"Do you really cook your own food at home, Uncle Gerad?" My eyes were as wide as the little plates Mom usually put her tea cups on during tea parties.

My uncle laughed as he reached down and picked up, setting me on his shoulders like I was some special passenger. I giggled as he began walking down the hallway. "Yeah. I'm not very good at it, but I can make a decent peanut butter sandwich."

"Peanut butter sandwich?" I asked, cocking my head to the side. "What's that?"

"Only the food staple of bachelors everywhere!" My uncle proclaimed as he ducked under the doorway to my room so that I wouldn't hit my head. "Your mother never taught you how to make a peanut butter sandwich?"

"Mom can cook?"

The idea of my mom, the Queen, in the kitchen with the chefs was even more astounding to me than the idea of my uncle making up some strange delicacy he called a peanut butter sandwich.

My uncle swung me off his shoulders and onto the ground. Then, he leaned down low so he could look me in the eye. "Your mom hasn't cooked for you?"

I shook my head rapidly.

"Before she met your father, your mother did almost all the cooking at our house," Gerad explained as he shook his head. "She was really pretty good, and I always thought she liked it. I wonder why she doesn't do it more?"

"Who knows?" I shrugged, my shoulders nearly touching my ears. "Are you going to teach me?"

"Teach you what?" Gerad asked, his eyes blank.

"How to make a peanut butter sandwich!" I exclaimed as if it was crazy for him to have thought anything else.

"Right," he said as he put a hand to his forehead. He pursed his lips to side before he shrugged. "What the heck! Prince or not, every bachelor needs to know the basics."

He swung me back up onto his shoulders as we walked toward the kitchens.

When we got there, Uncle Gerad sat me on one of the counters and patted my head. "Wait here for a second, buddy, okay?"

I nodded as he walked over to where one of the chefs was rolling out dough of some kind. It was probably for dinner tonight. Maybe they were making strawberry tarts because Mom's sister, Aunt May, was here. They always served strawberry tarts when she came, and Mom and Dad would always laugh whenever they were served like it was a big joke that only they knew.

Uncle Gerad came back with some bread, two butter knives, and a jar of brown stuff that I guess was the peanut butter. "You're going to have to be prepared that if you're ever on your own, your sandwich probably won't be made on homemade bread," he said as he shook his head. "And you definitely won't have access to hand-crushed peanut butter!"

I wasn't quite sure what he was saying, but I just nodded, ready to start the task.

"Okay," he said as he pulled me off the counter and onto a stool which one of the kitchen staff had brought over for me. "First things first. You need to start by setting the slices of bread next to each other like this."

I watched him put two of the slices next to each other to form a long, sideways rectangle. He handed me two more slices of bread and I did the same in front of me.

"Then, you take the knife and you dip it in the peanut butter."

Uncle Gerad swirled the knife in the jar and when it came out, it was piled high with this sticky, grainy brown stuff that smelled like peanuts.

He handed the jar to me, and I dipped my knife into the jar. I tried to swirl it around like he had, but the peanut butter was too thick, and it clattered to the ground. I half-expected the glass to break and shatter into a million tiny pieces all over the kitchen floor, but I was sorely disappointed.

I giggled as Gerad cursed and put his knife on the counter so he could pick up the jar.

One of the chefs glared at him, and Uncle Gerad put the jar on the counter. "Sorry! Sorry! It was an accident!"

He turned back to me. "How about I hold the jar, and you load up your knife with the peanut butter?"

I nodded as I stuck my tongue out in concentration. This brown sticky stuff wasn't going to get the better of me!

At last, my knife emerged with a huge glop of peanut butter slowly making its way off the knife and toward the floor.

"Okay, now, you spread the peanut butter on the bread," Uncle Gerad said as he smoothed the sticky stuff onto the pieces of bread.

I tried to do the same, but the peanut butter seemed to be so sticky that it didn't want to leave where I originally sent it on the bread.

Gerad chuckled as he helped me out. "It takes some practice," he said with a nod. "But I think you're a natural!"

I beamed as Gerad set the knife down.

"The last step is to put the slices of bread together with the peanut butter in the middle," he said as he demonstrated with his own sandwich.

I watched closely before he copied him, putting my two pieces of bread together with the peanut butter glue in the middle.

"Look at that, Prince Osten!" Gerad said with a grin as he clapped me on the back. "You just made your first peanut butter sandwich!"

