I’d known it as soon as Cinderella waltzed up to the front of the crowd like the rest of them didn’t exist.

I’d given every dance to her.

Every part of me would come later.

She’d been dazzling, her porcelain skin glowing in the lantern light, her dark blue dress hugging her every curve, sparkling like a beacon.

There was no looking anywhere else.

I hadn’t decided yet that she’d be my wife.

The papers thought me a lovesick prince, falling for her at first sight.

Let them think what they wanted.

I’d wanted her the moment I’d laid eyes on her. But that wasn’t why I’d proposed. I’d expected her to swoon as I pressed my lips to her palm.

She’d only met my hungry stare with an appetite to match.

When I’d swept her onto the dance floor, she’d hadn’t melted in my arms like I’d expected. She hadn’t batted her eyes in an outrageous display of faux meekness, nor had she slipped a thousand innuendos into the conversation, lest I miss the hint that she wanted in my bed.

No, Cinderella had simply talked to me, and not like I was a prince. Not once did she mention that awful word—heir.

Three dances later, and the music lulled. I’d drawn her into my chest, enraptured by her scent. Lilac and rosebuds. I’d never been the type to believe in mating bonds. The concept that the Fates preordained a perfect match for each fae had always seemed a bit too sentimental for me.

But then I’d scented her, and something in me snapped. Not in the sort of snapping that breaks. The sort that binds objects together in perfect unison.

I couldn’t think of another way to describe it but Fated. I knew then that hers was the only head I wanted resting against my shoulder, hers the only scent to settle into my clothes.

And then she’d asked me a question. The same question I’d been waiting a year for a woman to ask.

I couldn’t think of it here, not in front of my father, who would surely sense it and find some way to use it against me.

So instead I remembered what she’d said later that night.

Give me something romantic. Something I won’t forget.

By the time the night was over, I’d leaned in and whispered a question into her ear.

She’d just grinned up at me, dazzling me with that perfect smile of hers.

“Of course,” she’d said, and the words were a melody in my ears.

But then the clock had struck midnight, and she’d blushed, a frantic look overcoming her face. “I mustn’t stay. I must go, but I vow to return to you.”

I’d shaken my head, confused, but still grinning. “You’re going to leave right after agreeing to spend your life with me?”

“I promise myself to you, Prince Evander of Dwellen,” she’d said, just as her hands slipped from mine and she disappeared into the crowd.

I’d been so dazed, so confused, it had taken me a moment to come to my senses, to go after her.

When I finally had the wherewithal to cut through the crowd searching for her, she was gone.

The guards had found a glass slipper on the palace steps later that night. A slipper crafted by the faerie who’d watched over Cinderella since she was only a girl. A slipper crafted for her, and her alone.

Give me something romantic. Something I won’t forget.

So I had.

And now that something romantic was making its way through Othian, ready to find my betrothed and bring her back to me.

Honestly, I’d been shocked my father had agreed to the idea, and the ease with which he’d granted my request still made my stomach churn a bit.

He probably thought he was still punishing me somehow. Even though his plans had gone awry, and I’d actually found a woman I was more than eager to bind myself to, he surely thought he’d won in the end.

She was human, after all.

Her life would be a blink in my existence, but if I loved her, the sting of her loss would last much longer.

But even fae died.

My brother’s face flashed before my memory, and I shut it out.

When my mother and father left the table, I stayed, mostly because it irritated my father when I postponed my princely duties by extending mealtimes. Indeed, he scowled at me as he dismissed himself, but my mother touched my hand absentmindedly on her way out.

Not moments after they departed, a breathy, labored voice shook through the hall. “Your Majesty, Your Highness.”

I waved him in. “It’s just me, Orvall.”

The courier looked relieved not to be facing my father, but he didn’t enter. Instead, he plastered an unconvincing grin on his face.

“We have located the prince’s betrothed.”

CHAPTER 4

ELLIE

The doors to the king’s breakfasting room were plated with silver, etched with intricate patterns from which I soon had to avert my eyes, lest my vision double.

I hardly heard the courier announce my presence as he poked his head into the breakfasting chambers, presumably speaking to the royal family. My ears were still buzzing from the absurdity of his claim—that I, Ellie Payne, had somehow unwittingly betrothed myself to the Prince of Dwellen.

Someone inside the breakfasting room coughed. A moment later, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor screeched in my ears.

“We present the Crown Prince’s Betrothed.” The courier coughed slightly as his voice gave out toward the end, and the doors swung open.

I had always thought our house ornate, furnished with every luxury a human might desire, all funded by my father’s thriving business.

That, apparently, was not the case.