Crown Prince Wilhelm had once received his own coming-of-age ceremony while still young, on his eighteenth birthday, when he had been publicly presented before court, army, church, and Empire as the future heir of Germany.
That had been years ago.
Since then, everything had changed.
Wilhelm's attempted murder of Oskar remained known only to the highest figures in the Empire, buried beneath silence, loyalty, and fear. To the public, the explanation was simpler. After his riding accident, the Crown Prince had become mentally unwell and unfit for duty. He lived, but he no longer stood at the center of imperial life.
Oskar did.
He was the acting Crown Prince now, and Germany needed him to be more than a temporary solution. It needed an adult heir, publicly recognized, properly settled, and ready to marry. Above all, the Empire needed continuity and stability, should disaster ever strike the Kaiser.
Legally in 1908 Germany, adulthood belonged to the age of twenty-one. Yet dynastic necessity had its own logic, and court precedent offered enough room to maneuver—especially now since he already had six children recognised as his own and two women attached to him.
Thus, on the 27th of July, 1908, Oskar's twentieth birthday became more than a birthday. It became the day Germany marked him as a man.
Before the sun had fully climbed, church bells rang across Potsdam and Berlin, and from there the celebration seemed to spread through the rest of the Empire. Newspapers did not trouble themselves with the word acting. Their headlines spoke simply of Crown Prince Oskar's Coming of Age.
The people responded gladly enough.
Some celebrated out of loyalty. Some out of curiosity. Some because the Oskar Industrial Group had turned the day into a national festival of discounts, portraits, ribbons, and practical little household luxuries sold cheaply beneath imperial colors. Angelworks especially became half-shop, half-carnival, crowded from morning onward by women, workers, children, and clerks who had no invitation to the palace but still wanted some part of the day.
Oskar woke early, not merely to the usual sound of babies crying, but to the deep ringing of bells beyond the palace walls.
For a moment, he lay still in contemplation. Then he sighed, and so began the historic day.
Before he could properly wake, the household descended upon him. Maids, servants, valets, and attendants pulled him from bed, hurried him through bath and grooming, trimmed, polished, brushed, dressed, and arranged him with almost military discipline. By the time they were finished, he looked less like a man who had dressed himself and more like a priceless object prepared for exhibition.
His formal uniform sat perfectly upon him. Medals and orders gleamed across his chest. Every button, sash, glove, and polished boot had been placed with merciless care.
The rest of the household suffered the same fate.
His children were washed, dressed, and made presentable despite their protests. His women were prepared for the evening with equal seriousness. Karl, Heddy, and the others were drawn into the same machinery of ceremony. No one near Oskar was allowed to look ordinary that day.
Outside, guards stood in neat columns. Carriages entered the palace gates. Flags hung from balconies and windows. Crowds gathered behind police lines, while within the palace, servants, officers, clergy, ministers, and court officials moved through the halls in constant motion.
The morning passed in preparation.
The afternoon passed in rehearsal.
Speeches were reviewed. Names were repeated. The order of greetings, blessings, signatures, bows, dinner, music, and the first dance was explained until Oskar began to feel less like a prince and more like the unwilling lead performer in some vast imperial production.
And then evening came, and with it came the guests.
They arrived beneath the watch of royal and Eternal Guards standing in ordered rows outside the palace gates and along the inner halls, polished, silent, and ready to receive them. Every carriage and motorised vehicle that passed within seemed to enter not merely a residence, but the visible heart of imperial power.
Inside, the palace glittered.
Summer light still lingered beyond the high windows, pale and golden, yet the chandeliers had already been lit. Their crystal flames trembled over marble floors, gilded walls, polished swords, jeweled throats, and uniforms stiff with braid and medals. Silk whispered. Diamonds flashed. Court gowns moved like colored water through the great rooms, and the air held that strange royal mixture of flowers, candle wax, perfume, warm food, and old stone.
This was no simple birthday feast for a prince and his children. Nor was it only a coming of age celebration. It was a declaration, a show of might.
