I was making myself a peanut-butter sandwich when my Dad floated in the airlock. He had a funny glint in his eye that I didn’t quite like. Dad was a relatively high-ranking nobleman, which meant he could attend royal banquets and stuff like that. He was the one who had drafted the highly successful treaty with the Normans, but he was much better known for his enormous sideburns.

“Hi Dad, how was the ball?” I asked.

“Oh, it was absolutely marvelous.” He tossed me a paper bag filled with food he had brought home.

Uh-oh.

“There was this girl there, and she looked a lot like you. A lot. Prince Cli was falling for her – I mean, head-over-heels over her. She was more beautiful than a princess in a pumpkin.”

“Yeah?” I said. I didn’t like where this was going.

“And then she ran away.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes, and nobody found her! She disappeared!”

“Oh no.” I knew what he was going to say. He knew I knew. “So you pretended it was me??”

He tapped his nose. “Exactly. I slipped a few rumors, and then hurried home pretending you were with me. Now we just have to wait until we get the Royal Summons!”

“Dad, not again!” I yelled.

Have you ever been so sick and woozy that it felt like the wall turned into the ceiling? That was how I felt just then. (Except the wall actually was the ceiling, because our apartment had no gravity.) I felt like I wanted to barf. “Dad! How could you do that?” I shouted. “I don’t want to marry the prince!”

He winked at me. “I know you do. What girl your age doesn’t?”

“But that’s awful! I wasn’t even there! How can I lie to the Prince like that?”

“Don’t worry, nobody will even know,” Dad said.

I went to my room and shut the bulkhead. I felt like crying, screaming, and laughing all at once. The Prince? I was going to meet the Prince?? I bounced back and forth off the walls, trying to wrap my head around it.

“Aren’t you excited?” I heard Dad asking through the door. “This is our golden opportunity!”

There was sweat – or maybe tears? – all over my face. “Just go away, Dad!” I said.

Dad opened the door and floated in. “But think of all the money it would bring!”

“No!” I said.

“And you would get to live in the Royal Palace…”

“No!”

“And you would get to wear all the pretty, comfy dresses you wanted…”

“Just stop!” I said. “I don’t want to think about this! I don’t want to do anything!”

Dad wisely floated out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

I sighed and banged my head against my thin sleeping pad strapped to the wall.

Being poor was tough. It may not look like it, but noblemen are hardly paid anything. Most of their money goes to buying ridiculous outfits and fancy wigs. That was why Dad liked going to royal banquets: when we were at home, all we had to eat was Kraft mac and cheese and baloney. My clothes were all scratchy army-surplus jumpers which were covered in patches. We had to live in a tiny apartment in a run-down space station in the “bad sextant” of the galaxy. It didn’t even have its own bathroom – we had to use the communal bathroom down the passageway, and that meant I could only take a shower once a week.

As you could probably imagine, Dad was always looking for the Big Ticket. Most of his schemes involved trying to get me married to someone rich. But the prince, for crying out loud? I didn’t think I could handle it!

I screamed into my sleeping pad, then punched it as hard as I could, which sent me flying to the opposite wall.

…

The Royal Summons came the next day. Dad told me as soon as I came home from school. I could have guessed, from the way that he was cramming his enormous wardrobe into a series of cheap suitcases. I could smell the lanolin from all the way across the room.

I sighed. By this point, I was resigned to my fate: Dad was going to make me do it, just like he had made me go to the Royal Ball with Jer Finch that one time. I dutifully packed my one good dress along with the rest of my jumpers. It was off-white and slightly blue, and it had a simple ruffle around the neck and sleeves. Dad had bought it for me years ago, the first time he brought me to a royal ball. It had cost one hundred and seventy-nine blorks and 93 cents. It was by far the most valuable thing I owned.

The second-most valuable thing I owned was my painting kit.

I loved drawing and painting. I loved it ever since I was a kid. My painting kit was a gift from one of my Dad’s friends for my birthday. He had noticed I was drawing on the backs of some chupburger wrappers with a crayon, and when he asked me why, I told him I didn’t have anything else to draw on. And so he had bought me the painting kit, and I had cried when I opened it. It was the nicest gift anyone had ever given me. It had paints and brushes and pastels and pencils and a whole pad of clean, white paper. I had used most of the paper by this point; I only saved it for special drawings. The whole thing was made of bluish transparent plastic, and clicked closed with a latch. It was more valuable to me than fine gold.

