Ali wanted to throw up.

He had really done it this time. Coming on this trip was his escape from royal life. He picked a spot nearly across the world from his Father’s City, the Zhabaiye Household, and all that came with it. No sneaking, no humiliation, no family secrets whispered about by maids and waiting staff.

New Hudson, the gritty paradise, was free of such things. Here, Ali could be himself—or even find what ‘himself’ meant — with treasured friends who would like him and respect him for who he was.

Was royal life so inescapable?

He sat ruminating as the writer Julio Vasquez talked easily of his family to a complete stranger. The writer was wrong, of course—or rather incomplete. True, his grandfather had been a television producer and from that humble position made himself a kingdom.

He did not know the grip of utter fear that Grandfather held over Ali’s family.

This stranger spoke of Ali’s grandfather as though he were some sort of magician—a creator who had come out