I grinned as some of the sticky brown stuff oozed out the side and onto the side of my hand. I brought my hand up to my lips and licked it off.

"It-tho-good!"

My mouth felt funny, like my teeth and lips were stuck together with the peanut butter, and my words sounded silly as I tried to talk. I loved it!

"I gotta show Dad!" I cried, my eyes getting wide as I scrambled off the stool.

"Hold on there, champ," Uncle Gerad said as he caught me by the back of my shirt. "I don't think that's a good idea. He's working."

I crossed my arms and huffed, not caring that I probably had left a peanut butter smudges on my shirt. "He always has time for me."

Uncle Gerad sighed as he nodded. "Okay. We head up to your dad's suite. If he's not there, we make him a sandwich for later, okay?"

I studied my uncle's outstretched hand. Was this a trick to try and take me up to my room? Ahren and Eadlyn sometimes tried to trick me that way even though Mom usually yelled at them for it.

"We ask the guards if he's in his office?" I asked before taking the hand.

"I promise," Gerad said with a nod. "We'll ask the guards."

"And if he's not in a meeting, we'll see if we can go in?"

Gerad swallowed. "If Aspen says he's not in a meeting, we'll ask if we can go in for a minute."

I squinted up at my uncle in confusion. "Who's Aspen?"

"General Leger."

I pursed my lips, thinking carefully about those options. Something told me that General Leger would probably let me through unless Dad was in a meeting where he couldn't be disturbed. And if he didn't, I could always go find Miss Lucy. She'd talk to him for me. If Miss Lucy asked General Leger, I'd definitely get a chance to talk to Dad.

I extended my hand toward my uncle. "Deal."

A few minutes later, I knocked on the door of Dad's suite. I pressed my ear to the door to try and hear any sort of come in sound.

Dad's butler came to the door and looked down at me. "Prince Osten," he said with a bow. "What can I do for you?"

I looked up at Uncle Gerad who had a sad smile on his face as if he knew what the butler was already going to say to me.

In an instant, I ran past the butler and into my father's suite. There was a door in here that went right into his office. Eadlyn had shown it to me once when I had a nightmare that our whole family was hiding from rebels and Dad was still in his office. "See, Osten," she had whispered as she brushed the hair from my face. "If we were in here, Dad would still be able to find us. He's got this cool secret door!"

"Hey, Osten, buddy!" Uncle Gerad called.

"Your Highness!" Dad's butler cried.

I heard them running after me as I got to the wall I thought I remembered the door being in. I pressed my fingers against the wall, trying to find the handle. "Come on, come on, come on…"

The door swung open into my dad's office, and I grinned. "Bingo!"

I walked into the office, glad to see that he wasn't in the middle of a meeting, but disappointed to find that my dad wasn't here.

I sighed and climbed up into his desk chair, the seat swiveling as I did so. I set my sandwich on Dad's desk and grasped the edge of it with one hand to try and steady myself as I climbed up. I felt the squish of peanut butter under my fingers and I winced. Dad was not going to be happy to see that.

I heard footsteps coming toward me from both entrances to the room. Gerad and Dad's butler would both be pretty upset when they found me in here, but Dad? I thought he'd be okay with my visit. Was I wrong?

With my hands on the edge of Dad's desk, I swung my hips in such a way that the chair swiveled to and fro. I was going down either way. I figured I might as well enjoy what little time I had here in the office.

The main entrance to Dad's office opened, and General Leger walked in with Dad close behind. They were saying something about a trade agreement with New Asia when General Leger stopped. "Your Majesty, it seems we have a security breach."

His lips quirked up slightly into the tiniest hint of a smile, and I grinned in response.

My dad, whose eyes were focused on a report in his hand, looked up to where General Leger was looking to find me at his desk.

A moment later, Uncle Gerad and Dad's butler came to Dad's private entrance and caught both Dad and General Leger's attentions as well.

"Osten, we had a deal!" Uncle Gerad cried before he noticed my dad in the room.

I turned pink with embarrassment as my dad put his hands on his hips and cocked his head in my direction. "Do you have something to say for yourself, young man?"

"I made you a sandwich?"

I raised the peanut butter sandwich up so he could see it, a proud smile on my face as I did so. There was a small splat as some of the peanut butter dripped out of the sandwich and onto one of the stacks of papers on my dad's desk. "Oops."