It wasn’t hard to fit everything I had into one bag, including my painting kit. I had to help Dad, though, with his fifteen suitcases. That was on the low side for him; he usually took at least twenty. It would usually have taken a small army of porter-bots to carry everything, but strange things happen when you’re in a hurry, so somehow, by ourselves, we barely managed to get everything on the ship before it left.

The ship took almost two days to get to the Palace, because we lived halfway across the galaxy and we had to travel second-class. Those hard plastic seats were not comfortable to sleep on.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the Prince. I wanted to meet him, but I didn’t want to lie to him! Why was Dad doing this to me?

And the worst thing was, I had had a crush on Prince Cli ever since I was in middle school. I used to have a poster of him in my room. I had painted portraits of him several times. My sketchbook was filled with drawings of him. I wanted to meet him, but not like this! I wanted to run into him randomly, or maybe at a ball with lots of people around, the same way he met that other girl. I sighed and slumped a little lower in my seat. I had been sighing a lot lately.

…

I had been to the palace on exactly three occasions before: every time because Dad had taken me along with him to a royal ball. We had stayed in the Palace hotel (for free – because he was a nobleman), so I wasn’t wholly unfamiliar with such surroundings. What was unfamiliar was the complicated feelings.

The hotel lobby had a waterfall in it! I always admired it every time I was there. It was a two-story waterfall, and it was inside! The sound of it filled the whole room with a rushing, oddly soothing roar. The lobby was so tall I couldn’t make out the designs on the ceiling. Everything seemed to be made of marble. How many megablorks did it cost to ship all this marble here, let alone put it all together?

There was a woman strumming a harp next to the check-in desk. How much did they pay her to just sit there and play pretty music? I hoped it was enough.

Our room had red carpet on the floor, wall to wall. It was a deep red, almost blood red. I could stick my pinkie finger in all the way to the knuckle! I laid my face on it and ran my hands over it. It was like petting a kitten. It was much softer than my cheap foam pad at home. I thought about stealing some of it to take home, even though I knew I wasn’t allowed to.

Dad saw me petting the carpet and chuckled. “That’s the first thing you noticed?”

“It’s sooooo soft!” I said. I laid down on it and sighed. “I want to sleep here.” I was so tired I felt like I could sleep for hours.

“That’s what the bed is for. Come, help me unpack my luggage.”

The hotel room had a walk-in closet the size of our entire apartment back home. I gasped when I saw all the beautiful woodwork. I literally just stood there in shock. The mirror frame was made of dark wood, carved with boars and birds. I gingerly ran my hand along it, wondering who had made it and how long it had taken.

And then Dad bumped into me with an armful of dressing robes. “Oof! Pia, don’t just stand there, get working!” he said.

I sighed and went to get a case of shoes.

It took an hour to hang up all of Dad’s clothes. It only took me half a minute to put all of my jumpers in a drawer in a corner. Compared to Dad’s, my half of the closet looked embarrassingly bare. My one dress looked just as shabby as my jumpers when put next to the lustrous yellow wallpaper, embossed with Ytrrop leaves. I felt my face turn red as I thought about how I would look.

Even I have to admit I’m fairly pretty, I thought as I looked at myself in the mirror. If only I wasn’t so dirty. I’m probably soiling everything I touch. Yep, time for me to take a shower. That was always my favourite part of staying at the Palace Hotel.

Our hotel room had two bathrooms. I was frankly intimidated by the larger one, so I opted for the smaller one with the lapis lazuli walls. The water was hot – actually hot! – the instant I turned it on. I shouted, more from shock than pain, as I jerked my hand out of the water. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Yep, I thought, we’re definitely not in Sextant V anymore.

It was fun to scrub all the dirt off of myself. I turned the water black at first. I ended up filling the whole marble tub with the water from my shower. And the tub was not small! It was big enough for me to stretch out all the way and relax like I was floating in a warm soapy soup. It felt so good! I almost cried. I stayed in there for an hour, maybe two hours – I don’t even know. I would have stayed in there longer, but Dad banged on the door and told me that there was someone there to see me. I toweled off (the towels were fluffier than a poodle) and put on my one good dress.

