“Oh, and Miss Payne,” the prince added, “I’m going to need that slipper back. If I’m going to be stuck with you for the rest of my life, I’d appreciate it if I had something to remember her by.”

“Of course.” I smirked and reached out as if to hand him the slipper. His arm extended, smugness tugging his lips upward. Something told me this coddled prince wasn’t exactly used to losing. It was my turn to smile, and when he caught my expression, his smirk faltered. “On second thought… it’s mine. I can do what I want with it.” In a moment of fury, my finger relaxed.

Time slowed as the shoe slipped across my fingertips.

Glass shattered on the marble tile.

“There,” I seethed. “Something to remember her by.”

CHAPTER 6

EVANDER

Hate was typically an emotion I reserved for my father.

I figured in this case, I could make an exception.

My beloved betrothed strode through the door, the shards of my broken dreams littering the floor, and had the gall to smirk at me on the way out.

“Fates, Andy. How did you manage to find the one woman in the kingdom who’s not dying to crawl into your bed?”

I didn’t have to turn around to recognize the voice. The only other living being in this castle who ever spoke to me with such adoration in their voice was my mother, and she was certainly not the kind to bring up women and my bed in the same sentence.

Plus, no one else called me Andy. Probably because everyone else who knew me well enough to address me by name was centuries older than me and had always possessed the acumen to pronounce my name correctly.

Blaise ducked out from behind a decorative suit of armor, an ancient relic of the time humans ruled Alondria. A hole gaped in the armor’s chest, a reminder that such an era had long passed.

She strolled up to me, a cocky grin plastered on her face, and made like she was considering propping her elbow on my shoulder. That would never happen, of course. Blaise wasn’t what I’d consider tall, even by human standards, and I towered over her. Instead, her bony elbow poked into my arm.

“Are you trying to stab me?” I asked, eyeing her elbow.

“I would, but I’m afraid your betrothed might resent me if I beat her to it.”

I grimaced, which didn’t gain me an ounce of sympathy in Blaise’s brown eyes. Her gaze had always possessed this sharp and knowing quality, and I could tell she intended to make me explain myself, even though she usually knew what I was up to before I did.

“I didn’t find her,” I explained, “which you would know if you bothered to show up at the ball last night.”

I shot a disapproving look down my nose, but it glanced right off of her.

Blaise was used to disapproving looks. She was about the laziest servant in the entirety of Dwellen, and given her competitive nature, I imagined that was just the reputation she strove for.

“Why in Alondria would I attend a ball where no one bothered to invite any men?”

“I was there, wasn’t I?” I teased.

She worked her tongue like she was trying to get a bitter taste out of her mouth, and I laughed.

Blaise was the closest thing I’d ever had to a sister. Well, a sister I liked. There was Olwen, of course, my younger sister. But as soon as my father had tried to marry her off to a wealthy duke, she’d run off and trapped herself in a tower made entirely of vines.

Of the three of us siblings, she’d always been the prodigy when it came to magic.

Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t blame Olwen. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry the oily duke either. But Olwen could take care of herself, and as we didn’t exactly get along, I couldn’t say I missed her presence in the castle.

But Blaise? I’d loved her since the moment her family attended court over sixteen years ago. She was hardly a toddler then, but she’d had this keenness to her gaze that struck me. She’d been clever and mischievous and totally unreproved for it.

She was human, her father serving as the king’s mediator to the humans of Dwellen.

When Blaise was twelve, her father had fallen ill and died. Her mother had passed before I met her, and the rest of her family, quite frankly, could eat porcupine feces for all I cared, so she had no one. In a rare act of something resembling kindness, my father had taken her on as a servant, so at least her needs could be provided for.

Right. Again, resembling kindness. Not actual kindness.

If it had been just me entreating him to take care of her, I was fairly certain Blaise would be begging for scraps in a foreign kingdom right now, but Jerad had also taken a liking to her and had persuaded my father with his ardent requests.

That being said, Blaise’s father had never taught her to as much as lift a finger, and she rarely did more than the minimum required to keep the head maid from screaming at her, if she bothered with doing that much at all.

She really was a horrible servant.

But a sister? She was pretty stinking good at that.

“So, what were you doing when you were supposed to be attending the ball?” I asked, more than eager to steer the conversation away from my current predicament. I was pretty sure Blaise already knew the crap I’d gotten myself into, but if I didn’t distract her, she’d force me to admit it out loud just so she could mock me as I squirmed in embarrassment.

She didn’t miss a beat before she said, “Making out with Gregor in the pasture behind his pa’s house.”

I didn’t bother to fight back a gag, to which she raised an eyebrow of faux offense. Gregor was the youngest son of the human farmer who supplied at least half of the castle’s produce, and he wasn’t the sort I had in mind for Blaise.

I had no idea whether Blaise was pretty. She must have been, with all the suitors that weaseled their way past guards and into the castle to get to her. But when I looked at Blaise, I couldn’t see past the little girl I used to scoop into my arms, the child who I’d pretend not to see during our games of hide-and-seek, even though she’d always choose the suits of armor as her hiding spots.

The long black hair that she kept in a messy braid, the big brown eyes and the disarming grin? They were all just stretched out versions of the adorable child I’d grown to love.

Unfortunately, the entire city of post-pubescent boys didn’t seem to see her that way. She had them entranced with that boisterous laugh of hers, had them working for her smile like it was the last sack of grain during a famine.

“Remind me to have him whipped,” I grumbled, trying and failing to shove the image of the pimply farmhand’s hands all over Blaise out of my mind. Permanently.

She scoffed. “You wouldn’t dare.”

I craned my neck in challenge. “You sure about that? Isn’t Gregor considerably older than you, anyway?” And immature, and constantly spouting out lies to get attention, I didn’t add.

She rolled her big brown eyes. “I’m eighteen, Andy. All my peers have been married for at least two years and are already on their second pregnancy.”

She laced every word with venom, like a life married off young, a child in the arms and another on the way was a nightmare that other women her age didn’t know they were trapped in.

I wondered sometimes if she really felt that way, if she was glad for the life she’d escaped through her misfortune.

I wondered if maybe she told herself that to dull the ache.

Her peers, she called them—the girls with whom she used to toss pebbles into the pond, hoping the number of ripples would determine the names of their future husbands.

“Well, aren’t you going to go after your future bride?” She waved her hand toward the excessively ornate doors out of which Ellie had just stomped.