Within the grand ballroom, the imperial family stood upon the raised far end as if in a throne room, elevated above the gathering without needing an actual throne. Before them, the Empire had arranged itself in its natural ranks and circles: royalty and old nobility, ministers and politicians, merchants and industrialists, bishops, officers, and men whose fortunes had grown too large to ignore.
Beyond them, gathered in their own richly appointed corner, stood the foreign world.
Allies had come with polished warmth. Rivals had come because absence would have spoken too loudly. Ambassadors, envoys, royal cousins, military attachés, and quiet observers filled the hall, each pretending to celebrate while measuring Germany's newest Crown Prince with careful eyes.
It seemed as if every major power of Europe, and beyond had come. Even the smaller nations representatives had found reasons to appear, often in the form of daughters dressed beautifully enough to be remembered.
They were everywhere.
Princesses with practiced smiles. Countesses with careful eyes. Young women from ancient houses, dressed by mothers who understood politics and guided by fathers who understood opportunity. They did not stand about the hall like guests. They stood like advertisements, each trying to be as close to Oskar's table as possible.
It was clear they had not come merely to honor Oskar. They had come to judge him, to test him. And, if fortune favored them, to be chosen by him.
Oskar tried not to notice. That, of course, was hopeless.
For all his discipline, intelligence, and strange self-control in other matters, women remained one of his most dangerous weaknesses. He was young, full-blooded, and far too easily aware of beauty. The sight of so many well-dressed, carefully prepared women watching him from across the ballroom stirred instincts in him that no amount of reason could fully silence.
It was one of the reasons his own household was rarely unhappy.
It was also, unfortunately, the sort of weakness that could turn one careless smile into another imperial scandal.
And scandal already clung to him.
He was young, impossibly wealthy, physically overwhelming, and—most dangerously of all—unmarried in the eyes of the law. He had women, yes. He had children, yes. Everyone knew it. Everyone whispered about it. Everyone pretended not to stare at the household table where Anna, Tanya, the children, Karl's family, Bertha, and Hans Albrecht's family had been seated in a place of unmistakable honor.
But none of that changed the legal fact, that there was no princess beside him. No recognized wife. No lawful consort.
To half the ambitious families in Europe, that meant disgrace. To the other half, it meant opportunity.
And so they watched him anyway.
Because Oskar was not some ordinary German prince who had embarrassed himself with a few women and too much money. If he had been, the court would have buried him beneath disapproval long ago. But Oskar was something else entirely, and everyone in that ballroom knew it. His actions were tolerated because his value had grown too vast to dismiss.
By now, he was more than wealthy.
More than handsome.
More than physically imposing.
His books had spread across drawing rooms, universities, officers' clubs, and private libraries. His ideas had begun to trouble men who thought themselves wise. His inventions had entered factories, homes, hospitals, barracks, workshops, and newspapers. Slowly, almost without permission, he had ceased to be thought of merely as a son of the Kaiser.
He had become Oskar, a figure of his own who did not fit neatly into any ordinary category.
Some whispered that his fortune had grown beyond comprehension. Some claimed he was already Germany's youngest billionaire. Others went further and said, half in disbelief, that he might be the youngest billionaire in the world.
The irony was that he still lived under his parents' roof.
He owned no yacht.
He had no great appetite for jewels, private palaces, or useless luxury. He was more often seen riding Shadowmane without even a saddle than showing himself in some grand motorcar. At times, to the horror of those who cared about such things, he still used ordinary passenger trains when traveling among commoners.
Rumor had made him strange.
But it had also made him virtuous in a way no court propaganda could have achieved. To many, he seemed almost selfless: a man who spent fortunes improving the lives of others while treating his own comfort as a minor inconvenience.
To some, he was the future of German strength: tall beyond reason, broad as a fortress, physically imposing in a way that made exaggeration unnecessary.
To others, he was a dangerous mind wrapped in a beautiful body.
To many young women present, he was simply the most valuable unmarried man in Europe.
Before the celebration, letters had poured in by the thousands. Some came from women offering themselves with breathless devotion. Others came from fathers, mothers, uncles, and guardians presenting daughters as if arranging a sale beneath polite language and family seals.
