Red- White Royal | Blue

The backdrop was the Royal Wedding of the year. The crime scene: a forgotten linen closet off the main gallery.

The photograph was a disaster of biblical proportions. It wasn't just that Alex Claremont-Diaz, the First Son of the United States, had his hand firmly planted on the backside of Prince Henry of Wales. It was that the flash had caught them mid-laugh, mid-stumble, and mid-catastrophe, their faces flushed a brilliant, undeniable scarlet. The pristine white of Henry’s dress shirt was smeared with the remnants of a large slice of Victoria sponge cake, and Alex’s own navy blazer was hanging off one shoulder like a flag at half-mast.

Now, that laugh was being parsed by geopolitics experts on CNN.

Alex snorted. “I’m not. It was the best cake I’ve ever had.” Red- White Royal Blue

Henry picked up a blue one. “Tentative allies.”

Alex stood in the Oval Office, wishing the Persian rug would swallow him whole. “Mom, I swear, it was an accident. He tripped. I caught him. The cake was a rogue agent.”

“The cake is not the issue, Alex.” She finally looked up. Her eyes were tired. “The issue is that for six seconds, the world saw the First Son of the United States looking at a British prince like he was the last helicopter out of Saigon.” The backdrop was the Royal Wedding of the year

The solution, when it came, was pure, agonizing farce. A joint “unity tour” across the UK and the East Coast. The First Son and the Prince, publicly patching up their “differences” for the cameras. Smiling. Shaking hands. Pretending the air between them wasn’t thick with a tension that had nothing to do with politics.

The headline the next morning, splashed across every tabloid on both sides of the Atlantic, read:

Something in Henry’s expression cracked. He glanced at Alex—a real glance, not the camera-ready kind. And for a moment, Alex saw past the royal armor to the exhausted, lonely man underneath. It wasn't just that Alex Claremont-Diaz, the First

Henry stopped. They were in another alcove, this one mercifully free of dessert. “I don’t know,” Henry whispered. “What were we doing, Alex?”

The girl grabbed a white brick and slammed it into the tower’s base. “You should build something together. That’s what my mom says. Broken things get stronger when you glue them right.”

“Exactly,” Zahra said, arching an eyebrow. “Laughing. Intimately. The British press thinks you’re lovers. The American press thinks you tried to start a second revolutionary war. We need to triangulate.”

“It’s an act of diplomatic war,” his mother, President Ellen Claremont, said without looking up from the stack of damage reports. Her voice was steel wrapped in velvet. She was in her third year of a tight re-election campaign, and her opponent, Senator Richards, was already using the image as a fundraiser. “A royal rumble,” he’d crooned on Fox News. “Is this the respect the First Son shows our closest ally?”

“Your Royal Highness,” Alex said, his voice dripping with performative charm. “After you.”