The sound hit her first—a collective, respectful sigh as a hundred people folded at the waist. Then the light, a supernova of crystal chandeliers that made her blink. And finally, the name, echoing in the sudden, cavernous space of her mind: Your Highness.

Daisy’s playful smile didn’t just freeze; it cracked and fell away, leaving her face feeling stiff and alien. The world, which moments before had felt intimate and full of promise, tilted violently. The man beside her, her Al, was no longer just Al. He was a prince. He was the reason for the bowing, the deference, the entire glittering spectacle.

He was a lie.

The blood drained from her face, a cold tide pulling all the warmth of the week out to a distant, unreachable sea. He was looking at her, his whiskey eyes filled with a desperate, pleading sorrow she couldn’t bear to see. “Daisy,” he began, his voice a low murmur against the swell of the waltz music that was just now restarting.

She took a step back, the motion jerky and unnatural. Her simple navy dress, which had felt elegant and perfect moments ago, now felt like a cheap costume. She was an imposter, a contest winner, a joke. The host of ‘Past Imperfect,’ the professional cynic who dissected historical frauds for a living, had been played for the ultimate fool.

“Don’t,” she whispered, the single word sharp enough to cut through the noise between them. She turned on her heel, the sensible pumps she’d worn suddenly feeling like lead weights. She didn’t run. She walked, head held high, a rigid column of humiliation moving against the tide of exquisitely dressed guests who were now beginning to move toward the prince. She could feel his gaze on her back, a physical weight, but she didn’t look back. She pushed through the perfumed, gawking crowd, past the footmen in their livery, and burst out of the grand entrance, back into the cool, clean night air.

The sleek black car was still waiting. “The hotel,” she choked out to the driver, sliding into the plush leather interior that now felt like a cage. The palace, a floodlit dream against the dark sky, receded in the rearview mirror. With it, the man she thought she knew disappeared, replaced by the silhouette of a crown.

Back in her room, she tore the dress off as if it were on fire, balling it up and throwing it into a corner. She scrubbed her face raw, trying to wipe away the memory of his expression, of the hope that had bloomed in her chest. Every shared moment from the past week replayed in her mind, now tainted and grotesque. His talk of the ‘family business.’ His longing for a ‘normal life.’ The overgrown ruins, the hidden bakery, the shared bottle of cider on the stone wall—was it all just a carefully curated royal experience for the commoner?

A sharp knock echoed on her door. She knew who it was. She ignored it.

“Daisy, please.” His voice, muffled by the heavy wood, was stripped of its royal formality. It was just Al’s voice. Pained. “Please, just let me explain.”

“Explain what?” she called out, her own voice trembling with a rage she hadn’t known she possessed. “How you research your podcast guests for maximum emotional manipulation? Or is there a royal playbook for this? ‘How to Woo a Cynical American in Five Days.’”

“It was never like that.” The handle rattled. “I was a coward. I heard you on the air, and you were… brilliant. Fierce, and funny, and you saw through all the gilded nonsense. I wanted you to meet me, just me. Not the title, not the expectations. If I had told you who I was, you would have hung up the phone.”

“You don’t know that!” she shot back, pacing the room like a caged animal.

“Yes, I do! Your entire podcast is about how ridiculous my world is! And you’re not wrong! I just… I wanted a chance for you to see the man before you dismissed the prince.”

She finally ripped the door open, confronting him in the hallway. He’d taken off his jacket and loosened his bow tie. His hair was disheveled, his eyes desperate. He looked less like a prince and more like the man from the windswept cliff.

“You didn’t give me a man, you gave me a character,” she said, her voice dangerously low. “A charming, down-to-earth history buff named Al. He doesn’t exist. He was a lie you told to get what you wanted. So congratulations, Your Highness. You won. You got your on-location series. Was I a good prop?”

“No,” he said, his voice cracking. He took a step closer, and she flinched back. “Every moment was real. Everything I felt… everything I *feel*… is real. The lie was my name, not my heart.”

“Your heart?” she scoffed, a bitter laugh escaping her lips. “How can I possibly believe that? My entire career, my entire *personality*, is built on seeking the truth. On exposing the pretty story to find the complicated reality underneath. You turned me into one of your weeping diamond legends—a cautionary tale.”

He paled, the reference landing like a physical blow. “That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it? I have a flight at seven a.m. I’m going home. You can have your tourism board send the invoice for my time.” She slammed the door in his face, the sound echoing the shattering of the last few days. She slid down the door, buried her face in her knees, and for the first time since she was a child, she cried.

The next morning, she was a ghost moving through the motions. She packed her bags, checked out of the hotel without a word, and took a taxi to the airport. The sky was a pale, washed-out grey, matching her mood. She moved through security in a daze, her mind already back in her sound-proofed closet, a place of safety and solitude. A place where princes couldn’t reach her.

She was standing at the gate, staring blankly at the tarmac, when a familiar scent cut through the sterile airport air. Warm, buttery almonds.

She turned. There he was. Not in a suit, but in the same navy jacket and worn boots from the day they met. No entourage, no security, though a few people were starting to stare and whisper. In his hands, he held a small, grease-spotted paper bag.

“Your flight doesn’t leave for forty-five minutes,” Alaric said, his voice quiet. “And you can’t fly on an empty stomach.” He held out the bag. Inside were two of the flaky, almond-filled croissants from the tiny, hidden bakery.

