The private royal lounge at the airport had been designed to feel calm, exclusive, and impossible to embarrass.
This was optimistic architecture.
At the moment, it contained one twelve-year-old prince built like a controlled incident, one nine-year-old princess with better judgment than most adults, six security men trying not to look like they were guarding a diplomatic summit involving minors, and Hale standing near the window with the expression of a man who had accepted long ago that royal children were simply another category of threat assessment.
Nero was being patient.
This was alarming in itself.
He sat forward in one of the leather lounge chairs, long legs stretched out too far, one foot bouncing, white-blond hair tied back badly because he had refused help and Nayra had refused to fix it afterward on principle.
