Chapter Text
By the time Max Verstappen was shown to his room for the third time in one afternoon, he had decided two things.
First: the palace was offensively large.
Second: if one more person looked at him as though he had tracked mud over the marble simply by existing, he was going to say something spectacularly rude in Dutch and let them suffer for it.
He was seventeen, nearly eighteen by the day—he counted, because he was not a child and he refused to be treated like one, no matter how many stiff-backed footmen seemed determined to prove otherwise.
The palace had that sort of grandeur which made every corridor feel like a dare.
It sprawled over the cliffside in pale stone and gold light, all terraces and archways and long windows that caught the sea until the whole place looked as though it had been built out of salt, sunlight, and insolence. Beyond the highest balconies, the water shone blue and hard under the afternoon sky. Beneath them, the rocks fell away in white-slashed drops to the sea.
It was beautiful.
It was also impossible to navigate.
Max had already learned that there were at least three staircases that ended nowhere useful, two corridors that seemed to exist only to make guests feel stupid, and one gallery of painted ancestors whose expressions he found personally offensive.
The maid showing him to his chambers—if chambers was even the right word for a suite of rooms large enough to house a small army—kept her chin lifted and her lips thin, as though she suspected he might steal the silver simply by glancing at it.
He had half a mind to assure her he was only interested in stealing a nap.
Instead, he said nothing.
The palace spoke French to him in every polished surface and clipped syllable. Most of the staff used it in quick, efficient bursts, only occasionally switching to the graceful local patter of Monaco when they were speaking among themselves.
Max understood enough to know when he was being discussed and not enough to be pleased about it. Thankfully, there was at least one mercy in the whole absurd arrangement: he was not the only person in the building who could speak Dutch, and the first time one of the attendants had realised it, the poor man had nearly dropped a tray.
That had been the only thing that had kept Max from laughing in his face.
A pity, really. He would have liked to have seen the tray fall.
His room turned out to be in one of the older wings, high up and close enough to the royal apartments that the corridors narrowed and the carpets deepened beneath his boots. The windows looked out over the sea, and the light coming through them was all gold in the evening, turning the pale walls warm. There was a writing desk by the bed, a screen embroidered with hunting scenes, a washstand inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a wardrobe so large that Max briefly considered checking if it contained another smaller wardrobe inside it, just for the laugh.
There was, of course, a servant waiting beside it all.
“His Highness has ordered fresh clothing brought,” the man said in careful English, as though Max might fracture under the strain of being spoken to directly. “The tailor will attend tomorrow.”
Max glanced down at himself. “You mean this isn’t acceptable?”
The servant’s expression did not change. “It is not customary.”
“That’s a shame,” Max said. “I was growing attached.”
The man blinked.
Max smiled, all teeth.
For a moment he could almost hear his old housemates back in the Netherlands, snorting into their cups and calling him impossible. The memory struck sharply enough that he had to turn away to hide it, moving toward the window instead. He planted his hands on the sill and stared out at the sea until the room stopped feeling too clean for him.
From here the palace gardens rolled down the cliff in green terraces, clipped hedges and fountains and marble statues whose faces had weathered into solemnity. Somewhere below, somewhere out of sight, there were cypress trees and citrus and hidden paths and all the elegant poison of a court that had been smiling at itself for centuries.
A principality built on sea air and ritual and old money was always going to be dangerous.
Max had not quite decided whether he liked that.
He heard the servant clear his throat behind him. “Someone will come to teach you French at five.”
Max turned. “Someone?”
“I am not informed of all arrangements.”
“Very useful.”
The man looked as though he intended to be offended, but Max had already gone back to staring out the window. The servant left after a stiff bow, closing the door with the faint, resentful precision of someone who had been absolutely certain a foreign jester would be unbearable and had not yet been proven wrong enough to enjoy it.
Max let out a breath and dropped onto the edge of the bed.
It was too soft. That was another insult.
He looked around the room again—his room, apparently, at least for the foreseeable future—and dragged a hand through his hair. He had arrived at the palace with one valise, one satchel, and exactly enough dignity to remain irritating.
The journey itself had been long enough to make the whole thing feel like a mistake halfway through: boat, carriage, another carriage, then the final ascent up toward the sea and the palace and the certainty of being stared at by every servant with a pulse.
A court jester.
That was what they had called him in the letter.
Not actor, not entertainer, not companion, not whatever flattering nonsense nobles used when they wanted to decorate a servant with a ribbon and pretend that changed the hierarchy.