Turns out, it was a lady who was there to take us to get some new clothes for me.

The Palace Hotel was connected to the palace proper via a glass hallway. Not a regular space tube, mind you – a hallway. With gravity. It was almost surreal.

“How can they afford to have gravity everywhere in the palace?” I said. The palace was huge: easily the size of a small city.

Dad just chuckled.

When we got to the outfitting room, a different lady brought out several dresses and tried them on me. She made me do a T-pose while she pinned up the bodices, and I just had to stand there uncomfortably. It was easily the most awkward experience of my life, even more so than when Rik Barnes and I had gotten our tethers so hopelessly tangled that we had to call for help.

“So I’m gonna have to give these back eventually, right?” I said when she was done.

“No, of course not,” said the lady. “These are for your appearance before the Prince tomorrow.”

I gasped. “Really? I get to keep them?”

“Oh, you sweet little girl. Yes!” And then she took them all away and sent them through a clothes chute.

“Wait, what?” I said.

“Oh, I just sent them to be hemmed up. They’ll be delivered to your room before tonight.”

I walked back to our hotel room in a daze.

I tried them all on again when they got delivered to my room. They all fit perfectly, except a green one which I didn’t remember even trying on. “Oh, that one was a mix-up. Sorry!” said the delivery girl, who hurried it out of the room.

…

I kept having to tell myself that I wasn’t going to marry him. It was the only thing keeping me sane. I stared up at the blackness above me. My bed was a four-poster with thick green velvet curtains. I wasn’t going to marry Prince Cli. But why couldn’t I stop thinking about him?

Have you ever seen one of those clothes-dryers that tumbles the clothes around? That was what I felt like inside. First I was calm, then I was ecstatic, then I was miserable, then I was calm again, then I was back to feeling stressed. I never slept worse in my life than I did that night. Dad’s snoring didn’t help.

…

Morning.

Tired. Dead tired. I struggled to keep my eyes open as I ate my chocolate muffin. I only managed half of it before I felt like barfing.

Then I was taken to a room where everything was pink or blue, and several girls spent over an hour dressing me up, putting makeup on me, curling my hair, plucking my eyebrows, painting my fingernails, shaving all the hair off my arms… I can’t even remember what-all they did. I felt like a doll. They put me in a spotless white dress with a pencil-straight skirt. I had never worn anything like that in my life, and I felt exceedingly awkward. I kept worrying that I’d trip. At least I didn’t have to wear high heels. I had never tried them, and I intended to keep it that way.

And then, finally, it was time to meet the Prince.

We walked down a hallway lined with servants. There was a big set of double doors. They opened, and…

“Ah, there you are!” said Prince Cli. “Finally. I was wondering when you would show up.”

It was Prince Cli! He was really there, right in front of me! I’d better not blow it by acting stupid…

My face, disobediently, turned red.

He walked up to me and gently took my hand. We both sat down on a couch. “How are you doing? I was so worried when you ran off. It must have been so embarrassing when I asked to kiss you, right? I’m sorry about that.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I thought I’d better say something. “Okay,” I said.

I slapped myself mentally. Okay? What was that supposed to mean? I couldn’t think straight.

“Hey, listen, do you still have the other shoe?” he asked.

Ah. Right. The shoe. Dad had told me what to say.

“I’m sorry, your majesty. I lost it. It disappeared on the way home.”

“Ah, well, that’s all right. It’s a shame to lose something so beautiful. Not half as beautiful as you are, though.” He brought out a right-footed shoe made entirely out of glass. I felt rather stunned as he put it on my foot. It fit perfectly.

“There, see. It fits. What more proof do you need?” He said to a man standing on the side of the room, who nodded.

I couldn’t breathe. My new dress was too tight. Or maybe I was just scared out of my mind.

“Let’s talk later,” said the Prince. “It’s nice to know I’ve found you. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better.” He walked out of the room, and I was ushered back to my hotel room.

“That was good,” said Dad. “Very good.”

I collapsed onto my bed.

…

Nothing is worse than having artists’ block. Especially when you’re bored and stressed out of your mind at the same time.