Oskar had read none of them.
Then, before he could dwell on the absurdity of it all, the ceremony began.
Clergy in formal vestments stood beneath the light of the chandeliers. The presence of the church lent gravity to the proceedings, giving even the most cynical courtier reason to lower his voice. Words were spoken that had been spoken in different forms for centuries: duty, obedience, honor, faith, blood, service, and the burden of those born above others.
Oskar endured it patiently.
He stood in black formal military dress, medals and orders arranged across his chest, the cut of the uniform emphasizing the unnatural breadth of his shoulders and the controlled mass of his frame. He looked less like a youth being welcomed into manhood than a commander allowing an old ritual to catch up with what the world already knew.
When the formal blessing ended, relief passed through him like a physical sensation.
Then Wilhelm II stepped forward for the closing address.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Kaiser proclaimed, his voice carrying cleanly across the hall, "today we recognize Prince Oskar as having come into his full responsibilities as a man of the Empire."
He paused.
His eyes rested briefly on his son.
"Germany has grown strong," Wilhelm continued. "Strong in industry, in science, in arms, and in spirit. I thank God for granting this Empire capable sons—and I thank Him for granting us Prince Oskar."
The hall answered as one.
"May God bless Crown Prince Oskar and the German Empire!"
The sound was thunderous.
Oskar inclined his head, his expression composed, a restrained smile touching the corner of his mouth. He had been recognized. The words had been spoken before family, court, army, church, and foreign eyes.
After that, the formalities slowly loosened their grip.
Music rose. Food was served. Glasses caught the light. The palace, which only moments before had felt like a temple of imperial duty, softened into celebration—though the watching never truly ceased.
For Oskar and his household, however, the eyes of Europe mattered less for the moment.
This evening belonged not only to him, but also to his three eldest children. Little Imperiel, Juniel, and Lailael had turned three that very day: wide-eyed, silver-haired, and unnervingly beautiful beneath the palace lights, like tiny figures painted into the world rather than born into it. Their intense eyes made them seem almost unreal, as if some artist had given children the gravity of ancient spirits.
Even the younger ones were there. Azarael, Liorael, and Mirael drooled with open desire as the cake was brought forward, while little Durin, refusing to wait upon ceremony, wriggled free from Heddy's arms and crawled across the table with the grim determination of a conqueror. His chubby hand seized the first fistful of cake before Karl managed to capture the rebellious baby dwarf and pull him into his lap.
Imperiel began to cry.
Durin, with the solemn generosity of a barbarian prince sharing plunder, offered him cake from his own sticky hand.
They ate together.
It was heartwarming.
It was ridiculous.
Bertha's little Alfried watched the whole affair with silent, calculating curiosity, as if already wondering where cake came from and whether its production could be improved. Lailael and Juniel, meanwhile, proved far less philosophical. They demanded the first and largest pieces with the offended fury of small royalty denied their rights.
Off to the side, Cecilie sat with her own baby, little Wilhelm, looking almost abandoned amid the noise and warmth of Oskar's household. Oskar noticed. With a gesture, he called her over and told her to bring the child closer.
She obeyed quietly.
Soon little Wilhelm sat upon Oskar's massive lap as if upon a throne, eating happily while resting his small hands against Oskar's arms and his head against Oskar's stomach.
People laughed.
Even the Kaiser and Empress seemed touched by the sight. Whatever had happened with Crown Prince Wilhelm, whatever madness and violence had torn through the imperial family behind closed doors, Oskar showed no visible hatred toward his brother's wife or child. If anything, he treated the boy with the same easy care he gave the rest of the children.
Hans Albrecht's family watched it all from nearby, still caught between wonder and disbelief. Hans himself looked as if part of him had never fully left the mines. Not so long ago, at this very hour of the day, he might have been digging coal from the earth. Now he sat in the imperial palace, watching princes, princesses, generals, and ambassadors pass beneath chandeliers while his family shared a table with the acting Crown Prince of Germany.
Anna's daughters from her first marriage were there as well, dressed so finely that they looked almost like young princesses despite being common-born. That, too, drew glances. Oskar's favor had a strange way of bending the old rules without asking permission.
