Episode 1 · Mature · 18+ private alpha
The ferry to Dunbrae was late, which meant Tilly Hale had forty extra minutes to stand on the deck in the sleet and reconsider every decision that had led her here.
Decision one: becoming a photographer instead of, say, an accountant, or a dental hygienist, or anything that came with sick pay and a desk that didn't move.
Decision two: taking a job with the Marchetti Agency four years ago, when Genevieve Marchetti had looked at her portfolio and said, in the voice of a woman doing someone a great favor. You have an eye, and I have patience, and between us we'll make something of you.
Decision three, the freshest and stupidest: agreeing to spend Christmas photographing a royal husband-hunt on an island so small it had exactly one ferry, one castle, and according to the guidebook, one specific kind of seagull that existed nowhere else on earth.
"Twelve days," Genevieve had said, over a video call so crisp it made every pore on her face look like a design choice. "Twelve days of content, Tilly. The Christmas Court. The whole thing from the Advent ball, the skating gala, the yule log, all of it, right up through Christmas Eve. Dunbrae's never let cameras this close before. If we get the shot that shows what he's actually feeling when he looks at one of these girls we're not just covering the story. We own it."
"And if there isn't a real shot? If he's just pleasant to everyone, the way princes are trained to be?"
Genevieve's smile hadn't moved. "Then you find one anyway. That's the job, darling. You've always been good at finding the thing underneath."
Darling. Genevieve called everyone darling in the tone people reserved for listen carefully, because I will not repeat myself.
Tilly had said yes, because saying no to Genevieve Marchetti this close to contract renewal was not something you did if you wanted a contract to renew, and because, if she was honest, she wanted the assignment. Twelve days in a castle. A story that mattered to someone. Something that would put a little extra in the bank. She could really use a cushion there.
She was doing fine, actually. She had a job, a Nikon worth more than her car, and at the moment, the beautiful view of a small green island rising out of a gray and jagged sea, its cliffs sparkled with the first Christmas lights of the season, the frost which clung and reflected the light.
It was, despite the sleet, despite her frozen fingers, beautiful. She got the camera up and took the shot of the island, lights, and a gull riding the wind sideways like it was showing off.
"You'll want a faster shutter for that gull," said a voice beside her. "He's called Nigel. He's very fast."
Tilly lowered the camera. The man leaning on the rail a few feet away was wearing a simple black coat, and a wool hat pulled low. He was somewhere in his late twenties, dark hair escaping the hat at the ears, a few days of stubble, and a face that was quite distracting.
"Nigel," she repeated. "Nigel, the seagull."
"Everything on this island has a name. It's a small island. We get bored." He nodded at her camera. "Local, or here for the show?"
"The show?"
"The Christmas Court." He said with a gentle smile. "Our Prince is looking for a bride. It will be twelve days, very medieval, mostly an excuse for the tourist board to sell a great many postcards of the castle covered in snow. You've got the look of someone who's here for it."
"That obvious?" She laughed a short, surprised sound that startled a second gull off the rail. "I'm here for the show, yes. Working it, not watching it. Photographer."
"Ah." Something shifted behind his eyes, there and gone, quick as the gull. "Rough gig, from what I hear. They say the prince is dull as a wet Tuesday and the whole thing's a circus built to marry him off before the new year like a prize turkey."
"Do they," Tilly said. "And what do you say?"
He considered this with a gravity that seemed disproportionate to the question. "I say I've met him. He's not dull. He's just tired of being looked at like he's a job to be finished."
Something in the way he said it made her look properly, for the first time, the way she'd look at a subject through the lens rather than around it — not the coat, not the hat, but the set of his shoulders, the careful stillness of a man used to being watched and hating it.
"That's oddly specific for someone who's just met him once or twice at the pub."
"Small island," he said again and smiled, and it did something unfair and immediate to the whole shape of his face. "Everyone's met everyone. I'm Al, by the way."
"Tilly." She didn't offer a hand. Hers were full of camera and the rail was slick.
There was a small, easy silence while the ferry's horn sounded and the island got close enough that she could see individual windows lighting up along the harbor front, small gold squares against the dark.
"Well, Tilly-the-photographer," Al said, straightening off the rail, "welcome to Dunbrae. Try not to let them talk you into anything you'll regret by Twelfth Night."
"Is that a warning?"
"It's an island tradition," he said. "We're very superstitious about Christmas. Something about it changing people." He was already moving toward the gangway, hands in his pockets, collar up against the wind. "Good luck with the gull shot. Nigel's terrible in profile get him head-on."
Then he was gone into the crowd of foot traffic not far away, and Tilly was left holding her camera and feeling like she'd missed something important.
She didn't think about him again until hours later. She had showered and thawed back out in her narrow room above a harborside inn called the Sea Thistle, when she opened the welcome packet the Marchetti Agency's local fixer had left for her and found, on the second page a formal photograph of His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alastair of Dunbrae.
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