I was sitting on a bench in one of the many palace gardens, trying to draw a statue of a lady holding some birds. All my drawings came out terrible. I was mad that I was wasting so much of my precious paper. But I didn’t have anything else to do; a footman had told me to wait there until the Prince showed up.

I was starting to add color to my drawing when I heard the sounds of many footsteps approaching.

It was the Prince. I sprang to my feet.

“His highness, Prince Cli!” said a footman.

“Your highness,” I said, curtsying. I was wearing a cream-colored dress today, one that was slightly more comfortable than yesterday’s.

He bowed to me. “Your name is Pia, is that correct?”

I nodded.

“They’ve told me a lot about you. They’ve told me that you live with your father in Sextant V.” He made a face. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s not really a big deal,” I said. “We get by.” I smoothed my dress nervously.

“What a horrible place to live, though,” he said. “I’ve been to Turrixis 4, and it was the second-worst planet I’ve ever been to.”

That begs a question, I thought. Should I ask it? Does he want me to? Or is he just going to say it himself? Will he be mad if I ask the question? Would it be impertinent of me?

“I see,” I said finally.

He raised his eyebrows slightly. I could see him think for a second. Then he dismissed all the footmen and stepped a bit closer to me. “Looks like you’re drawing something. Would you care to show me?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” I said. “I’m not quite done though.” I showed him the drawing of the statue. I was starting to add trees and flowers around it. Is he on to me? I wondered. But if he was, then why is he still talking to me?

“That looks beautiful,” he said. “Can I watch you draw?”

I took a deep breath. Here it was. My chance to shine. I picked up the pencil and tried not to let my hand shake as I finished coloring in the flowers.

“Brilliant,” he said.

“Thank you, your highness,” I said.

“What else have you drawn? Do you care to show me?”

I flipped through the rest of the papers, showing him all my drawings and paintings. I had gone through that morning and carefully removed every page with drawings of Prince Cli, which made the pile a lot smaller. Now it was mostly drawings of landscapes I wished I could see, and people I wished I could meet. He paused me when I got to a watercolor painting of the Palace that I had done the last time I had been there with Dad. I had spent a long time on that painting. I had tried to capture the form and the whimsy of its asymmetrical yet elegant shape, with its many towers.

“That’s a good painting!” said Prince Cli. “I’m impressed.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

“Do you think you could draw me?” he asked.

Easy. I had been drawing that face for years; I knew every line by heart. It was different with him right in front of me, though! As I sketched and shaded, I felt like something was missing… I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

I showed him my drawing when I was done. “That’s great!” he said. “It’s even better than my official portrait.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

“Oh, stop calling me that.” He waved his hand like he was brushing away a mosquito. “Looks like you’re running out of paper.”

I blushed.

“Come. If you need more paper, I know a place.”

Apparently, Prince Cli knew every inch of the palace like the back of his hand. Either that, or he pretended like he did. He took me past miles of statues and carpeted hallways. He told me about all the people in all the paintings as we walked by them. I got dizzy trying to keep track of all the names. The painting I remembered most was of his aunt Lim. She was sitting on a padded stool, wearing a deep-green dress, her hands in her lap, her face relaxed. It looked almost like she was smirking out of the canvas.

“They say I get my smile from her,” he said.

Once, as we passed a hallway, I saw another girl my age, with very dark hair, peeking at me from around a corner. I turned my head to get a closer look at her, but she disappeared.

We eventually ended up at the palace print shop. “Hey there, Tal,” said Cli. “Pia here was wondering if she could get some more paper.”

“What kind of paper?”

Cli looked at me. He was letting me speak for myself. How nice of him!

“Um, just some regular paper, you know, for drawing and stuff.”

“Hmm. How about some watercolor paper?”

“Um, yeah.”

Tal handed me a thick stack of paper. The sheets were as wide and tall as the length of my forearm. It was beautiful paper. How much did it cost?

“Thank you,” was all I could say.

“You are very welcome,” he replied. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“I don’t know…” I said. The paper was nice and thick, and it was semi-smooth and sparkling white.

“Well, if you think of anything, let me know.”

“Thank you, Tal,” said Prince Cli, then showed me out the door. He even held the door for me!

“That was nice of him, to just give me this paper,” I said, fingering the edges.

“Well, why would we have to pay for it?” said Prince Cli.

