instead of one. Really embarrassing to be at a wedding with only one champagne fountain.” “Alex,” Henry says in that maddeningly posh accent. Up close, the waistcoat under his suit jacket is a lush gold and has about a million buttons on it. It’s horrible. “I wondered if I’d have the pleasure.” “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” Alex says, smiling. “Truly a momentous occasion,” Henry agrees. His own smile is bright white and immaculate, made to be printed on money. The most annoying thing of all is Alex knows Henry hates him too—he must, they’re naturally mutual antagonists—but he refuses to outright act like it. Alex is intimately aware politics involves a lot of making nice with people you loathe, but he wishes that once, just once, Henry would act like an actual human and not some polished little wind-up toy sold in a palace gift shop. He’s too perfect. Alex wants to poke it. “Do you ever get tired,” Alex says, “of pretending you're above all this?” Henry turns and stares at him. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” “T mean, youre out here, getting the photographers to chase you, swanning around like you hate the attention, which you clearly don’t since you're dancing with my sister, of all people,” Alex says. “You act like you re too important to be anywhere, ever. Doesn’t that get exhausting?” “Tm ...a bit more complicated than that,” Henry attempts. “Ha.” “Oh,” Henry says, narrowing his eyes. “You're drunk.” “T’m just saying,” Alex says, resting an overly friendly elbow on Henry’s shoulder, which isn’t as easy as he’d like it to be since Henry has about four infuriating inches of height on him. “You could try to act like you're having fun. Occasionally.” Henry laughs ruefully. “I believe perhaps you should consider switching to water, Alex.” “Should I?” Alex says. He pushes aside the thought that maybe the wine is what gave him the nerve to stomp over to Henry in the first place and makes his eyes as coy and angelic as he knows how. “Am I offending you? Sorry I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else. I know that must be confusing for you.” “Do you know what?” Henry says. “I think you are.” Alex’s mouth drops open, while the corner of Henry’s turns smug and almost a little mean. “Only a thought,” Henry says, tone polite. “Have you ever noticed I have never once approached you and have been exhaustively civil every time we’ve spoken? Yet here you are, seeking me out again.” He takes a sip of his champagne. “Simply an observation.” “What? I’m not—” Alex stammers. “You’re the—” “Have a lovely evening, Alex,” Henry says tersely, and turns to walk off. It drives Alex nuts that Henry thinks he gets to have the last word, and without thinking, he reaches out and pulls Henry’s shoulder back. And then Henry turns, suddenly, and almost does push Alex off him this time, and for a brief spark of a moment, Alex is impressed at the glint in his eyes, the abrupt burst of an actual personality. The next thing he knows, he’s tripping over his own foot and stumbling backward into the table nearest him. He notices too late that the table is, to his horror, the one bearing the massive eight-tier wedding cake, and he grabs for Henry’s arm to catch himself, but all this does is throw both of them off-balance and send them crashing together into the cake stand. He watches, as if in slow motion, as the cake leans, teeters, shudders, and finally tips. There’s absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. It comes crashing down onto the floor in an avalanche of white buttercream, some kind of sugary $75,000 nightmare. The room goes heart-stoppingly silent as momentum carries him and Henry through the fall and down, down onto the wreckage of the cake on the ornate carpet, Henry’s sleeve still clutched in Alex’s fist. Henry’s glass of champagne has spilled all over both of them and shattered, and out of the corner of his eye, Alex can see a cut across the top of Henry’s cheekbone beginning to bleed. For a second, all he can think as he stares up at the ceiling while covered in frosting and champagne is that at least Henry’s dance with June won't be the biggest story to come out of the royal wedding. His next thought is that his mother is going to murder him in cold blood. Beside him, he hears Henry mutter slowly, “Oh my fucking Christ.” He registers dimly that it’s the first time he’s ever heard the prince swear, before the flash from someone’s camera goes off.