Author's Note 1- I've updated the questions on my profile, sorry for the inconvenience! This won't change any of the order of the shifts, but it correct a mistake that I noticed in almost every meeting the prince questions set submitted. It's my fault, for not being clearer, but please get this done immediately!

Prince Fitz's POV

He couldn't remember the last time Luke hadn't sought refuge in the garden after running away. It was as if his brother had some sort of magnetism towards the flowers and the trees, even when it was raining. He expected to see a very wet Luke appear back inside in around ten minutes, but by the way Jadie was storming off, Luke might have wanted to get back here quickly.

Fitz was thankful the selecting process was over, but this raised new worries, particularly what he would do once the girls finally arrived. He had a week to prepare conversation topics, figure out how he would appear to the girls, and figure out which girls would work with him best. Jadie had promised them binders with the girls' applications and other information, and he hoped that she could get them to him soon.

Jadie was currently in the process of marching a soaking Luke back into the room, and he was leaving wet footprints behind them, much to Jadie's irritation. Luke looked fairly done with being a human being, and Sam was laughing at him from the other side of the room. Jadie fixed that by raising her clipboard in Sam's direction, and he soon fell silent.

"Fitz, would you mind joining us?" Jadie called to him from where Sam and Luke were, and he walked over to them, avoiding the puddles that Luke had dripped onto the floor. Luke just sighed in greeting, and Sam grinned at him, which meant he was up to his usual tricks.

Jadie, turning to an assistant who was hovering behind her, grabbed a stack of binders in three distinct colors and passed them out to the boys. Sam staggered under the weight of his five green binders, while Luke stared at his five red binders with a look of confusion. Fitz was pleased that Jadie has finished them early, but five seemed a little excessive, even for Jadie Flores's standards. His binders were colored a pleasant blue, his favorite color.

Fitz walked out of the room, trying to steady the binders, and made his way up to his room, nodding at passing guards and trying to look as normal as possible while he carried the binders. He heard footsteps behind him, and Luke came up next to him, mostly dry and still carrying all of his binders in his arms.

"How on earth were you able to run and carry those?" Fitz asked, looking at his brother with an incredulous expression on his face. Luke shrugged, and continued to walk with Fitz.

When the two reached their rooms, Luke darted inside his without so much as a look back on Fitz, leaving him shaking his head and continuing towards his own entered it and shut the door behind him before letting out a profound sigh of relief.

Fitz set the binders down on his desk, amid the neat stacks of files and other political things he had been working on before the lottery, gently taking a book off the desk and setting it back on the bookshelf so he could ring a butler up to bring him a mug of tea. Pulling out the chair, he checked the time, and made the decision to order his dinner now as well. Jadie had told them that dinner would be in their rooms, but had given them options for when to eat it, and it would be best to order something and eat it before he really got into selection business.

He typed in something to the room service system in the wall, then sat down on the chair he had stationed at his desk. Each binder was about the same size, with 14 girls in each, alphabetized by province, with seven provinces per binder. He knew exactly who he wanted to look at first.

Fitz flipped to Sterling's section in the binder, riffling through the neatly labeled dividers until he found the one marked "Sterling Everett". He pushed the other dividers back so he could see it with a quiet thud, and was greeted with a picture of her smiling up at him. Sterling's wavy blonde hair was up in a messy bun, lacking America's fiery red hair, but he could still see similarities when he looked closely at it. Turning the page, he was greeted by a copy of her application, her handwriting scrawled across the page. He quickly turned it over to see what lay behind it, as the next divider wasn't for a few more papers, and found a more official looking summary of the girl. Her occupation caught his eye. She was a violinist, taking after one of the talents her aunt had. Fitz remembered his mother telling him about her birthday party at the palace, during the selection, and how America had brought a violin and played a song for her. She described it as being beautiful. If Sterling had any of her aunt's talent, then hearing her play would be a treat.

Thinking about musical talent, Fitz checked the selection event schedule that Jadie had given to him. It was merely a list of when some major events were set to take place, and much of it was describing when eliminations needed to take place by, though there was one thing he had seen earlier that could be potentially useful.

In August, the girls will be given their first way to appeal to the nation and show how they stand out, in the form of a memorial opening performance at the America Singer Center for the Arts. It is modeled after the Kennedy Center, from when the US was still in existence, which was in the capital at the time. The America Singer Center not only honors it's namesake, but honors the large number of fives who live in Illea. Each girl will have to take part in the show, whether performing or working backstage and doing a minor onstage piece, and will rehearse during a two week period where eliminations will not be put in effect due to the structured nature of this event.

Fitz, interested in the concept and curious in how Jadie intended to get the girls to work together, looked for more information on the event, but none , he turned back to Sterling's section, and read over it once again. Three siblings, two who were younger than Sterling, the oldest being a visual artist.

Looking back on the schedule, he spotted a highlighted section that was apparently very important made him blink in confusion.

In September, for two weeks, the selected will accompany the royal family on the trip to the soon to be 36th province, The Islands. After Illea was formed, the state known as Hawaii was appropriated by Japan, but stayed in a state similar to what it had been during the USA, except all the tourists were Japanese. The war with New Asia put the islands in a confusing position, but King Maxon recently made a deal to put the Islands under Illea's control. One condition that the Islands gave to become the 36th province was that they would not be put in Castes, and King Maxon obliged, though anyone who moves their who has a caste cannot get rid of it. This will be a trip to promote peace between the new province and it's new monarchs, and will also be an opportunity for the selected to have a once in a lifetime experience. Plane tickets have been bought for a larger number of girls than necessary, and Jadie will be brought along to make sure that everyone stays on schedule and abides by Illean laws.

So they were going on a trip to the Islands! Jadie had said something about it beforehand, but he hadn't taken her seriously, and it was a fact that wasn't known to many of the staff in general. The no castes issue was going to be hard to tackle, but he supposed that, besides tourism, Islands would stay mostly independent from Illea. When he had a son, 36 girls would come to the palace for their selection, which was something unprecedented.

They would need an entire airplane to take about 50 girls with them, since it wouldn't be time for the Elite, and they wouldn't have eliminated more then twenty girls at that point.

It would be absolute chaos, having that many people on a plane for that long, and knowing the safety protocols for the palace, they would have to fly across the country to even take off for the Islands. The way he expected it to go, it would be at least 10 hours, probably more because they had to fly to the secure airport in Waverly. It certainly made family trips annoying, having to visit another part of the country before going anywhere, but rebels were still an issue, especially around airports.

Fitz had never been to the Islands, but then again, who had? It took long enough to get through all the paperwork for going out of Angeles. Looking back at the binder, he found himself looking at one of the girls from Atlin, Albany Harding. She was one of the few fours who had made it into the selection, and her background page said that she was still attending a local high school. It wasn't uncommon for fours to finish high school, and he suspected that Atlin had a better public school system than Angeles, if the number of students in the schools were anything to go by.

Checking the clock, he realized that he had never sent his dinner order through, and immediately got up to go get himself some food.

Author's Note 2: Yes, shorter chapter, but I have a good reason. I want to have the second shift filled before I even start writing the prince meeting chapters, so fill out the questions! This was also a way to let you know what you should be prepared for, since these events will have chapters in mid to late March.