As she was ushering the woman out, Lukas showed up at her door. He was dressed in a dark blue suit with a matching pink tie, his blond-again hair pulled back into a queue. His nail polish had been removed, and he looked like any handsome young aristocrat, except for the frown on his face.

“Oh, hello, my liebling. You look wonderful today,” Madame Flemard said. She adjusted the dresses on her arm to smooth Lukas’s hair. “I have some things for you that I’ll leave in your room.”

“Merci, Flemie,” Lukas said, kissing the modiste on both cheeks, then looking expectantly at Nya.

“Hi,” she said. “Do you want to come in? I have to do my makeup, but I can still talk.”

Lukas stepped in awkwardly, all traces of the defiant teen who told his brother to sit and spin gone.

“Your hair is different,” she said as he stepped into the room.

“Jah. That was just a colored hair wax,” he said. “Can you imagine if it’d been permanent? Johan might have held me down and shaved my head.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“You’re right,” Lukas said. “He would have just told me what a disappointment I was and harped about my responsibility until I shaved it myself.” He shrugged. “I just wanted to see how your time here has been going. I saw some talk about Johan’s love child online and was worried.”

“Which love child? The one I’m carrying or the one that made me cry?” she asked as she sat at the dressing table mirror. She’d already moisturized in nine steps because Liechtienbourg in the winter was asking for ashiness, and now she dabbed on a bit of concealer. She’d spent enough time practicing YouTube video looks in her apartment to do her makeup quickly and efficiently. She decided to go with a simple but eye-catching bronze shadow, brown winged liner, and sheer pink lip gloss.

Lukas laughed nervously. “You’re not really pregnant, are you?”

She gave him her best quelling look with the eye she wasn’t spreading eye shadow on.

“Sorry,” he said. His gaze lingered on her makeup bag.

“No. The love child story seems to have been entirely made up by journalists.”

“Oh,” he said, lips thinning. He looked a lot like his brother when he was uncomfortable.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I don’t have any children yet, but producing heirs is part of my job so I suppose I will one day,” he said with a grimace.

“I meant how are you doing with all of the attention from the referendum?” She didn’t know him and would be gone soon, but he was a kid and had obviously come to her room for something.

“Oh! I’ve been better,” he said airily. “Before I just assumed I was going to be king and that was that. Now I’ve had to think of what will happen if the people vote us out. It’s scary, but also kind of exciting.”

“I can’t quite relate,” she said. “But I’m about to go out on my first publicity event. What happens if I trip? What if my stockings get a tear? What if someone says something mean? It must be hard having this attention on you all the time.”

“Johan will help you,” Lukas said, then tried to backtrack. “He’s a spoiled jerk, but he isn’t completely awful. Besides, if you fall, just make it seem like the only thing that could have happened was you falling, and everyone will go along with that.”

“Did your brother teach you that?” she asked before smearing on some of the sparkly translucent lip gloss. Lukas was staring at her mouth covetously, but not in the way Johan did. She recognized that look. She’d been in his shoes before, watching others get glammed up while she stood in her black loose-fitting dress and makeup-free face.

This was lust, but not for her.

This moment was important. She was a stranger, though he thought she was his future sister-in-law, but her next words could still leave a lasting impact.

She held up the fancy gloss tube with the golden screw top. “Want to try it?”

“No! Of course I wouldn’t! Why would I—” He huffed, then grabbed it from her, losing his stiff royal bearing and reverting to excited teenager. “It’s been sold out for weeks and Lars was trying to get it, and—”

Lukas stopped and looked at her, shock and fear in his eyes.

Nya just kept doing her makeup, smiling just enough to let him know that he had nothing to be afraid of from her. “Go ahead. My friend Portia gave me two tubes because she got sent a bunch to talk about on social media. This one fits your coloring better, so you can have it.”

“Really?” Lukas smiled, the most genuine she’d seen from him, before dabbing the applicator at his lips and leaving behind a gloss that looked like crushed diamonds.

“It looks so good on you,” she said.

“Thank you,” Lukas said, checking himself out in the mirror from behind her. His gaze met hers in the reflection and there was a tension in his eyes. “Oh my god, you really are too good for my brother. How did he trick you into agreeing to marry him?”

Now that she thought about it, Johan hadn’t exactly tricked her, but she had been under duress when he’d proposed his plan. She didn’t regret saying yes, but she couldn’t help but think of the Phokojoe tale again.

She decided to change the subject. “Are you coming with us to the opera Greta was so excited about?”