Jester.
Max had read the word three times before he had agreed.
The letter had been formal, almost comically so.
An invitation to the princely household. An opening. An opportunity. A post which, if he accepted, would place him in the service of the young prince as a source of amusement, commentary, and occasional relief from court obligations.
There had been no mention of how a seventeen-year-old from elsewhere was supposed to feel about being described in such terms. There had only been the promise of a place, a wage, a room, and—most importantly, because Max had always hated pretending that he was above such things—the chance to be near the centre of something alive.
The palace was alive.
He could feel it in the way the corridors hummed with movement. In the way voices carried and vanished. In the way doors opened and closed with soft decisive sounds, as if every room in the building had secrets worth guarding. Even the air seemed to know where it was.
He was still trying to work out whether he had been brought here to entertain or to be tested.
Possibly both.
A knock came at the door.
Max stood immediately, because whatever else he was, he was not stupid, and he had already learned that one did not keep nobles waiting in palaces like this. He opened it to find a woman of about fifty, dressed in black and cream, with silver at her temples and an expression that could have cut glass.
She took one look at him and sighed, as if she had been personally burdened by his existence.
“Master Verstappen,” she said, and if the title sounded like a judgment, he decided not to mention it. “I am Madame Vilar. I oversee portions of the household and will be instructing you in court expectations.”
“Lovely,” Max said. “Will there be homework?”
Her gaze sharpened.
He smiled brightly.
It did not help.
Madame Vilar informed him in brisk, immovable English that he was to be punctual, discreet, clean, silent when required, and amusing when permitted. He would not wander unannounced into the royal apartments.
He would not address members of the court as if they were his equals, no matter how much they deserved it.
He would not run through hallways.
He would not climb on furniture.
He would not speak over the prince.
He would not, under any circumstances, insult the Grand Chamberlain in front of the assembled household.
Max listened with the solemnity of a man receiving instructions for bomb disposal. It was far too many rules to recall at all hours.
When she had finished, he said, “So I can insult him privately.”
Madame Vilar did not blink. “You may think about doing so privately.”
“Encouraging.”
“You will also be taught French by Monsieur Delaunay.”
“Ah,” Max said. “The mysterious someone.”
“You are not to call him mysterious.”
“Then why did you make him mysterious?”
For the first time, something like amusement threatened her mouth and was immediately smothered. “You are bold.”
“I’ve been told it’s one of my more charming qualities.”
She looked him up and down. “By whom?”
Max paused. “Usually me.”
At that, she actually made a sound—small, clipped, nearly inaudible, but unmistakably a laugh if one knew what to listen for.
Max filed that away with interest.
Madame Vilar seemed to realise at once that she had made a mistake and recovered her composure so quickly that he almost admired her. “At five,” she said, “you will be expected in the blue salon. Do not be late.”
Then she swept away, leaving behind the faint scent of lavender and victory.
Max shut the door and grinned at the empty room.
Well. This place might not be a complete waste after all.
He spent the hour before his lesson unpacking, which in his case meant removing a change of clothes from his bag and leaving the rest of his life in a pile near the wardrobe.
The clothes he had arrived in were plain, practical, and familiar, but when he laid them over the back of a chair and took in the room around him, they looked suddenly too ordinary to belong here.
Too direct. Too honest.
Nothing in the palace was honest-looking.
Even the sunlight seemed to have learned manners.
By the time a bell sounded somewhere deep in the walls, Max had washed his face, rolled up his sleeves, and gone back to the wardrobe to inspect the hanging garments sent for him by the household. They were not yet his proper motley—that would come later, he was told, after fittings, after approval, after the sort of ceremonial nonsense courts loved—but there were already hints of it in the fabric.
Dark colours. Deep wine, black, blue so dark it nearly dissolved into shadow.
Fine tailoring. A jacket with a narrow waist and longer lines than anything he had ever worn before. The cloth felt expensive just to look at.
There were samples laid atop the shelves for tomorrow’s fitting, and one sleeve cuff embroidered in gold thread with a pattern of leaves and stars that made his fingers still.
He laughed under his breath.
Of course the palace would dress him like a storybook delinquent.
Someone had taste.
At five on the dot, a servant escorted him to the blue salon.
