I bristle, and open my mouth to tell him off, but he interrupts before I can. “Think about it. You’re choosing to become queen. If you stepped aside, you could do what you wanted with your life. But you know, as I do, that hiding is a small price to pay to stand at the head of our country. To be the one everybody looks up to, and listens to. To have the power to make changes. Think of the sort of good we could do together. I know I couldn’t pull it off as I am. But by your side?”

I suppose, now that he mentions it, I can see Alfie in the role. How many times have I marveled at his ability to make small talk, and charm strangers, and hold himself in the spotlight? He was born for it, in ways that I wasn’t. But I was actually born for it, and because of that, my choice will always hold a different weight to his.

“It’s more complicated than that for me,” I say thinly.

“Perhaps. But I think, at the heart of it, you’re intoxicated by the potential your life could hold in that position.”

“Perhaps,” I say, “Or maybe you simply believe I must feel that way, because you do.”

“Right, because I don’t know your internal world at all,” he says, looking—amazingly—amused. “Ever since you met Danni Blythe, all you can talk about is wanting to be good. There is no greater good than this.”

I look past Alfie at this. My mind is swirling with thoughts I can barely begin to parse. I look past his parents, and mine, and beyond them—beyond the crowd—I find William’s eyes boring into me as he watches us speak.

“We’re friends,” I say to Alfie, still looking at William. “I couldn’t…”

“Would a stranger be any better, though? Really think about it, Rosie.”

And I do. I picture all of it.

Alfie proposing with the Harrington family ring. Marriage. Children. Coronation. Secrets. Lies. Cages.

My future was set in motion long ago, and I have no choice but to be swept along.

What does that future look like? Truly? Stealing kisses in secret rooms, all the while terrified that I will be found out, and I will lose the love of my family, the love of my country, my future, and my identity, in one fell swoop.

Marrying somebody I can never love, and sleeping with him over and over while my entire body recoils with revulsion, just so I can serve as an incubator for the continuation of the crown. Screaming in agony, or bleeding out in a hospital bed like Mum, as I birth children I never wanted inside me to begin with.

And all the while shoving it down, further and further, until I’m not really here at all.