Then one night, while sitting on our favorite swing in the nearby park during one of our usual conversations, he told me he had feelings for me. I was stunned. I’d come to think of him as a brother. I couldn’t say the one thing he wished to hear: that I felt the same way about him. The heart-wrenching look on his face, as if his whole world had crashed and burned, was one I would never forget—no matter how hard I tried.

The next day he texted me from our Hellenic school’s library, saying he needed to tell me something urgently. I told him to come over, dreading the awkward conversation that would ensue. As I waited for him to arrive, an uneasy feeling grew in my stomach. Something, maybe intuition, informed me that something terrible was about to happen. Still, I waited and waited.

He never showed up. Bryan died in a car accident. That was over a year ago now, but I still missed him every second of every day. I also couldn’t help feeling like it was my fault; if he hadn’t been on his way to see me, he would still be alive today. We would be working on our escape plan together—counting our combined savings and deciding whether New York was too expensive for our budget. We had already agreed that a big city was our only option if we wanted to avoid being found by our parents. We could live peacefully among the Nescient, blissfully click-free.

I couldn’t bear to look at the photo any longer so I put it back inside the shoe box, closed the lid, and pushed the box to the dark corner underneath the bed. I hated the idea of someone reading every passing thought I had inside my mind. I couldn’t go through what Bryan’s mom had. As cliché as it sounded, I wanted a normal life—free from all the sacred rituals and important celebrations. The fact that I’d also be free from all the Royals who always looked at me as if I was below them—as if I was less than them—was a generous bonus.

Without Bryan, though, I couldn’t escape on my own. The thought of being on the road alone terrified me, and I hadn’t saved up enough, anyway. It seemed like I was stuck going to Court after all.