For a time, he allowed himself to enjoy it.
Then he felt it again.
The watching.
Not from his women alone, though he knew their eyes were never far from him. No, this was larger. A pressure from the ballroom itself. When Oskar finally looked up, he found a sea of women watching him from every corner of the hall.
Princesses. Countesses. Duchesses. Daughters of old houses and ambitious courts. Some stood modestly beside their mothers. Others were placed with such care that their position could not be mistaken for accident. They wore silk, pearls, diamonds, lace, pale shoulders, jeweled throats, and smiles trained for war.
A few had dressed daringly enough to make even Oskar pause.
He swallowed.
For all the nations of Europe represented in the room, one absence became obvious. There were no Ottoman princesses among them. After a moment, he remembered why. Faith, custom, and law made such a match nearly impossible. A Christian prince like him could not be offered a daughter of the Sultan in the manner European courts traded daughters across borders.
A shame, some reckless part of him thought.
Then another figure caught his eye and drove the thought away.
Near the front of the foreign gathering stood a woman slightly taller than most around her, poised with such effortless certainty that she seemed less placed among the guests than set apart from them.
Princess Patricia of Connaught.
He recognized her at once.
She was bound directly to the British Royal Family, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria herself, and, according to rumor, a talented painter. Through her mother, German blood also ran in her veins, which made her presence in Berlin feel less like courtesy and more like intent.
Oskar noticed her the way one noticed a hidden weapon, not loudly, but with the growing awareness that something beautiful also hid something dangerous.
She was no soft little princess waiting to be led. She stood straight, her posture trained and natural at once, shoulders back, chin level, every movement controlled without becoming stiff. She was twenty-two, if he remembered correctly—old enough to understand the game, young enough to be placed within it. Tall for a woman of her time, perhaps around one hundred and seventy-two centimeters, though still far below him, she carried herself with the polished ease of a woman raised from birth to occupy space without apology.
Her beauty was clear even across the ballroom.
Fair-skinned, almost milky beneath the golden chandelier light, she possessed a complexion that made the ivory of her gown seem warmer by comparison. Her face was finely shaped: blue eyes sharp and watchful, soft brows, a composed mouth, and a look that could pass from royal calm to feline intensity in a heartbeat. There was a healthy strength to her as well, not masculine, not crude, but unmistakable. The set of her shoulders, the firmness of her waist, the trained grace of her hips and figure all suggested a woman who rode, walked, exercised, and understood her own body.
Her gown was English in cut, ivory silk with a quiet sheen, fitted cleanly through the waist before falling in controlled elegance to the floor. The fabric followed her figure with deliberate discipline, revealing the hourglass shape beneath without ever becoming vulgar. Lace softened the bodice. Fine embroidery moved across the silk like frost over glass. Pearls rested at her throat, and diamonds at her ears caught the light whenever she turned her head.
The neckline was modest enough to preserve dignity, yet daring enough by older courtly standards to hold attention. It revealed the pale line of her collarbones, the smooth curve of her shoulders, and the carefully supported fullness of her full round breasts beneath structured silk. Oskar tried to keep his gaze upon her eyes.
He did not entirely succeed.
Nor, he suspected, had she expected him to.
The gown had been chosen with intelligence. It did not beg for admiration. It commanded it quietly. It made her look royal, refined, healthy, fertile, and dangerous in precisely the way a princess at such a gathering needed to be. Beauty, properly arranged, was diplomacy. Patricia seemed to understand that perfectly.
Her light brown hair had been pinned with exacting elegance, soft enough to flatter her face, disciplined enough to survive an evening of judgment. White gloves covered her slender hands. Her mouth remained composed. Her blue eyes stayed clear.
Everything about her said, without a word: "I belong here."
And she knew exactly why she had been invited.
At first, Patricia looked at him with the sharpness of a hunter measuring dangerous prey. Then curiosity entered her gaze. Then, when their eyes met too directly, composure betrayed her. A blush rose faintly in her fair cheeks. She looked away.
