He went looking for J-Auntie, his parents’ housekeeper, to see if she’d make him a sandwich. Only because she would act all wounded if he made one for himself. His stomach growled. He always lived at the Anchorage when he came back to California. Yes, his parents’ estate had a name. Yes, he knew exactly how pretentious that sounded. Now that he had decided to stay in California for the foreseeable future, he had to figure out where he would live.

Oh, who was he kidding? Ma would go into full-blown Extra Ma mode if he suggested living anywhere but here. He knew Ma hated that they all had their own places now that they were adults. It used to be the Indian way to live with your parents until you were married, and even after that if you chose. His older siblings had moved out after college. They’d had that tangible threshold to cross. Vansh hadn’t gone to college but he’d lived mostly out of the home since the age of sixteen.

Ma had worked hard to make their family home a sanctuary for them, and he was glad for it. The Anchorage was even more comfortable than the palace of his ancestors.

The Rajes had ruled the kingdom of Sripore for a century before the Europeans colonized India and the British took over Sripore. Growing up, their mother had dragged them to Sripore every summer, intent on keeping them acquainted with their royal Indian roots.

Sagar Mahal, the Sripore palace, was a magical place, especially for a little boy with more energy than anyone knew what to do with. Every summer there was something new to discover, a chamber no one knew about, a tower with a secret staircase, a trapdoor in the back of a closet. Being the youngest of his siblings, five years younger than Ashna, who was the closest to him in age, Vansh had been left mostly to his own devices.

He was also the only one of his siblings who wasn’t obsessed with reading. He’d heard one of the nannies at the Sagar Mahal tell one of the servants that the Baby Prince was more energetic and harder to handle than the others because he didn’t read.

Having a learning disability in a family where academic brilliance was taken for granted wasn’t fun, but it had been a while since Vansh had felt the sting of it.