Her throat tightened. It was such a small gesture. Such a specific, personal, *real* thing amidst the colossal lie.

“A pastry isn’t going to fix this,” she said, though her voice lacked its earlier venom.

“I know,” he replied. “But I hoped it would get you to listen for two minutes. Daisy, you were right. I lied. And it was a stupid, selfish, cowardly thing to do. But I did it because I was falling for the woman who said, and I quote, ‘royal succession laws are just centuries of a family convincing everyone else their kids are more special than anyone else’s kids.’ How was I supposed to introduce myself after that?”

A flicker of a smile touched her lips before she could stop it. “I did say that.”

“You did,” he affirmed, a hint of the old warmth returning to his eyes. “You challenged everything I’ve ever known. You made me look at my own history, my own life, with fresh eyes. I didn’t create a character to fool you. I just… left out the part of my biography I like the least. The part that has nothing to do with who I am when I’m talking to you.” He took a step closer. “Please don’t go.”

“I don’t belong here, Alaric,” she said, the name feeling foreign on her tongue. “I’m a podcaster who records in a closet. You’re a prince who lives in a palace. It’s not a fairytale, it’s a logistical nightmare waiting to happen.”

“Then we’ll figure out the logistics,” he said, his intensity startling her. “But we can’t do that if you’re on the other side of the ocean. Just give me one more day. One day of complete, brutal honesty. No titles, no secrets. If, at the end of it, you still want to leave, I’ll drive you to the airport myself.”

She looked from his earnest face to the pastry bag, then back again. The cynic in her head was screaming, a loud, insistent alarm bell. But the woman who had laughed with him on a stone wall, who had felt her heart leap every time he called, whispered, *What if he’s telling the truth now?*

She let out a long breath and took the bag from his hand. “One day,” she said. “And you’re buying lunch.”

He didn’t take her to another charming, rustic spot. He took her to the palace. Not through the grand entrance, but through a series of quiet side doors and private corridors until they stood before a heavy, steel-reinforced door. He unlocked it, and they stepped inside a climate-controlled vault. The Crown Jewels of Eldoria lay before them, a blinding collection of history and wealth, displayed on beds of dark velvet.

“The gilded cage,” she murmured.

“The gilded cage,” he agreed. He led her past crowns and scepters to a single item on its own pedestal. It wasn’t the largest stone, but it was the most mesmerizing. A deep blue diamond that seemed to drink the light, a drop of captured twilight. The Weeping Diamond of Eldoria.

“Queen Isabella the Honest,” he began, his voice soft. “She commissioned this not as a security system, but as a reminder. To herself, mostly. That the crown is heavy, and power invites falsehood. That the only thing a ruler truly has is their word.”

He turned to face her, his back to the priceless artifacts. He was just a man in a room full of shiny rocks.

“You told me on the phone that the curse wasn’t about heartbreak, but about truth,” Daisy said, her voice steady. “About the unraveling that happens after a lie is told.”

“My life has been unraveling since you walked away from me last night,” he confessed, his gaze unwavering. “Because the lie I told you is threatening the most important truth I’ve ever found.”

He reached out, not to touch her, but just holding his hand in the space between them. “My name is Alaric Christian Theodor of House Valois. My title is Crown Prince of Eldoria. My family’s business is the impossibly complicated task of helping to govern a nation. And I am completely, irrevocably in love with you, Daisy Miller. The snarky, brilliant, beautiful woman who records a podcast in her closet. That is the truth. All of it.”

The air left her lungs in a rush. The cynic in her head finally went silent, silenced by the raw, terrifying sincerity in his eyes. He wasn’t performing. He was surrendering.

She looked at the diamond, the symbol of so many stories, and then back at him. Her story. Her complicated, messy, unbelievable reality.

Slowly, she stepped forward and placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, warm and solid.

“The legend says the diamond weeps for the lies told *afterward*,” she said, quoting his own words, her own voice, from what felt like a lifetime ago. A genuine smile, the first one in twenty-four hours, spread across her face. “So, no more lies, Your Highness.”

A look of profound relief washed over his features. “Al,” he corrected her softly. “To you, it’s always just Al.”

And there, in the quiet heart of the treasury, surrounded by the weight of his history, he leaned in and finally kissed her. It wasn’t a fairytale kiss. It was better. It was real, earned, and full of the promise of a thousand complicated, wonderful, honest days to come.

Several months later, the familiar opening music of ‘Past Imperfect’ faded out. “Welcome back,” Daisy’s voice filled the airwaves, as crisp as ever. “We’ve just been discussing the political maneuvering behind the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.”

“And you’ve completely neglected the romantic aspect,” a second voice interjected, smooth and warm with a familiar Eldorian accent. “It was also a love match, you know. History isn’t all politics and pragmatism.”

“Says the man who inherited a country,” Daisy quipped, and in her small, sound-proofed closet, she looked across the microphone at her new co-host. He grinned, sliding a warm, flaky almond croissant across the desk toward her.

“It just makes me an expert on the subject,” Al said, his eyes sparkling. “Now, about that Weeping Diamond theory of yours…”

Daisy laughed, a full, happy sound that filled the small space. She leaned into the microphone. “Alright listeners,” she said. “Let’s debate the prince.”