No kidding, I thought.
Well, I wasn’t going to just let them dispose of my favorite book, either. My eyes rested on the bedside table. It had a little drawer at the top, the perfect size to hide a few of my possessions, and close enough at hand if I needed to retrieve them quickly. I was just about to slide the book and necklace inside when a little object in the far back corner caught my eye. I reached in and pulled out a blue origami star. It seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. I put it back where I found it, along with my own things, just as Gloria walked back through the door.
“I’m sorry, Sasha, but I can’t wait any longer,” she said. “The team will be here any minute, and honestly, you look like you just came in off the street. Juliana would never be caught dead in any of that. You’ve got to wash and change immediately.”
“What are you going to do with my stuff?” I asked. “My clothes and my bag.”
Gloria heaved a sigh. “We’re going to have to burn them, dear. I’m sorry.”
“I figured.” I was glad to have rescued the items I could. Gloria gave me a sympathetic smile. She pointed at the bathroom door with her stylus.
“Shower,” she commanded.
I scrubbed every inch of my body until all traces of the last two days had been washed down the drain. Afterward, I stood in front of Juliana’s enormous antique dresser and looked in the mirror; with my hair wet, and my pink, clean skin, wearing only a luxurious white cotton bathrobe, I looked like a blank slate. Now that the adrenaline had worn off and weariness was setting in, I was starting to feel like a blank slate, too. Maybe that was for the best; maybe that would make all this easier. But it felt wrong.
“Wait here,” Gloria said, disappearing into Juliana’s enormous walk-in closet. Minutes later, she emerged carrying an armful of dresses, each of which she laid carefully on the bed. I glanced down at the dresser, which was empty but for a few framed photographs, a large mahogany jewelry box, and a collection of perfumes in cut glass bottles that rested on a silver plate. I scanned the photographs with interest. It was easy to pick out Juliana in them; all I had to do was look for my own face. But it was the other faces that fascinated me. One picture showed Juliana around age seven with a man and a woman that I gathered were her parents. They didn’t resemble mine in the slightest. The woman, a young and beautiful brunette with delicate features, had her arms wrapped around Juliana, who was beaming at the camera; the man, much older than the woman, wore a smile on his handsome, aristocratic face, but stood at a slight remove from his wife and daughter and didn’t touch them.
“I’m thinking this one for now,” Gloria said, indicating a one-shouldered blood orange chiffon dress with a wide black buckle and a pleated skirt. “This one for the interview.” She placed a black leather pencil skirt and a sleeveless white silk blouse beside the orange dress. I squinted at them dubiously. “On those rare occasions when Juliana does give interviews, she tends to dress a little more …”
“Rocker chick?” I suggested.
Gloria pursed her lips. “ ‘Mature’ is the word I was looking for. And I think this one would be more than adequate for tonight’s banquet. What do you think?”
The third outfit was also sleeveless, a red taffeta minidress with a huge ruffle on one side from shoulder to hem. “For a banquet?” I asked. I didn’t know what that entailed, but if I had to guess I would say that it should’ve involved a gown of some sort.
“It’s not really a banquet in the strictest sense of the word,” Gloria said. “The queen has arranged a welcome home dinner for Juliana. There will be some important political figures and high-ranking Citadel personnel there, but it won’t be a huge party, and it’ll be served in the formal dining room, not the banquet hall. This will be fine.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re the expert. I like the color.”
Gloria held it up against me. “It suits you.” She turned me so that I stood before the mirror. Juliana’s face stared back at me. I shivered.
“Oh dear,” Gloria fretted. “You’re cold.” The door chimed. “That’ll be the ladies. They’ll do your hair and makeup. Go into the closet and get dressed while they set up. I’ll let them in.”
Juliana’s aestheticians were waiting when I emerged from the closet. They all greeted me with a stiff, “Good morning, Your Highness,” to which I took care not to respond with anything more than a head nod, as Gloria had instructed. Apparently, no staff or domestics were allowed to speak to the royal family unless they were first spoken to except in salutation. They did their work fast. The hairdresser, Louisa, blow-dried my hair until it was stick-straight and then styled it into a waterfall of big, soft curls. Then Rochelle, the makeup artist, applied layers of foundation, powder, blush, mascara, and eye shadow to my bare skin.
“The princess is going on the box this morning, so make sure she’s camera ready,” Gloria instructed Rochelle. When they were finished, they left as silently as they came. Gloria gave me a bunch of shoes to choose from; they were stilettos, about three inches high. Apparently, that was all Juliana owned.
“Perfect,” Gloria said. I gripped a nearby bedpost to make sure I didn’t fall flat on my face. Gloria gave me a quick once-over.
“One last thing.” She went to the dresser and grabbed a small, gold pin. She fastened it to the dress right above my heart, careful not to damage the delicate fabric. “This is a rowan branch,” she explained. “It’s the symbol of the House of Rowan, to which Juliana belongs. We all wear one in the Citadel.” Sure enough, there was an identical pin fastened to her shirt. Thomas had been wearing one, too—as had the General. “But this one is special. It’s linked to Thomas’s KES earpiece. If you press it, you’ll be able to communicate with him.”
“I better not lose it, then, huh?” I said, fingering it absently.
“If you do, there are more in that crystal bowl on the dresser,” Gloria told me. Her mouth quirked at the ends. “Juli can be careless sometimes.”
“Is that what you call her? Juli?” I liked the sound of it. My birth certificate read ALEXANDRA EMILIE LAWSON, but I’d gone by Sasha for so long that I sometimes forgot it wasn’t my real name.
Gloria nodded. “Those of us who know her well.” I wondered if Thomas called her Juli.
“Gloria,” I said. “This interview …”
She pursed her lips, which, I was learning, meant she was trying very hard to think of the exact right way to put something. “It ought to be fine. We have a deal with the CBN. We approve all the questions in advance. But Eloise Dash … she’s a more ruthless reporter than she appears to be. You’ll have to be on your guard with her. Juliana doesn’t like her, but then again she doesn’t like any reporters.”
I took one last look in the mirror. The girl I saw reflected in it looked much more like the girl in the photographs than she did me. Gloria, Louisa, and Rochelle had done their jobs well; I was starting to understand, for the first time, how anyone might mistake me for a princess.
Gloria went to fetch her tablet, and as she passed through a ray of sunlight, I saw something sparkling on her left ring finger.
“Are you married?” I asked, pointing to her hand.
Gloria glanced at the ring as if it was so much a part of her that she had forgotten it was even there. “Engaged.”
“Like me,” I joked weakly. Ugh.
“Oh, I almost forgot!” Gloria rushed to a nearby bureau and started rifling through a carved jewelry box. When she found what she was looking for, she came over and dropped something in my hand—an engagement ring. It had a thin, delicate band of what looked like platinum and a pear-shaped diamond the size of a geode sitting in the center.