The Prince (Maxon's Selection POV)

Chapter Five

Recap: "America, could I ask you something personal?"

"Maybe" she said.

I gave her a humorless smile. "It's just... well, I can tell you really don't like it here. You hate the rules and the competition and the attention and the clothes and the... well, no you like the food." I smiled and she smiled back. "You miss your home," I continued, and your family... and I suspect other people very, very much. Your feelings are incredibly close to the surface."

"Yeah, I know" she said, rolling her eyes.

"But you are willing to be homesick and miserable here instead of going home. Why?"

"I'm not miserable...and you know why."

"Well, sometimes you seem okay. I see you smiling when you talk to some of the other girls, and you seem very content at meals, I'll give you that. But other times, you look so sad. Would you tell me why? The whole story?" I asked.

"It's just another failed love story. It's nothing big or exciting. Trust me" she said pleading something with her eyes.

"For better, or for worse, I'd like to know one true love story besides my parents, one that was outside these walls and the rules and the structure...Please?"

She took a deep breath and began her story.

"In the world out there, she said pointing past the walls, the castes take care of one another. Sometimes. Like my father has three families who buy at least one painting every year, and I have families that always pick me to sing a song at their Christmas parties. They're our patrons, see?

"Well, we were sort of patrons to his family. They're Sixes. When we could afford to have someone clean or if we needed help with the inventory, we always called his mother. I knew him when we were kids, but he was older than me, closer to my brother's age. They had always played rough, so I avoided them. My older brother, Kota, he's an artist like my dad. A few years back this one metal sculpture piece that he'd been working on for years sold for a massive amount of money. You may have heard of him."

I mouthed the words Kota Singer and thought, and it clicked in my brain. She brushed her firey red hair off her shoulders and continued.

"We were really excited for Kota; he'd worked really hard on that piece. And we needed that money so badly at that time, the whole family was elated. But Kota kept almost all the money for himself. That one sculpture catapulted him; people started calling for his work every day. Now he has a waiting list a mile long and charges through the roof because he can. I think he might be a little addicted to fame. Fives rarely get that kind of notice."

Our eyes met and she was silent for a second. "Anyway, after the calls started coming, Kota decided to detach himself from the family. My older sister had just gotten married, so we lost her income. Then Kota starts making real money and he gets up and leaves us." She put her hands on my chest to emphasize her point, and my heart beated a little quicker. "You don't do that. You don't just leave your family. Sticking together...it's the only way to survive."

"He kept it all for himself. Trying to buy his way up?" I asked.

She nodded. "He's got his heart set on being a Two. If he was happy being a Three or Four, he could have bought that title and helped us, but he is so obsessed. It's stupid, really. He lives more than comfortably, but it's that damn label he wants. He won't stop untill he gets it."