Page 599 of Bad Prince
EPILOGUE
Tristan
The medal still looks unreal on her.
Even hours later.
Even after the anthem and the cameras and the avalanche of congratulations in three different languages and the kind of crying family members do when they’ve run out of dignified ways to contain pride.
It still looks unreal.
Gold against her throat.
Heavy enough to mean something.
Bright enough to pull every eye in the room.
Not mine.
Mine was already hers.
The restaurant clings to the side of the hill above the water, all white stone and candlelight and ivy and old-world confidence. Somewhere below us, the Aegean keeps hitting rock in slow black flashes. The tables are crowded with flowers, wine, laughter, too many plates, and the kind of joy that leaves everyone a little louder than usual.
Jade has told the story of Stella’s final kill three times.
Each time it gets more dramatic.
Each time Leo lets her finish before quietly correcting a statistic and making her throw a bread roll at his head.
Emmanuel is pretending he isn’t emotional.
He’s failing.
Not publicly.
Not in any way anyone but family would catch.
But I see the way his hand keeps drifting to the back of Stella’s chair.
The way he watches her when she laughs.
The way his jaw goes tight whenever anybody mentions the wordgold, like the scale of what she just did still keeps ambushing him every few minutes.
Her mother’s worse.
No restraint at all.
No interest in restraint.
She has cried over the appetizer, the main course, one toast, and the fact that Stella ordered sparkling water with lime instead of wine because athlete habits apparently survive even Olympic history.
My parents are here too.
My mother has gone from polished admiration to full possession in under six hours. She’s already telling anyone who’ll listen that she “always knew Stella had the bearing of a woman built for rooms larger than the ones she was given first.”
My father, who does not waste words, leaned over at one point and quietly told Stella that very few people in the world ever become the best at something clean and visible. Then he lifted his glass to her like a man saluting another serious person.
That hit her harder than she expected.
