She was quiet on the last leg of the flight, from Frankfurt to Zurich. She had nothing left to say. She was so grief-stricken she was numb. The loss of her friend, the absence of the man she loved, how hopeless their situation was, no matter how much they loved each other, and being torn from the place she had come to love for the past nine months—all of it together was almost more than she could bear. And now, in spite of the joy of seeing her father again, she felt as though she were going home to prison, to be trapped in Vaduz for eternity, doing her duty to her father and their country, sacrificing herself more than ever before. She felt as though she were being punished for having been born royal. It had become, and had always been for her, an intolerable burden. She felt torn between what she had been taught she owed her ancestors, her country, and her family, and what her heart longed for, Parker, the only man she had ever loved.

The plane landed in Zurich, and her father was waiting for her at the airport. He put his arms around her, and there were tears in his eyes. He had been so desperately worried about her in those final hours. He couldn't have borne it if he had lost her. He looked gratefully at Max and Sam for getting her out before something terrible had happened. The news reports he had been following closely had gotten worse since she left Asmara.

She looked up at him, and smiled, and he could see instantly that a different person had come home. She was a woman, and not a girl anymore. She had loved and lived and worked and grown. And as it had done to others before her, the beauty of Africa and all she had learned and discovered there had crept into her very soul.

They waved her through customs in Zurich as they always did. They never even glanced at her passport. They didn't need to. They knew who she was and smiled at her. This time she looked at them and didn't smile back. She couldn't.

She got into the Rolls beside her father, with his familiar driver, and the bodyguard in the passenger seat. Sam and Max were following in another car, with two other bodyguards who were happy to see them. They weren't as devastated as Christianna was. It had been a job to them, although they had come to love it, too. And they were also sad to be back. Their old familiar world suddenly looked so different to them, just as it did to Cricky.

Cricky said little on the drive to Liechtenstein. She held her father's hand in silence and looked out the window. It was autumn and the weather was beautiful. But she missed Senafe. He knew everything that had happened, or thought he did. He knew about Fiona, and of Christianna finding her. He thought what he was seeing was her deep shock over that. He had no idea that what he was seeing was her sense of desolation over losing Parker too. Even if she hadn't completely lost him yet, she knew she would. And even if they met in Paris, there was no way they could continue doing so, without creating a scandal, like one of Freddy's, and she wouldn't do that to her father. She couldn't. She owed him more than that.

“I missed you, Papa,” she said, as she turned to look at him. He was looking at her so tenderly that she knew yet again that she couldn't break his heart by betraying everything she'd been born to. So she was offering her own heart as a sacrifice instead, and Parker's. Two hearts for one. It seemed a terrible price to pay for duty.

“I missed you, too,” her father said quietly. She held his hand, and once they reached Vaduz, she saw the familiar palace where she had grown up. But it no longer felt like coming home to her. Parker was home. Senafe was home. The people she had loved there had been home. The people in the life she had been born to had all become strangers to her in the last nine months. She had come home a different woman. And even her father knew it.

She got out of the car quietly. The servants she had grown up with were waiting for her. Charles came bounding up to her, and as he put his paws on her and licked her face, she smiled. And then she saw Freddy, waving to her from the distance. He had come from Vienna specially to see her. And in her heart of hearts, she felt nothing. The dog followed her inside, and she heard someone shut the door behind her. Freddy put his arms around her and kissed her. Charles barked. Her father smiled at her, and she smiled sadly at all of them. She wanted to be happy to see them, but she wasn't. She had been deposited in a family of strangers. Everyone who spoke to her called her Your Serene Highness. It was exactly who she didn't want to be, who she hadn't been for nine extraordinary months. She didn't want to be Christianna of Liechtenstein again. All she wanted to be was Cricky of Senafe.





Chapter 14


Once home, Christianna continued to follow news of the situation in Eritrea with intense interest. She was worried about her friends. And the situation did not sound good. There were continuing border violations, and many people had already been killed. Eritreans were starting to flee the country again, as they had before. The war was slowly getting under way, and although she hated to admit it, her father had been right to force her to come home.

Her heart still ached over Fiona. She thought constantly about the laughter they had shared, how angry Fiona had been when she found out that Christianna was a princess, and she felt that she'd been holding out on her by keeping it a secret. She thought of all the good times they'd had together, and that terrible morning when they'd found her, and how horribly she had died. Christianna could only hope that the end had come fast. But even if in seconds, she must have faced such agony and terror. It was hard to get that hideous image out of her head, of Fiona, naked, like a rag doll, lying facedown in the mud and rain, having been stabbed again and again.

In both good and bad ways, Christianna had changed forever in Eritrea. She had loved every moment of it, the people she'd met, worked and lived with, the places she had seen. It was all woven into the fiber of her being, and now she felt more like a stranger here than there. In Senafe she had been herself, the best self she had ever been. In Vaduz she had to be the one she had resisted all her life. In fact, she had to give herself up almost completely to be there. She had to surrender to duty and history. And worst of all, in order to be who she was destined to be, she had to give up the man she loved. She couldn't think of a worse fate. It felt like a living death to her every day. She loved her father and her brother, but being back in Vaduz continued to feel like a life sentence in prison to her. She had to force herself to get out of bed every day and do what was expected of her. She did it, by sheer force and selfdiscipline, but she felt as though a piece of her died every day. No one saw it, but she knew it. She was withering inside.

She and Parker wrote to each other by e-mail every day. She called him in Boston a few times once she was back, but he was afraid to call her. Christianna didn't want anyone aware of him, nor for anyone, particularly her father, brother, or security, to see his name on a message lying somewhere. E-mail was the only communication that was safe. And even there she held out no hope for the future to him. There wasn't any. And misleading him now, or harboring hopes herself, would have been too cruel. They had no hope, all they had now were memories of a golden time, and the love they shared.

She loved her exchanges with him, their laughter, even if only on screen. He told her how his work was going, and she told him about her days. Most of the time she just told him what she felt. She was more than ever in love with him, and he with her.

She attended numerous state events with her father, and two dinners in Vienna. And they went to an enormously fancy party in Monte Carlo, given by Prince Albert. It was the Red Cross Ball, which had particular meaning for her, although she had had no real desire to attend the ball. She was back in her traces again, the yoke of duty on her neck, her father's hostess in Vaduz and Vienna, and ever on his arm when they went out.

Freddy was living in Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna, and playing all over Europe. He traveled on yachts with friends, and spent a week in St. Tropez in September. As always, the paparazzi followed him, hoping to get some tidbit or scandal. Lately, he had been better than usual, but the press knew, as Christianna and her father did, that with Freddy it was only a matter of time before he was in the soup again, and being served up on a silver platter by the press. He had visited Victoria in London several times, and she was engaged again, to a rock star this time, in honor of whom she had gotten a huge heart tattooed on her chest, and dyed her hair green. Freddy loved hanging out with her. She moved in a racy crowd that suited him. And once in a while, when he had nothing else to do, he came home for a visit to Vaduz.

It unnerved him to see how mature Christianna had become, how determined her efforts to please their father. She visited the sick in hospitals and orphanages constantly, went to see old people in convalescent centers, spoke at libraries, and posed constantly for photographs. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to do, without a single word of complaint, but when he looked into her eyes on one of his visits home, what he saw there made his heart ache. Even Freddy could see the price she was paying for the life she led.

“You need to have more fun,” he told her one morning over breakfast, on a gloriously sunny day in Vaduz toward the end of September. “You're getting old before your time, my love.” She had turned twenty-four that summer, and he was about to turn thirty-four, with no sign whatsoever of his settling down or growing up.