I blinked a few times. Wow. He doesn’t even think about money! Everything in this palace is free! He has so much money, it means nothing to him! I wonder what that’s like.

He didn’t say anything for a while, until we got to the glass hallway which went to the Palace Hotel. “I have to go to a meeting,” he said. “When do you want to meet again?”

Again with giving me the choices! “Um, I… I don’t know…”

“How about…” he tapped his watch a few times. “Hm. Well, actually, I’m busy for the rest of the day. Bummer. I guess we’ll have to meet tomorrow at lunchtime. Do you have a preference for which cafe to go to?”

“I, uh…” I stammered. “I don’t know.”

“I see. Well, I’ll meet you here and we’ll go find something we both like. How’s that?”

“Sure.”

“Goodbye.” He bowed. I curtsied. He strolled away. I kept watching him until he rounded a corner out of sight. I hugged my new paper a little tighter.

…

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Dad!” I said. I was pacing up and down our hotel room, waving my hands anxiously. “I think he likes me, but I can’t tell if it’s because he’s trying to be nice, or what!”

“I think he loves you.”

I groaned. “But he doesn’t love me, he loves that girl who ran away at the Ball! Think about it: he wants me just because I’m pretty!”

“Well, you are very pretty.”

I groaned again. “Why did we ever come here? Why can’t we just go home? This is no place for us! I feel way too poor for this place! Just look at the light fixtures, with all that fancy metalwork! How long did it take someone to make that?!”

“And just think… we could live here.”

I rolled my eyes exasperatedly. “Dad, I don’t want to live here! Not if it means I have to lie to the Prince!”

We had been through this conversation over and over. I was getting so sick of it! They had told us not to leave our hotel room until Prince Cli came, so I was stuck in this pointless argument with Dad. There was nothing I could do about it except retreat to my bathroom and read a book I had found on a side table. It was called “The King of the Icewind,” and it was about a group of kids who got magically transported to a different world where everything was covered in ice and snow. It was fairly interesting, but in my imagination, the main character looked exactly like Cli, and every time he said something, he spoke in Cli’s voice.

…

Lunchtime grew near, and there was a knock on the door. I opened it. “His Highness, Prince Cli!” said a footman.

“Your highness,” I said, curtsying for the second time. Then I added, “What a pleasure to see you.”

“I was about to say the same,” replied Prince Cli. “You look lovely in that outfit.”

“Thank you,” I said, blushing slightly. I still didn’t like how everyone kept saying how pretty I was.

I was wearing a dark-blue skirt with a white shirt and a grey blouse. They were part of a large set of clothes which had appeared in the closet overnight. It was the most comfortable outfit I could find, but it was also the most plain. I almost wished I had worn a necklace or something. I had tied my hair back with a ribbon, so there was that. I wondered if I should get my ears pierced so I could wear earrings.

“How do you feel about sandwiches?” Prince Cli asked.

“Sure,” I said, letting him take my arm.

The sandwich place was in the middle of the palace, inside a huge glass dome through which you could see the stars outside. It wasn’t quite like anything I’d ever seen before. The Prince remarked how interesting it was that I had noticed that. “Most people never look up at the ceiling.”

“I like noticing details,” I said. “Like how you’re holding something behind your back.”

He grinned and drew out a bouquet of flowers. “I made this for you.”

“Oh, thank you,” I said, smelling them. They smelled like… colored pencils?

They were colored pencils! It was a bouquet of colored pencils with paper flowers on top! It struck a deep chord in my soul. I felt like singing.

“It’s so pretty!” I said, giggling.

He grinned. “It wasn’t my idea, actually, it was Dan, one of my gentlemen-in-waiting.”

“It’s lovely though!” I said. “Thank you!” I felt almost as tickled as when I got my painting kit. “Did you make these yourself?”

“Well, Dan helped,” he said, grinning. “So why did you and your Dad leave so quickly after the ball?”

He almost caught me off guard with that one! Thankfully, this was another question Dad had prepared me for. “Well, I… I just had to leave.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. Again, I’m so sorry for that.”

“No problem,” I said, looking for a change of subject. Fortunately, our sandwiches arrived just then. I had ordered a grilled-cheese, and he had ordered a salad. My sandwich was just the right amount of toasted, and the cheese was so flavorful it felt like it was exploding in my mouth! I wanted to savor every bite, but it was hard to do that and talk at the same time. We kept talking about the way the palace was different from where I lived at home.