It was not a salon in the modern sense, if such a thing existed; it was an antechamber with sky-coloured walls and a ceiling painted with pale clouds, where the windows faced west and the evening light made everything look underwater. A harp stood in one corner. There were gilded chairs, a small table set with a silver pot and cups, and a carved hearth with no fire in it yet. The room smelled faintly of lemon polish and wax.
And there, near the far window, standing with one hand on the back of a chair as if he had been interrupted mid-thought, was a young man Max recognised only from portraits and formal appearances glimpsed in the press of the household.
Charles.
Prince of Monaco.
He was slimmer than the paintings made him seem, and somehow quieter. The sort of person whose stillness was not absence but concentration. He wore dark trousers, a pale shirt with the sleeves rolled once at the forearm, and no ceremonial finery at all—only a fitted waistcoat in midnight blue that caught the light when he turned his head. His hair was slightly disordered, as though he had been running a hand through it and had not yet bothered to fix it.
He looked up as Max entered.
The room changed.
That was the first thing Max noticed, though he did not yet know how to name it. Not in any mystical sense. Simply in the ordinary, immediate way that happened when a room had been built around one person’s gravity. The air sharpened. The silence adjusted itself. Even the light seemed to find him.
Charles’s gaze held on Max for one second longer than politeness required.
Then, perhaps remembering himself, he inclined his head.
“Master Verstappen, I hope you're settling in well after your journey.”
His English was very good. Better than Max had expected, though with a cadence that made every word sound carefully placed.
Max bowed, because he had been told to, and because unlike some people in this building he could recognise a moment when one was being tested. “I have no complaints yet, Your Highness.”
Charles’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but the ghost of one.
Max immediately felt something in his chest shift in response, which was irritating, because he had not been in the palace long enough to start taking orders from his own heartbeat.
A man entered through the side door with several books under one arm and the expression of someone who had been made to teach the impossible for a living. He was middle-aged, neat, and exhausted in the exact way that suggested his intelligence had not protected him from administrative choices.
“Monsieur Delaunay,” said Charles, with obvious and faintly resigned relief. “Thank you.”
So this was the mysterious someone.
Monsieur Delaunay gave Max a look that implied they were both about to suffer for the benefit of the state and he should please remember to be grateful.
The lesson began.
It was worse than Max had feared and better than he had expected. Monsieur Delaunay did not have the patience of a saint, but he did have the patience of a man who had spent years teaching arrogant children and had developed a cold fascination with repetition.
Charles remained in the room for the first quarter-hour, ostensibly to observe, though Max suspected he was also checking whether the household had recruited a fool or merely a problem.
Max, for his part, did not mind being observed.
He minded being corrected by a prince while being corrected by a tutor, but that was only because he had a functioning sense of injustice.
“Again,” Monsieur Delaunay said, tapping the page.
Max repeated the phrase.
Charles, who had been standing by the window with his hands loosely clasped behind his back, spoke softly. “Your pronunciation is improving.”
Max looked at him. “That sounded suspiciously like encouragement.”
Charles’s expression remained composed. “It was.”
Monsieur Delaunay made a noise that might have been a sigh or a warning.
Max, on principle, looked delighted.
Charles’s gaze flicked over him, quick and assessing, and then away again. “You learn quickly.”
“I have to,” Max said. “Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my life staring at people who look disappointed in me, and I’d rather be able to understand the insult.”
This time Charles did smile, though only slightly.
It was unfair how much Max liked it.
The tutor barked another word at him, and Max repeated it with enough accuracy to avoid open failure, then mangled the next one with such determination that Charles had to turn toward the window to hide the sound that escaped him. It was not a laugh exactly. More the sharp inhale of someone trying very hard to remain dignified and losing by a fraction.
Max saw it anyway.
He saw the way Charles pressed his lips together afterward, as if surprised by his own reaction. He saw the way the prince glanced back at him once, as though uncertain whether he should be pleased or annoyed.
Max’s grin turned sly on its own.
Oh.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
Monsieur Delaunay continued through grammar, verb endings, and the kind of courtly phrasing Max was certain existed only to humiliate the newly arrived.
Charles stayed near the window for another few minutes, then moved to the table and began leafing through a stack of correspondence with the air of someone who had expected to work in peace and had been interrupted by destiny.
Max made a point of not staring.
That lasted almost a minute.
Charles felt the attention before he saw it, apparently, because he looked up from the papers and caught Max at it.
Max did not look away first.
“Does the palace always keep you this busy?” he asked in English before he could stop himself.
