He slipped on his pants and tiptoed over to the door, cracking it slightly. Greta stood at the threshold, expression tight. She held the daily paper in her hand.

“Have you seen this?”

Johan grinned. “Well, no, I was busy.”

Greta unfurled the front page and revealed the huge picture. He had no idea when it had been taken. It was him, shrouded in darkness, touching the ring that he’d worn around his neck until he’d slipped it onto Nya’s finger, with Bulgom Pamplemousse glaring out from beneath him. It was him. Not Prince Jo-Jo. His expression was somber and completely unguarded, blown up on the front page. And he was holding a teddy bear.

Christ.

“The Lonely Prince,” the headline read. He scanned the article, and it was mostly nonsense but a bit too close to home—some story about Johan’s never-ending pain, how he slept with his teddy bear close to his heart because he was so frightened of being alone.

All of the anger that had been pushed away by his night with Nya returned, having doubled in size. It muddied his thinking, and he crushed the paper in his hand. It was as he crushed it that he remembered Nya’s flash going off in the bedroom of the airplane.

No.

“Jo-Jo. I wanted to tell you yesterday that I saw a disturbing text on Nya’s phone as I was holding it. Something about getting rid of outdated royal institutions. Very conspiratorial-like.” Greta floundered. “Have you considered that most of this started when she arrived?”

That was true, wasn’t it? The reports in the papers, the news that had somehow started to leak from Thesolo linking them together.

“And her father was attempting to destabilize their kingdom,” Greta added.

“Hmm,” Johan said.

I come from a family of politicians, Johan, and my father was a criminal one at that. You’re not the only one who knows about manipulation.

It made sense, as far as schemes went. It was a good long con, all the coincidences that had driven them together that seemingly had no explanations. Now she was in his bed, and the reputation he had painstakingly built at the expense of his true self was in shreds.

“And . . . I rechecked the IP addresses of the latest posts on that forum, and whomever it was used our IP address. The comments were coming from inside the house, so to speak.”

Johan tousled his hair, rolled his neck from side to side.

“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

He closed the door and stalked back toward the bed. Toward the woman he’d told he’d loved, who he’d finally let his defenses down around.

She seemed to sense him coming, rolling onto her back as her eyes fluttered open. She smiled, and the anger suffocating Johan loosened.

He was being ridiculous. Wasn’t he?

“Nya.”

“I need coffee,” she said, and then stretched. “And a massage. No one ever told me sex uses so many muscles!”

He tried to smile, but it was halfhearted, and when she noticed, her own faded.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He held up the newspaper, watching her reaction as she took in the image. She sat bolt upright in the bed, grabbing the paper from his hands. “This is the picture I took on the plane.”

“Yes. And somehow it’s on the front page of the tabloids.”

“Someone must have taken it from my phone!” She looked at him. “I’m sorry. I should have deleted it afterward. I didn’t think I was important enough to have my phone hacked before, and then I was so caught up in . . . well, in you.”

“You’re sure you didn’t send it to anyone? Not to any friends?” He hated even asking, because that awful, needy part of him told him that it didn’t matter what she did. He didn’t want to lose her, and especially not like this.

“My only friends are Ledi and Portia, who would never betray our trust, and I didn’t send it, even to them.”

He nodded and sighed.

Her only friends.

“If you have no other friends, who was the person you were texting with?” he asked. “I saw a message from him, you told me he was a nice person, and Greta saw something disturbing when she held your phone. Something about overthrowing governments.”

He watched with dread to see if she cringed or balked or looked away from him, but instead she giggled and shook her head.

“Oh that! I told you it was a game. I can show you.”

Relief flowed through him, pooling in the cracks of his hardened anger, as she slipped out of bed to take her phone from the charger. He hadn’t truly believed she would betray him, and he was glad he had asked instead of making assumptions. Now she would show him and everything would be fine.

“Here is my friend,” she said, voice playful.

She handed over the phone and he saw . . . himself. A two-bit cartoon version of himself, with a silly, sly smile plastered on its face.

“What is this?” he asked, though something told him he really didn’t want to know.

“It’s One True Prince,” she said, taking the phone and scrolling. “It’s an immersive virtual dating game and—”

“And that’s me. You were dating a video game version of me?”

She paused, her head tilted with uncertainty. “No. I was playing a romance game. It’s not dating.”

He remembered her laughing when he’d given her love advice during their adventure capturing a goat. She’d been laughing at him.