t exist here.