Chap­ter 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 town­house last week, after the par­lia­men­tary vote, and we were review­ing 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 pro­to­col 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.” Andreas 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 plan­ning 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 help­ing 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 per­fect 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 fin­ished 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 set­tings. 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 excuse 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 reg­u­lar­ly. 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.