Then back again. Each time, she attempted control. Each time, she almost succeeded.
But there was always some small betrayal: a glance lowered too late, a breath gathered too quickly, color suppressed but not erased.
More worrying was where her eyes went next.
To his family.
Anna, Tanya, and the children sat together, joined by Karl's family, Bertha, and Hans Albrecht's family as well. By courtly standards, it was a strange table: young, rich, intimate, influential, and deeply improper. Many seated there possessed real weight within the German Empire now, yet to old nobility and foreign royalty, several of them remained commoners—people elevated not by blood, but by Oskar's favor.
Patricia's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
She did not approve of the arrangement. That much was obvious. Yet there was something more in the slight tension of her fingers, in the way her gaze lingered on the women, then on the children, then returned to Oskar.
Displeasure, certainly. Judgment, without question, but perhaps jealousy too.
Oskar could only guess. To someone like Patricia, power was supposed to be inherited, ordered, and properly arranged. A prince surrounded by women who had not been born into court was already troubling. A prince who seated them openly in honor, with children beside them, before all Europe, was worse.
It was improper, almost insulting, and yet Patricia looked back at him again. Longer this time.
Oskar thought he understood her type, or at least, he thought he did.
She had come to measure him. To decide whether marrying him would place her near the heart of Germany's rising power, or whether he was too unstable, too strange, too uncontrollable to be worth the scandal. She would watch, smile, blush, listen, and later, perhaps, send her impressions back to Britain in careful language.
After all, Britain would want to know.
How had Germany's most disruptive prince gathered so much money, so many inventions, so much influence, and so much loyalty before even being properly married?
Oskar did not know whether Patricia had come as a woman, a princess, or a spy.
Perhaps she was all three.
Then, sadly, his family time came to an end.
The first dance of the night was approaching, and his mother, seeing that he still remained safely at the table, came to remove him from it with the calm ruthlessness of a commander correcting a cowardly subordinate.
She ordered him to do his duty.
To entertain the guests.
To be seen.
And, though she did not say it so bluntly, to begin the work of finding a wife.
A moment later, Oskar walked toward the center of the ballroom like a defeated general marching to execution.
His brothers noticed.
Several smiled.
Luise, especially, looked as if she might begin laughing at any moment.
Tradition demanded the first dance.
Apparently, so did his mother.
And Oskar had learned long ago that refusing either too openly only gave his enemies something solid to hold against him.
Then the first dance was announced.
Fate—or careful planning—parted the crowd before him. And Princess Patricia of Connaught stood directly in his path.
She stood before him with her head barely reaching the level of his chest, forcing her to look up—not slightly, but noticeably. The difference between them was impossible to ignore. Oskar was all height, breadth, black uniform, medals, and controlled force. Patricia was ivory silk, fair skin, pearls, perfume, and royal composure arranged into the shape of temptation.
Her blue eyes lifted to his. There was curiosity in them, calculation too. And something softer beneath both, though she hid it quickly.
Oskar smiled down at her, or at least tried to. For one dangerous moment, his gaze betrayed him, lowering from her eyes to the pale line of her collarbones and the full, carefully supported curve of her chest beneath the structured silk of her gown.
He caught himself too late.
Patricia noticed.
The corner of her mouth curved with the faintest hint of mischief, as if she had just discovered a weakness in a fortress wall.
Oskar offered his hand. She accepted without hesitation.
Her white gloves were gone, as were his black ones. There was nothing between them now but skin. Her fingers were slender, delicate, and slightly cool, so small in his grasp that his hand could have closed around hers with almost absurd ease. His own hand looked enormous by comparison, heavy and scarred, more like the hand of some ancient warrior than a courtly prince.
The difference in size was immediate, unmistakable.
What struck Oskar most was not merely how small she seemed, but how vividly he could feel her through that simple touch. Her lightness. Her warmth. The softness of her hand inside his. Compared to him, she seemed almost fragile.
And yet she did not behave like something fragile.
Just as clearly, Patricia felt the opposite from him. The vast solidity of his body. The immovable strength beneath the formal uniform. Two meters tall, nearly two hundred kilograms of controlled mass, standing with calm ease while other men shifted and fidgeted under the pressure of the room.