“I keep telling The King that he should pay his noblemen more,” Cli said. “And a lot of other things too, I won’t bore you with the details.”

I was definitely not prepared for him to say that. “How, um… generous of you, your highness,” I said. “I’m glad you’re thinking of us.”

“Well, The King and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye.”

“My dad and I don’t either,” I said. Oh, how foolish of me, I thought as soon as I had said it.

He asked me to elaborate.

I sighed. “Well… for one thing, he likes being here, but I don’t.”

“You don’t like it here?” he raised his eyebrows a little.

“Well, um… It’s not because it’s not nice here, it’s just… well, I’m used to sleeping on a thin pad strapped to the wall. I’m used to everything I touch being dirty. I’m used to eating stale food from a cardboard box.”

He smirked a little. “I totally understand,” he said. “I get tired of being here, too.”

“You do?” I said. We had something in common!

“Oh, yeah. I try to get out of here whenever possible. Like how I took a trip last month to the desert of Gorganzolia.”

I chuckled. “And how did you like that?”

“Oh, it was very interesting. I was wondering what their houses looked like. Turns out, they live underground!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, and they don’t have many electric lights.”

“My Dad and I have to use glow sticks sometimes when the power goes out.”

“Yeah, same kind of thing! And they use these huge sails to trap water from the air.”

We kept talking about the Gorganzolia desert, and I drew a picture of one of their underground houses, as he described them, on the back of a napkin. He smiled as he admired it, and put it in his pocket.

…

The next day, we didn’t meet until the evening, where we sat together and listened to an orchestra perform in the palace theatre. I had never heard that kind of music before. I didn’t really like it, but it made me feel oddly emotional. And it was very loud. Cli seemed kind of disappointed when I told him I didn’t really enjoy it. That made me feel bad. But why should I feel bad about that? I shouldn’t be caring at all about what he thinks, because all I’m doing is lying to him. Just thinking that made me feel even worse.

I didn’t see him at all the next day. It was a really boring day. For some reason, they didn’t let me out of our hotel room except when I was meeting with Cli. I figured they didn’t want me getting lost. Admittedly, that was quite a valid concern. I could hardly remember how to even get to the hotel lobby. At least they brought us food, so we didn’t go hungry.

I did peek outside the door a couple times, but I never saw anyone.

…

Finally, it was the last day of the week, the last day we were going to be there. It was evening. Dad was gone to some kind of official meeting for noblemen. I was sitting at a desk in the hotel room, looking at the letter I had written.

Dear Prince Cli,

I’m sorry about all of this. I didn’t mean to get tangled up in all of this. It’s such a shame, because I really do like you.

But I’m not the princess you’re looking for. I wasn’t there at the ball that night. My Dad made me lie to you. I’m sorry.

Sincerely,

Pia

I crumpled the paper into a ball and sighed, putting my head in my hands. I could hardly cope with the pressure anymore. Prince Cli was way above my pay grade, and he knew it. Then why did he keep talking to me so affectionately?

He was so nice. And funny. He got me to laugh, to put my guard down. But I couldn’t do this anymore! Sooner or later, he would figure me out.

KNOCK KNOCK.

I got up and answered the door.

It was the lady who I’d met the first day, the one who gave me all those dresses. “I’ve come to make sure you’re suitably dressed for tonight,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because the Prince told me this was a special evening.”

Oh no.

…

Thirty minutes later, I was waiting with a footman next to a fountain in one of the palace gardens. It filled the air with humidity, and I could feel some wispy hairs tickling the back of my neck. It was early in the night, and the gardens were bathed in moonlight. (There was a day-and-night cycle in the palace, and they had lights come on at the right times to simulate the sun and moons. It was pretty realistic. Back home, they just cut off the power at 20:00 with a big CLUNK.)

“It’s a nice night,” I said to the footman. He glanced sideways at me for a second, then kept staring straight forward. Oh, right, I’m not supposed to talk to the footmen.

I was wearing a white dress similar to the one I had worn when I first met the prince, only this one had puffy sleeves, sparkles, and matching elbow-length gloves. I didn’t know why the dress lady had made me wear the gloves; they felt bunchy and annoying.