The tutor froze.
Charles raised one brow, not offended, merely mildly intrigued. “Does it seem so?”
“Yes,” Max said. “It seems deeply rude.”
Monsieur Delaunay coughed into one hand as if trying not to laugh.
Charles’s eyes narrowed with the faintest suggestion of challenge. “And yet you are here.”
Max spread his hands. “I’m not the one who asked for the lesson.”
Something changed in Charles’s face then, so quick Max might have imagined it if he hadn’t been watching so closely. A pulse of amusement. Interest. Recognition, perhaps, though of what he could not yet say.
The prince set the papers down and straightened.
“Continue,” he said to Monsieur Delaunay.
But he did not return to the window.
He remained by the table, listening now with half his attention turned toward the lesson and the other half reserved, unmistakably, for Max.
The realisation struck with such force that Max nearly stumbled over a line of French and had to recover by glaring at the page as though it had personally betrayed him.
Charles was watching him.
Not out of duty. Not out of obligation.
Because Max had made him laugh.
Because Max had said something rude enough to be interesting.
Because, perhaps, Charles had been bored before he entered the room and now had to pretend he wasn’t.
Max hid his grin behind the next sentence.
There was something almost intoxicating about it.
He had never before been in a place where his mouth might matter.
When the lesson finally ended, Monsieur Delaunay gathered his books with the tight expression of a man who knew he had just survived the first day of a long campaign. He bowed to Charles, then to Max, and escaped with all possible haste.
Charles remained.
The silence after the tutor left did not feel empty. It felt charged. Max stood where he was, waiting to be dismissed, or spoken to, or judged, or perhaps all three.
Instead Charles crossed the room and picked up a bell-shaped paperweight from the table, turning it once in his hand.
“Do they intend to teach you the whole language at once?” he asked.
“I think they intend to make me miserable in instalments.”
That earned him a real smile this time—small, but unmistakable. The kind that looked as though it had to travel farther to reach the surface than it did for other people. Max felt the sight of it land in him like a hand at the back of the neck.
Charles set the paperweight down. “You are not as easily cowed as Madame Vilar expected.”
“I’m devastated she noticed.”
“She notices everything.”
Max tilted his head. “Including whether I’m intolerable?”
Charles’s eyes flicked with something sharp and amused. “That, I think, she had determined before you arrived.”
Max pressed a hand to his chest in theatrical injury. “Then I have been judged before introduction. How cruel.”
For a moment the prince only looked at him.
Then, unexpectedly, Charles laughed.
It was brief, a breath of sound rather than a full laugh, but it changed his face in an instant. The carefully held lines of him softened. The distance between prince and person narrowed enough that Max could see the boy underneath all of it—tired, bright-eyed, and trying not to show that he was anything at all.
Max went still.
Charles seemed to realise what he had done only after it happened. He looked almost startled by his own amusement, and for one second there was the faintest pink in his face before he composed himself again.
Max, because he had the instincts of a survivor and the manners of a menace, said, “There. That sounded much better than the official version.”
Charles’s mouth threatened to betray him again. “The official version of what?”
“Your life, presumably.”
That made Charles look properly at him, with interest now, no longer guarded. “And what do you imagine the unofficial version is?”
Max considered him.
The room had gone so quiet he could hear the sea beyond the windows, the distant wash of water against the cliffs. Sunlight had tipped toward evening and bled amber across the pale floor. The prince stood in the middle of it all like a figure someone had painted too carefully to be true and then forgotten to make ordinary.
Max’s heartbeat, traitorous thing, had decided to become a problem.
He answered with the first thing that came to mind. “That you’re bored out of your mind and pretending not to be.”
Charles stared at him.
Then, very slowly, the corner of his mouth rose again.
“Well,” he said, “you may prove useful.”
Max bowed with exaggerated elegance, because if he was going to be useful, he intended to do it insultingly well. “I live to serve, Your Highness.”
Charles’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer than before. There was something there now—something alert, perhaps amused, perhaps dangerous in the way all interesting things were dangerous.
Then he looked away first.
Max decided, with the silent certainty of a man about to make a series of increasingly poor life choices, that he would like to see Charles laugh again.
Not because it was polite.
Not because it would help the lesson.
Because it had seemed, for one impossible moment, like seeing the sun through a crack in a sealed door.
And because Max was already beginning to understand that if the palace wanted him to be a fool, he might as well become the kind that remembered exactly who was watching.