“Jah, I’m his brother,” Johan said, relaxing his hold on Nya. “Who are you?”

“This is my drug dealer, Lars,” Lukas said, expression perfectly serene. He even smiled a bit, as if he truly enjoyed tormenting Johan.

Lars elbowed him. “Not funny, Luk.”

“Lukas,” Johan bit out. “Please. Can we talk somewhere?”

“No. You’re busy with your fiancée and I have royal duties to attend to,” Lukas said. “Come on.”

He tugged at his friend’s sleeve, and Lars adjusted his hold on his backpack and looked back over his shoulder apologetically as Lukas strutted away.

“Where is your bodyguard?” Johan called after him.

“Probably wherever yours is,” Lukas shouted without looking back.

“Lukas!”

Lukas raised one fist in the air, unfurled his pinkie, and twisted his wrist. Johan let out a string of curses.

“What was that?” Nya asked, replicating the movement. Johan cupped his hands around hers to stop her.

“It is the most offensive gesture in our culture,” he explained through his teeth. “It means ‘sit on a short blade and spin.’”

“Oh dear,” Nya exclaimed, then let out a peal of laughter. Johan didn’t see what was funny. “Your people are so violent! Honestly! Knife legs and blade sitting and all of this. Don’t you have any nice, nonweapons-oriented phrases?”

She blinked a few times, and he could almost feel it physically—her willing him to calm down.

He took her hand and started walking, slowly, in the opposite direction of where Lukas had gone.

“We have some very lovely terms of endearment,” he said after letting the cold breeze whipping up the cliff whisk away his anger.

“Like what? And I hope they are better than Sugar Bubble.”

Johan paused, trying not to be hurt. He knew what it was like being called a name you hated. “You don’t like Sugar Bubble? I can stop, if it bothers you.”

“No! I was just trying to be cool,” she said awkwardly. “I like it when you call me that.”

“Well, I like it when you call me Phoko,” he said, feeling warmth at his cheeks. “Here are some other nonweapon-related names you can choose from: schneckelein, mausez?hnchen, zuckermaus, hasenfürzchen.”

“And, what are those?”

“Little snail, little mouse tooth, sugar mouse, sweet little rabbit fart.”

She burst out laughing and leaned into him. “I think I will stick with Sugar Bubble.”

“Okay. Sugar Bubble-Fürzchen, it is.”

She swatted at him with her free hand, but her other hand held his tightly.

“Hey. With your brother. You helped raise him after your mother died, yes?”

“Ouay,” Johan replied morosely.

“I think you should talk to him again,” she said. “Talk with him.”

“He’s been going to the best therapists in Europe since he was a child,” Johan said.

“You think he needs a therapist more than he needs a brother?” she asked.

“I’m saying . . .” Johan huffed out a cloud of condensation. “I’m saying that I’m worried that he doesn’t need me. That if I try to talk to him, it will only get worse. He’s been distant since before I left for Thesolo, but I hoped it would just . . . go away?”

“He wants to talk to you,” Nya said confidently.

“How do you know?”

“No one tries this hard to get a reaction out of someone they don’t want to talk to.”

“Hmm,” he said.

“Hrim!” she grunted, then looked up at him. “What does that mean, by the way? The word you said earlier? I like the feel of this word. Hrim!”

Johan was still worried about his brother, but he couldn’t resist the laughter that bubbled up in him, obstructing his stress.

“It means this,” he said, and then he leaned down and pressed his mouth against hers. “Hrimmm,” he groaned into her mouth as she gasped, their lips catching softly once, twice, three times.

Her cold fingertips came up to his face and stroked his cheek before she pulled away.

“Oh.” She looked a bit dazed, and though the kiss had been brief, it left bright stars circling around Johan’s head. No, not stars. Camera flashes.

Johan had allowed himself to forget that this was his life. Parading around for paparazzi. He was used to it, but this felt wrong. This thing with Nya wasn’t real, but it wasn’t staged like him happening to wander out of the palace without a shirt. The photographers hadn’t been invited here.

“That’s enough,” Johan said as the three men advanced with their cameras. Phillipe, Hans, and Krebs, the local photographers who made their living from photos of Johan, not the foreigners who showed up when their papers needed some Jo-Jo jus. Being a tabloid prince was like running a mamm-and-papp business in a way; people depended on him to make a living at this point. He didn’t want to put anyone out of work, but he wouldn’t expose Nya to an ambush. “You got your photos, so you can leave now.”

“Aw, come on, Jo-Jo. Why did you call us here if not to take photos?”

“I didn’t call you,” Johan gritted out.