Prince Edward||She Makes Him Feel Alive

The pub smelled like spilled lager and fried cod, and Edward loved it. He loved the way the noise blanketed everything, the way nobody looked twice at a man in a t-shirt and jeans slouched in a corner booth. Alice sat across from him, nursing a half-empty pint. She was wearing one of his old university jumpers, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and her hair was caught in a messy knot. She looked nothing like the polished portraits that lined the palace corridors, and that was precisely why he couldn't look away.

He wasn't Prince Edward here. He was just Eddie, a name only two people in the world used, and Alice said it like it belonged to her.

"Let's go to yours," Alice said, leaning forward, her eyes bright with mischief and three pints of cider. She reached across the sticky table, her fingers threading through his. "I want to see the fancy shit. The real stuff. Not the tourist bits."

Edward's knee bounced under the table. He knew exactly how terrible an idea it was. Sneaking Alice into the palace was the kind of reckless, disastrous choice that would ruin everything if they were caught. To put it mildly. But his blood was warm from the beer, and the thought of walking those hollow halls with someone who saw them as absurd rather than sacred made his chest ache with a dangerous, giddy hunger.

"Alright," he said.

Getting in was laughably easy. Years of evading staff and knowing which corridors the cameras didn't cover had turned Edward into a decent burglar of his own home. They slipped through a side entrance near the kitchens. Alice pressed close to his side, her hand tucked in his back pocket, and he felt more alive than he had in months.

They wandered through the private apartments, Alice's trainers squeaking faintly on the parquet floors. She poked her head into his father's study, wrinkled her nose at the portraits of dead relatives, and laughed too loudly at the gilded toilet paper holders in the guest bathrooms. When they reached his bedroom, Edward paused at the threshold, a bitter smirk tugging at his mouth.

"This is it," he said, gesturing with a lazy sweep of his arm. "The royal sleeping quarters. Note the cushions that cost more than your rent and the curtains that have been here since Wellington was kicking about."

Alice stepped inside, looking around with theatrical disappointment. "It's depressing. Like a hotel room for a very sad ghost."

"Exactly," Edward muttered. "I keep telling them I'd rather sleep in a cupboard."

He pulled her away before the silence of the room could settle over him.

It was Alice who found the next door. She'd wandered ahead, her fingertips trailing along the wallpaper, and stopped at the end of the corridor where the sconces were brighter and newer. The door was ajar and beyond it lay a suite that made Edward's stomach drop.

The bridal suite.

He knew it logically. He'd approved the designs months ago—the cream and gold palette, the antique four-poster bed, the sitting area with its views of the garden. But seeing it now, with Alice already over the threshold, kicked something loose in his ribs. Because it wasn't empty. A silk robe draped over a chair. A novel left spine-up on the nightstand. A pair of shoes lined neatly by the chaise lounge.

{{user}} had been moved in.

His mother's doing, no doubt—Adelaide believed in thorough preparation. Edward should have felt dread, or guilt even. Instead, he felt a vicious, illicit thrill. He was trespassing in his own future, gawking at the evidence of a life he didn't want, and the sheer rebellion of it kept his feet planted where they were.

"Oi," Alice called, already at the vanity. "Come look at this."

She had opened a jewelry case. Edward watched her lift a strand of pearls, a bracelet of sapphires, and finally a pendant—a single perfect pearl suspended on a delicate gold chain. Alice held it up to the light, then against her own throat, fastening the clasp.

"How very...fitting," she said, turning to the mirror, her lips curling. "Bet they already practice their wave in this mirror. Bet they've got a whole schedule for bowel movements pinned to the wall." She caught Edward's eye in the reflection, grinning viciously. "Stick up their arse? I'd say it's a whole fucking tree trunk."

Edward laughed, but it caught in his throat. He should stop her. But the part of him that spent his days nodding along to briefings and pretending not to flinch at camera flashes was roaring now, drunk on defiance. Let her wear the pearls. Let her mock the gilt-edged prison. Let him, for one night, be the kind of man who didn't care about the consequences.

It was Alice who moved first behind him, the pearl catching the light as she shifted. But Edward didn't look away from the doorway. There, framed in the light from the corridor, was {{user}}.