When his hand closed around hers, it was not forceful. It did not need to be.
Dominance was there regardless, a physical fact neither of them could pretend away.
He felt her react. A fractional tightening of her fingers. A breath drawn just a little deeper than necessary. She masked it almost instantly, almost.
Up close, he saw the faint bloom of red warming her fair cheeks.
The music swelled, and the dance began.
When his hand settled against her back and drew her closer, she stiffened for the smallest instant. Not enough for anyone watching to notice, but enough for him to feel. Then she mastered herself and leaned in, lifting her face to meet his eyes—eyes that were frustratingly far above her own.
Oskar, unfortunately, was not looking at her eyes. He was yet again looking lower, not intentionally, and definitely not subtly enough to escape her notice either.
Patricia's lips formed a small, playful pout.
"Your Highness," she said, composed but teasing, "my eyes are not that far down. They are higher."
"Ah, Princess," Oskar replied smoothly, with the shameless confidence of a man lying badly and enjoying it, "I was merely admiring your necklace. It is truly magnificent. Very eye-catching."
She smiled despite herself.
Then, without missing a beat, he switched languages, "I hope you are enjoying Berlin."
The accent landed like a quiet shock, posh British and polished. Almost too perfect.
Somewhere in the buried, reincarnated part of Oskar's mind, a man in a tailored dinner jacket, with a pistol under his arm and a woman on each side, gave silent approval.
James Bond would have been proud.
Patricia's brows lifted before she could stop them.
"I was not aware Prussian princes were educated in such… refined London accents," she said lightly.
"They aren't," Oskar replied, guiding her into the first turn with a strength that made the movement feel inevitable rather than requested. "I am simply—as you may have noticed—more varied in my interests than most."
She laughed softly.
The court noticed.
As they moved, Patricia became increasingly aware of him—not merely his size, but his stillness. He did not dance like a man desperate to impress her. He did not rush, strain, posture, or overplay his strength. He simply existed, and the room seemed to adjust itself around him. The dance did not command him. It bent around him.
For a moment, the rest of the ballroom faded.
The chandeliers, the music, the watching nobles, the foreign envoys—all of it seemed to blur at the edges.
There was only him and her. It unsettled her, yet it thrilled her as well.
Up close, she noticed the scars on his right palm—ugly, unmistakable marks where a bullet had once torn through flesh at close range. Evidence of how narrowly death had missed him. To some, such scars would have been a blemish. To Patricia, they were something else entirely: proof that danger had touched him and failed to keep him.
The thickness of his forearm did not escape her attention either. Nor did the calm, watchful intelligence in his eyes. He did not look at her with the eager hunger of a man who desperately wanted her royal favor. He did not look like a suitor begging to be chosen.
He wanted nothing of note from her, even if he did find her pleasing to the eye. That should have made him safer.
Instead, it made him far more dangerous. Because his gaze still lingered when he thought she would not notice. Not with desperation. Not with apology. But with frank masculine interest, restrained by discipline rather than absence of desire.
Patricia understood the difference, and quite dangerously to her irritation, she liked it.
She had heard the rumors, of course. That he ruled his household with an iron hand. That he tolerated no disorder, no infighting, no disobedience. That beneath the charm and strange kindness was a will capable of crushing anything placed against it. And most of all, to get close to him would undoubtedly cause a scandal she could never recover from.
That should have warned her, but instead, it made her more intrigued by him.
"You are quite different from the rumors," she said carefully. "From the way you speak and carry yourself, you seem far gentler than the title Iron Prince suggests."
"Oh?" Oskar allowed a faint smile. "That is disappointing. Do I not look like a tyrant of steel made manifest? The embodiment of mighty Hercules, slayer of lions and hydras? Or perhaps great Alexander himself?"
Her lips curved despite herself.
"Well, speaking of which," she replied, amused, "I had hoped to see you at the Olympics this summer. People said you might attend, yet you did not. Instead, you allowed your countrymen to take home the prizes. Although the Games are said to continue until October. Surely you could still join?"
