You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

50
RHYS
“YOU CAN’T SIT BY A QUEEN’S SIDE IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHICH FORK TO
use. You’ll embar­rass your­self at state func­tions.” Andreas crossed
his arms over his chest. “Did you not look at the dia­gram I sent
you?”
“They’re. All. Forks,” I bit out. “They serve the same func­tion.”
“I’d like to see you try to use an oys­ter fork to eat steak.”
A dull ache throbbed at my tem­ple. We’d been review­ing din­ner
eti­quette for the past hour, and I was one sec­ond away from stab­bing
Andreas with one of his beloved forks.
He’d offi­cial­ly moved out of the palace and back into his town-
house last week, after the par­lia­men­tary vote, and we were review-
ing place set­tings in his kitchen.
I’d asked him to help me accli­mate to the whole roy­al lifestyle
thing. Diplo­mat­ic pro­to­col, who’s who in Eldor­ran soci­ety, and so
on.
I already regret­ted it, and we hadn’t even fin­ished our first
les­son.
Before I could respond, the door­bell rang, sav­ing Andreas from
death by uten­sil.
“Study the dia­gram,” he said before answer­ing the door.
My tem­ple throbbed hard­er. I should’ve asked the palace’s pro­to-
col office for help instead. They were humor­less automa­tons, but at
least I didn’t want to mur­der them every five min­utes.
I heard faint voic­es, fol­lowed by the sound of foot­steps.
“Rhys?”
I looked up and saw Brid­get stand­ing in the door­way with
Booth. I wasn’t sure who was more sur­prised, her or me.
“What are you doing here?” we asked at the same time.
“It seems I’m now the most pop­u­lar per­son in the fam­i­ly.” An-
dreas stepped around Brid­get. “Iron­ic.”
She walked to me and gave me a quick kiss before slid­ing a cool
glance in Andreas’s direc­tion. “You’re not the most pop­u­lar per­son
any­where except in your head.”
I didn’t both­er hid­ing my smile. Snarky Brid­get was one of my
favorite Brid­gets.
Andreas arched an eye­brow. “Care to explain why you’re here
then, Your High­ness? I assumed you’d be too busy to vis­it lit­tle ol’
me.”
Good ques­tion. Brid­get was sup­posed to be at a coro­na­tion plan-
ning meet­ing.
“My meet­ing end­ed ear­ly, so I thought I’d come by to say thank
you. I didn’t get a chance to say it before, but I appre­ci­ate you help-
ing Rhys with Erhall.” It came out grudg­ing­ly. Bridget’s rela­tion­ship
with Andreas had warmed a few degrees since she found out he’d
been try­ing to help her in his own fucked-up way, but they would
nev­er be best friends. They were too dif­fer­ent and had too much
his­to­ry.
Andreas’s face broke out into a devi­ous grin.
“Don’t be a dick,” I warned.
“Me? Nev­er.” he drawled before turn­ing to Brid­get. “I appre­ci­ate
the grat­i­tude, cousin dear­est. Does this mean you owe me a favor in
the future?”
She nar­rowed her eyes. “Don’t push it.”
Andreas shrugged. “It was worth a shot. While you’re here,
maybe you can explain place set­tings to your boyfriend. I drew a per-
fect dia­gram, but alas, it’s not enough.”
Bridget’s con­fu­sion mor­phed into amuse­ment when I explained
the sit­u­a­tion, glar­ing at Andreas the whole time.
“He doesn’t know his forks,” Andreas said after I fin­ished. “I’m
try­ing to civ­i­lize him. Imag­ine using a sal­ad fork to eat pas­ta.” He
sniffed with dis­dain.
“I know them enough to stab you with one of them,” I said.
Booth snort­ed from the door­way.
“The vio­lence is anoth­er thing we have to work on.” Andreas fin-
ished his whiskey and set it on the counter. “You’re dat­ing a princess
now. You can’t go around stab­bing peo­ple.”
“Oh, I think peo­ple will under­stand once they find out who I’m
stab­bing.”
Brid­get laughed. “For­get about him,” she told me. “I’ll help you.”
She turned to Booth. “I’m fine here. Rhys is with me. I believe there’s
a foot­ball match you want to watch?”
Foot­ball as in soc­cer, not Amer­i­can foot­ball. It was one of the
thou­sand small things I had to get used to.
Booth’s face lit up. “If you wouldn’t mind, Your High­ness.”
Since it was get­ting late and Andreas had no gro­ceries except for
milk and eggs, we ordered take­out while Booth watched his game in
the den and Brid­get and Andreas fought to teach me about place set-
tings. Even­tu­al­ly I got the hang of it, and we moved on to nobil­i­ty
ranks. It wasn’t hard to remem­ber. After the roy­al fam­i­ly, dukes and
duchess­es ranked high­est, fol­lowed by mar­quess­es, counts, earls,
and barons. Eldor­ra had a sim­i­lar hier­ar­chy to Britain.
“You might make a good Prince Con­sort after all.” Andreas
wiped his mouth with a nap­kin and checked the clock. “If you’ll ex-
cuse me, I have a call with an old friend from Oxford. Don’t destroy
the kitchen while I’m gone.”
“Good to hear. You know how I live for your approval,” I
dead­panned.
“I do.” He clapped me on the shoul­der on his way out, and my
annoy­ance ratch­eted up anoth­er notch.
I couldn’t believe I shared DNA with that guy.
When I turned back to Brid­get, she was try­ing, and fail­ing, to
sup­press a smile.
“What’s so fun­ny?”
“You and Andreas. You bick­er like Nik and I do.” Her smile
widened at the incom­pre­hen­sion on my face. “You bick­er like
sib­lings.”
Sib­lings.
It didn’t hit me until that moment. I’d known Andreas was my
broth­er, but he was my broth­er. A real, albeit annoy­ing, one I saw reg-
ular­ly. We argued all the time, but maybe that was just what sib­lings
did, like Brid­get said.
I wouldn’t know. I’d been alone all my life…until now.