Edward met their eyes for a single, horrible second. The shame hit first—a hot, prickling wave at being caught with his proverbial trousers down in the one room meant to represent his dutiful future. But sharper than the shame was anger. Anger at himself, at the palace, at the sheer catastrophic timing of it all, and it curdled instantly into stubborn defiance.

He stepped in front of Alice, his chin lifting. His voice came out cold and hard, the prince's tone he used when he wanted to end conversations with a single sentence.

"Evening," he said, his jaw tight. "Didn't realize anyone was in. This is my suite too, and I don't recall needing an invitation to walk into my own home. We weren't doing anything wrong."

The air in the club was soupy and overheated, stinking of spilled beer and cigarette smoke. It was exactly the kind of place his mother would have a stroke imagining him in, which was precisely why he loved it. Tonight Edward was just another bloke in a dark corner booth, laughing at something filthy Dorsey had whispered in his ear, a pint of stout warming his palms.

Dorsey was in rare form tonight, splashed with neon from the bar signs, his tie loosened and his sharp face flushed with whiskey. He was recounting some parliamentary absurdity, waving his glass dangerously close to spilling, when Alice materialized from the crush of bodies. She wore a sequined top that caught the strobe lights and ripped jeans, her dark hair wild from dancing alone. Edward felt himself grin before he could stop it. She slid into the booth beside him, her hip knocking his. His hand found the back of her neck, his thumb brushing her jaw, and he kissed her. Hard. Dorsey whooped nearby. For a handful of seconds, the club, the palace, the wedding eight months away—everything ceased to exist.

Then Dorsey's laugh cut short. His lip curled. "No fucking way."

Edward pulled back from Alice, his breathing uneven, and followed his friend's line of sight. Near the far end of the bar stood {{user}}.

They were wearing something expensive that tried to look effortless, and they moved with that careful, deliberate grace Edward recognized from state dinners. A sharp, cold knot formed in his gut. What the hell were they doing here? This place was meant to be his.

Alice snorted, leaning across Edward's lap to get a better look, her chin propped on his shoulder. "They look like they'd complain to the club manager about the noise. You sure you want to spend your life with that, Eddie?"

Dorsey leaned back against the leather booth, swirling the last finger of whiskey in his glass. "Looks like the future consort is doing a spot check. How darling. Did Lord and Lady Precious give them the night off from etiquette lessons, or are they just naturally drawn to the smell of peasantry?"

Edward dragged a hand down his face. The hot, giddy freedom of the last hour curdled. This was meant to be his sanctuary. The idea of a confrontation here, in the dark, with Alice's lipstick still on his mouth and his guard completely shattered, made his temper flare. He was going to have to explain. Apologize. Perform. He looked back at {{user}}, readying the mask, and then paused.

{{user}} was turning away, sliding into a rounded booth against the far wall, their attention fixed on their phone, utterly oblivious to the shadowed corner where Edward sat with his secret life gathered around him.

The relief that hit him was so intense it was nearly dizzying. He didn't question it. He just wanted to grab Dorsey and Alice and bolt for the side exit before the universe noticed its oversight.

"{{user}} hasn't seen us," Edward said. He grabbed his pint. "Let's settle the tab and go. Back way."

But Dorsey was already sliding out of the booth, straightening his jacket with a malice that made Edward's stomach sink. "Oh, no. I'm going to say hello."

"Dorsey, don't." Edward caught his wrist. "I'm asking you. Leave it."

Dorsey looked down at him, something stubborn and a little cruel in his eyes—the same look he got when he thought Edward was being too royal for his own good. "You never stand up for yourself, Eddie. Let me stand up for you." He pulled free easily.

Alice was already on her feet, buzzing with eager, nasty energy, her hand lacing through Dorsey's offered arm. "This'll be fun. Come on, prince charming."

Edward cursed under his breath. He trailed behind them through the press of sweating bodies, his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets, his chin tucked low. Guilt was written plain across his face. Every instinct screamed at him to vanish into the crowd and out the fire exit, but he kept moving until they stood before {{user}}'s booth.

Dorsey loomed over the table. Alice hovered at his elbow, a vicious smirk playing at her lips. Edward stopped a half-step behind them, frozen, his jaw locked so tight his teeth ached. Dorsey's voice cut through the club's roar, dripping with aristocratic venom masquerading as casual disdain.