Oskar smiled.
He had intended to go once. The absurd length of the Games—nearly half a year—still amused his modern mind, though it was perfectly ordinary for the time.
"It is quite simple," he said. "It would not have been fair."
She blinked. "Not fair?"
"Realistically," he continued calmly, "could anyone have broken my records if I had competed?"
The statement was arrogant. And yet, coming from him, it made a terrible kind of sense.
Patricia broke into light laughter at his audacity and, without thinking, struck his chest playfully with her hand mid-dance.
Several onlookers gasped.
Oskar did not even flinch, which only made it worse.
For a moment, her hand remained there against him, and she felt the dense, immovable strength beneath the uniform. It was like striking stone covered in cloth. Her laughter softened, and something in her expression shifted before she could hide it.
She was drawn to him. She could feel it clearly now, and it irritated her deeply.
Attraction was supposed to be controlled, arranged, weaponized. Used when useful and hidden when inconvenient.
It was not supposed to seize her by the breath in the middle of a ballroom.
Yet when Oskar leaned in slightly to guide her through another turn, she felt his warmth, his solidity, and the overwhelming sense that if he chose to stop, the whole dance would have to flow around him.
She did not pull away.
Oskar, for his part, had no illusions.
Patricia was beautiful—undeniably so. Balanced, refined, fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and dangerously aware of her effect. She had the sort of beauty that could rule a salon before speaking and disturb a man's judgment without ever appearing improper.
But she was also an emissary, a dangerous question wrapped in silk.
If she married him, she would surely seek access. Influence. Answers. She would want to understand how his mind worked, how a man so young had reshaped Germany. And she would probably send that knowledge home.
Besides, there was no guarantee such a marriage would soften the Entente or draw Britain closer to Germany. Her political value, despite her royal blood, was uncertain. Still… he could not deny the pull.
"Your dress suits you," he said evenly. "It was chosen with intelligence."
Her eyes snapped up with amusement.
"Thank you," she said softly. "I take that as praise."
Oskar smirked as he said, "As it was intended."
Thus they danced on under the watchful gaze of others, chatting casually as if none of it bothered them at all. Although both of them understood the truth of the moment, this was not true courtship. It was reconnaissance—on both sides.
And neither was quite certain who was winning.
But elsewhere in the ballroom, certainty existed of a different kind.
Luise stood rigid near the edge of the floor, fingers curled so tightly together that her nails pressed half-moons into her palms. She watched in silence as yet another beautiful, older woman moved with her brother—claiming his attention with ease she herself had never mastered.
Oskar had been her first kiss. That memory burned sharper than pride, sharper than reason.
Seeing another woman's hand on his chest, her body pressed close to his, felt less like etiquette and more like theft. Luise's jaw tightened as she fought the childish, dangerous urge to cross the room and remind the princess—very loudly—that some things were not hers to touch.
At the long household table, the mood had shifted just as violently.
Bertha leaned forward, eyes narrowed, posture tense as coiled steel. Anna's expression had gone cold and unreadable, the kind that preceded decisive action. Tanya muttered something under her breath that was very much not a prayer.
Even Cecilie—usually careful, usually restrained—had gone pale, lips pressed thin as she watched the dance unfold.
They were women who had shared Oskar in one way or another, who had accepted each other, protected each other, and understood the unspoken rules that governed him. And this British princess was not part of that understanding.
The closeness was wrong. The familiarity worse. The playful slap to his chest—too intimate, too confident—crossed a line none of them had granted permission to cross.
Had it not been for Karl's sudden, frantic intervention—murmuring sharply, one hand braced against the table—and Gustav's quiet but immovable presence behind them, the scene might have ended very differently.
More than one noblewoman would have learned that night that titles did not make one untouchable.
Across the ballroom, laughter rose. Applause followed a turn in the dance. The court smiled, unaware—or pretending not to notice—the tension coiling beneath silk and jewels.
And as the orchestra carried the final notes into the vaulted ceiling, suddenly everything changed. Trumpets sounded, and a truly unexpected announcement came.