Page 2 of Royal Resistance

The lights are hot, the faces a blur as I drop to one knee. The last notes hang in the air, joined by Benny’s double thump of the bass drum, and the crowd erupts.

I grin at Duncan, and he raises his arms, the crowd on their feet. He rules the stage at these shows. I may be the heart of the band, the one who gives the energy, but Duncan is the face, the voice, the king up here.

And I’m happy to let him be.

Fans scream, and my heart is about ready to burst.

I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but this has got to be one of the best.

We finish up with the latest hit, Adieu my love, and then it’s over. Another show in the books. Germany loves us, but I’m ready for a break. In two months, we head back to Canada for a handful of shows, before ending in Halifax, the closest we come to Laandia.

But tonight, Laandia has come to us.

My father is in the crowd tonight. He insisted on watching the show from the floor, slightly off to the side so he won’t accidentally get caught up in the mosh pit. His security surrounds him like a wall and my younger brother stands beside him.

I was excited to see Dante. There’s always a chance this time will be different. That we can be brothers, friends even.

And then I caught sight of Dante’s face during one of the early songs, as sour as it usually is. There’s only one reason he’s here, and it isn’t to enjoy the show.

Dad seemed like he was enjoying himself, though.

I duck out of the meet and greet as early as I can to meet them back at the hotel bar.

My father is King Euan of Laandia, the small country, perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in the northeastern part of North America.

We’re a small country and only forty-nine years old. Because Laandia used to be the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. After my grandfather, Leif Erickson, prevented a Nazi invasion during World War II, the Canadian government rewarded him with his own country.

His own kingdom, because apparently my grandfather really wanted to be king.

I don’t get it.

My father seems to like the role as well, taking over for Afi Leif—King Leif to the rest of the world—when he passed at the ripe old age of seventy-nine, three years before I was born.

I would have liked to have met him, to ask him just what the holy hell he was thinking, starting his own country.

Who does that? Other than my family.

Dad and Dante are seated at a table in the hotel bar, their security team arranged discreetly at the exits. In his pressed black jeans, black polo shirt, and thin leather jacket that his assistant must have told him was suitable to wear at a rock concert, Dad looks like an uptight businessman on vacation rather than a sitting monarch.

My brother is another story. Dante could be the poster boy for a Disney Prince Charming. Tall and handsome—even his hair is picture-perfect. Most times it looks like the hunk of plastic on a boy Barbie’s head that constitutes hair, but it always looks good in pictures.

Unlike me and my shock of thick reddish-blond hair that won’t stay tamed regardless of what I do to it.

It’s worse when I’m on stage, so I’ve taken to wearing a hat, a plaid felt newsboy cap. It’d probably be better if I took it off, but I can only imagine the mess my hair would be.

My brother always works at looking good for the pictures. Viking tall like all of us, bland blondness, but I’ve never been able to trust his smooth handsomeness.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t trust him. He might be my brother, but since I’m the person standing in the way of everything he’s ever wanted, just because I had the misfortune of being born first, trust is hard to come by.

“How did you find the show?” I ask as I take the seat across from Dad, too eager for their approval. A moment later, a frothy schooner of beer is placed before me by a smiling waitress. “Thanks, love.”

Duncan, Benny, and I closed the place after last night’s show, so I guess she remembers what I like to drink.

“Loud,” Dante says, his blue eyes as cold as the chardonnay in the glass before him.

“It’s supposed to be that way, for all the fans at the back to hear,” I tell him. Not for the first time do I wish I’d brought Duncan along for moral support. He handles my brother better than I can.

I turn to my father, wishing his approval didn’t matter as much as it does. “You definitely have a presence on stage,” Dad says, albeit grudgingly. “Then again, I don’t think you’ve ever been lacking in charisma.”