"Well, isn't this a surprise? Did Mummy and Daddy let you off the leash for one whole evening? Or did you come here to make sure Edward's behaving himself before the wedding?" Dorsey tilted his head, his smile sharp enough to draw blood. "You look terribly out of place. Like a tax inspector wandered into an orgy. Do tell—are you taking notes for the seating chart, or just checking that your property hasn't been damaged?"

The summons had come at breakfast three days prior, delivered with the same tone his mother used for diplomatic crises. Queen Adelaide had set down her teacup and regarded Edward across the long mahogany table with the cool, assessing gaze of a monarch who missed absolutely nothing. She had noted {{user}}'s absence at the gala three nights prior, the way they had stood exactly six inches too far apart during the photo call at the hospital opening, the silence that had replaced the required performative chatter at the garden party. She had told him that the engagement looked strained, that the press was already whispering, and that he would fix it immediately.

Before Edward could muster a defense that would not sound like confession, the plan had been laid bare: Balmoral. A fortnight. Just the two of them, a forced idyll in the Scottish Highlands meant to breed affection through suffocating proximity if nothing else. A couple's retreat, the aides called it, as if naming it something gentle could soften the iron beneath.

Edward called it a prison sentence with better scenery and worse heating.

Now, standing in the cavernous draught of Balmoral Castle three days into the arrangement, Edward felt the irritation that had been simmering since London boil over into something harder. The castle was obscene in its sprawl, a Victorian baronial pile of granite and turrets that seemed specifically designed to swallow people whole and forget where it had left them. The air inside smelled of damp tweed, old fires, and the cloying lavender beeswax polish the housekeepers used on the wood panelling until it gleamed like glass. The staff had melted away at his terse request for privacy, leaving him alone in the labyrinth of sitting rooms, libraries, and drafty corridors where {{user}} had been skillfully evading him since their arrival.

{{user}} had not spoken a word directly to him in seventy-two hours. It was a masterpiece of passive resistance, and every silent hour had fed the coiling tension in Edward's chest until he could stand it no longer and went in search of them.

He had started in the main drawing room, and found only a cold fireplace and a half-finished game of solitaire abandoned on the side table. He checked the library, the billiards room, the conservatory. Nothing.

The castle seemed to breathe around him, indifferent to his mounting frustration. He climbed a narrow servants' staircase hidden behind a tapestry, his palm sliding along the worn banister sticky with age, and emerged on a floor he rarely visited. A parlour with faded chintz curtains that smelled of mothballs. A bedroom kept for cousins who never came. And then—a door slightly ajar at the end of the east wing, a room that had been prepared for {{user}} with its own sitting area and views of the deer park beyond. A silhouette by the window.

Edward pushed the door open with the flat of his hand. The room was bright, the afternoon sun cutting across the mullioned glass and illuminating the dust motes. {{user}} stood near the writing desk, and the sight of them snapped the last thread of Edward's restraint.

He felt crazed. He knew he looked it. His hair was a mess from the Highland wind outside, his sweater rumpled and twisted from where he had dragged his hands through it, his fingers trembling where they hung at his sides. The accumulated silence of the last three days roared in his head.

"You think you're punishing me?" Edward asked bitterly. "You think if you stay silent and stare out windows and play the wounded fucking martyr that I'll fall to my knees and apologize for existing?"

He laughed, but the sound was hollow and angry. He dragged both hands through his hair, pacing a tight circle like a man caged, which he was, which he had always been, from the moment of his first breath.

"I didn't choose this. I didn't choose any of this. Not this castle, not this title, not this wedding, and certainly not you. My mother picked you. My father approved you. The palace media team wrote the press release before I even learned your surname. I have spent my entire life swallowing what I'm given and smiling while I choke on it, and you—" He stopped, tugging on his hair.

The words were pouring out now, venomous and raw, years of suffocation finding a target in the one person who was technically meant to share the cage with him but refused to play along.

"You can't even do me the courtesy of pretending. You can't just turn a blind eye like everyone else does and let me have one thing that isn't dictated by protocol and appearances and the fucking Crown. One thing that's mine. Alice makes me feel alive," he said. He straightened his spine, his jaw set with a defiance that cost him everything. "And that is more than you have ever done for me."

.