Dad's face was hard to read. I could tell I wasn't in trouble—not yet anyway—but I couldn't tell if he was happy to see me. It was almost like there was something else in his mind that he had to sort through before he could respond to.

"Maxon, I tried to tell him that we'd come back later, when you weren't busy," Uncle Gerad said as he took a slow step into the room. I wondered if he was afraid that General Leger would try to keep him from coming into the office.

Dad's butler had disappeared, and I assumed that he had gone to get the supplies to clean up the big mess I was making.

"Dad?" The longer he was quiet, the more afraid I got. Ahren had once told me that if Dad was quiet for a long time, it was because he was trying to calm himself down enough to handle the problem as carefully as he usually did.

I wasn't sure why, but I figured that wasn't a good thing. Besides, that was usually when we got punishments like "no desserts for a week" or "you get to clean your room by yourself for a month."

"Give me ten minutes, Aspen," Dad said as he turned to General Leger.

He gave a slight bow of the head. "Yes, Your Majesty."

As he turned to go, my dad turned a smile toward my uncle. "I think I can handle it from here, Gerad."

"Of course," he said with a nod.

"I think Kaden had some science questions for you," he said in a pleasant tone. "That boy soaks up knowledge like a sponge."

Uncle Gerad grinned. "I'll be in Kaden's room if you need me."

Dad nodded as his butler squeezed next to me and began to try and tackle the mess.

Dad waved him away before he could get started. "Give me a moment with my son first, Everest?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said with a bow.

He closed the door as he returned the way he had come.

I swallowed. Dad had just gotten rid of all the witnesses.

I was in so much trouble.

"You made me a sandwich, huh?" He walked around to the other side of the desk, taking in the damage this peanut butter sandwich had made.

I nodded. "Uncle Gerad taught me how. He said it's a bad-lor stable."

Dad's lips tweaked into a half-smile. "Did he now?"

I nodded solemnly. "Dad, what's a badlor?"

"I think you mean bachelor," he said with a chuckle as he poured two glasses of water from a pitcher on the round table in the center of the room. "And it means a man who's not married."

"Oh."

I looked at the sandwich in my hands. "Is he saying that he only eats peanut butter sandwiches because he doesn't have a wife?"

My dad laughed as he handed me one of the cups. "I think that's exactly what he's saying."

He pulled out a letter opener from his desk drawer, put a finger to his lips as if to swear me to secrecy, and cut the sandwich into two triangles. He handed one of the triangles to me, and kept the other for himself.

He sat on the floor behind the desk and patted the seat beside him. I scrambled out of the chair as fast as I could to sit next to him, my sandwich in my hand.

There was a knock on the door to Dad's suite, and before he could say anything, the door swung open.

Mom looked around the room, apparently not seeing us at first. "Maxon?"

"Down here," he said, waving the sandwich in the air to catch her attention. She cocked her head to the side as she saw me sitting beside him on the floor with a matching sandwich half in my hands. "And just what are you doing down here, young man?"

I opened my mouth to speak before Dad answered. "He made me a sandwich, America."

Mom's eyebrows scrunched together before she looked over at the desk and saw the dollops of peanut butter all over it. Her mouth fell open. "Osten, did you do this to your father's desk?"

Dad smiled as he looked down at me. "It's just peanut butter, America. We can clean it up." He caught my mother's eyes, and a look passed between them as they often did. I never understood what they were saying to each other in those moments, but I guess I wasn't ever supposed to. "Besides, isn't this what I asked for? Peanut butter fingerprints on the desk?"

My mother laughed and brushed a few stands of red hair from her face. "I suppose you did."

"Just give me five minutes, okay?" Dad said, looking up at her. "Just five minutes to share a sandwich with my son."

My mother's eyes softened and she shook her head. "You're going to spoil him!"

"I needed a break anyway," he said with a smile.

"Five minutes," she said, giving me a harder look. Dad might not ground me, but I had a feeling that Mom wasn't going to be so generous. "Not a second more."

I nodded immediately. "Yes, ma'am."

She bent down to kiss my dad before she slipped back out of the office.

"Yuck," I said, scrunching my nose up in disgust.

Dad laughed as he looked over at me. "Someday, I suspect, you won't find that so disgusting."

"Impothible," I said as I took a bite of my sandwich.

Dad grinned as he took a bite of his. "Maybe," he said, his voice muffled with the thick peanut butter. "Maybe not."