I thought about what I was going to say to the prince. I had the flattened-out letter in my pocket, and I kept fingering it nervously.

A slight breeze brought scents of lilacs. It was ever so quiet, except for the sound of the fountain and my own racing thoughts.

Then, footsteps.

“His Majesty, Prince Cli!”

“Oh, stop that. You may go,” Cli said to the footmen.

“What a beautiful evening,” he said to me. When I didn’t reply, he said, “It’s been lovely seeing you for the past week. I hope I can continue to see you after you go home.”

I took a deep breath. This is it. “I’ve… I’ve got to tell you something.”

“What is it?” his eyebrows tilted, concerned.

I grabbed the edge of the fountain and rocked back and forth. “It wasn’t me. I’m not the girl you’re looking for.”

He tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“That girl at the ball!” I said. I was trying to keep from crying. “It wasn’t me! Dad was just pretending I was there because he wanted me to marry you. I don’t know who it was, but it wasn’t me! It was a total coincidence!”

I sat down on the edge of the fountain, and covered my face with my hands. He sat down beside me, but didn’t say anything.

“I really do like you. You’re so nice. I’m so sorry!” At this point, I burst into tears. I couldn’t control myself anymore.

He gently put his hand on my arm. I brushed it off, and continued, “I’m gonna just go home with my Dad and you’ll never have to speak to me again. I hope you find a real princess, someone you deserve.” I stood up and walked away.

“Pia.” His voice was gentle. It made me pause.

“I’ve known it all along,” he said.

“Really?”

“Ever since that first day, when you said ‘I see’ instead of ‘What’s the first-worst planet you’ve ever been to?’” he was half-smiling.

“How did that tip you off?” I asked miserably.

“Because that’s what I was talking about with the girl at the ball. For the record, it’s Tulaxaine.”

“No surprise there,” I said. I couldn’t help laughing through my tears.

“And do you think we haven’t been watching you over the cameras in your hotel room?”

“Oh.” Of course there were cameras. I should have known.

He stood up and took a couple of steps toward me. “But, Pia, I don’t care who it was at the ball. It’s in the past. She’s gone, but you’re here now, and I love you.”

I couldn’t tell whether I was crying or laughing. Was he serious?

“But if you want to leave, that’s fine. I won’t stop you. I don’t want to be too grabby this time.”

“Really? You love me?” Were my dreams coming true?

“Yes. Pia, you are nice and sweet and kind and humble. You’re good at drawing, and, most of all, you’re honest. I love you.”

I laughed and rushed into his arms. I couldn’t help myself. It just came spontaneously. He loved me! I hugged him tighter than a moogsquid. It was so good to be free of guilt! He loved me!

“I love you too,” I said.

“So does that mean we can kiss now?”

Yes it did.

– EPILOGUE –

We talked and talked for hours, about everything from music to foreign policy. I had never had such a deep conversation with anyone before, even my Dad. I spent the whole time drawing on my new paper. I must have done 50 drawings, mostly of Cli. I knew what had been missing from my earlier drawing: confidence.

During dinner, Prince Cli said he had sent all of the other girls home.

“So I wasn’t the only one?” I said, shocked.

“Did you ever wonder why you weren’t allowed out of your hotel room?”

“I figured it was because you didn’t want me getting lost.”

“No! It was because we didn’t want any of the girls to know about each other.”

“Well, it certainly worked. But why did you summon eight of us instead of just one?”

“It was a contest. We summoned everyone who might have been there at the party, and those eight girls were the only ones who fit the shoe. We invited them all to stay here for a week so I could quiz them. You were the very last one, but I knew you were the right one the moment I saw you.”

I chuckled. “There’s a double meaning in that.”

He winked.

…

The wedding took place three months later. There were only about a hundred people there, because we both agreed that we didn’t want this to be a public event. The wedding lasted an hour, but the only thing I remember about it was the way Cli looked at me as we said “I do.”

My Dad couldn’t have been more pleased at the way things turned out. “I always knew she’d end up with a handsome young man,” he said, ruffling Cli’s hair.

“Yes, thanks to your involvement.”

Dad looked uncomfortable, but Cli just sent him off with a little punch to the arm. Cli looked as though nothing at all could make him unhappy. And I felt exactly the same way.

THE END