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.
I let out an agitated breath. “I’d rather not.”
“Remind me why, exactly, you picked her.”
I let my eyes roll over to Blaise slowly and deliberately. “You act like you weren’t hiding behind that suit of armor during the entire conversation.”
She shrugged, her eyes lighting with mischief. “But I wanted to hear your side of the story.”
She looped her arm into mine and dragged me toward the doors. “Oh, come on,” she said as I protested, digging my feet into the ground like a pouting child. “I won’t make you talk to her. But I’ve been out all night, and I won’t be able to stay awake for your tragic tale if I don’t get some coffee in me.”
The kitchen was probably Blaise’s favorite place in the entire castle, if not the entire world, and if she was shirking her responsibilities, this was likely where you could find her.
Unless it was her day to clean the kitchens, in which case your best bet was to search for a pair of boots sticking out from underneath the garden shrubs.
“So, let’s get this straight…” Blaise shoved a pecan tart into her mouth, pocketing it in her cheeks as she twiddled her thumbs. “You, Prince Evander Thornwall, Heir to the Throne of Dwellen and suitor of many a courtesan, fell in love with a mysterious stranger, a human woman, quite literally at first sight.”
I picked the last pecan tart from her plate, and she pouted. “It wasn’t at first sight. We danced and talked all night.”
Before I could bring the tart to my mouth, she grabbed it from me and licked it.
I grimaced. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re glossing over some important details,” she said, as if this were far greater a crime than infecting the last pecan tart with her saliva. “Also, it totally counts as love at first sight if it’s the first time you meet someone.”
“I’m afraid you’re wrong about that, young lady. It only counts if you love them the instant you lay eyes upon them.”
“Would you say that you’ve seen her a second time yet?”
I didn’t answer, which Blaise took as response enough. “I’ll take that as a no. Now, I know my education was cut tragically short, but I’m pretty sure if it comes before second, that makes it the first.”
“So you’re going to drag me down to the kitchens, make me smell the pecan tarts, not even let me taste one, then tell me how wrong I am?”
She nodded. “Pretty much.” But then her face softened, as it so rarely did. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you wanted.”
I swallowed. I knew almost every one of Blaise’s maneuvers. Earnest was not one she plucked out very often.
“It’s really my own fault,” I said. It had been stupid to convince my father to let me place a bargain onto those shoes. He’d known that, and that’s exactly why he’d let me do it.
Not to mention the fact that Cinderella had been lying when she told me the shoes were glamoured to fit only her. As a fae incapable of lying, it was the one thing that made me wary about most humans, the one power they boasted over us.
But then again, she probably just came from a lowly family and worried I would have cast her to the side if I’d realized she had no name and no money.
Could I blame her?
“Your fault or not, it still stinks,” Blaise said.
“Yeah.”
“You wanna tell me what you loved about her?”
Her voice was so gentle, so soft, it sounded unnatural. I furrowed my eyebrows, then took the back of my palm and placed it over her brow. “Are you feeling ill?”
“No, it’s just that I’ve never seen you really care about any of them before. It makes me worried, that’s all.”
I cocked my head, puzzled. “You know I’m never going to let anyone take your place, right?”
At that, Blaise jerked out from underneath my hand and pushed it away, grumbling. “You’re coddling. It’s overbearing.”
“Fine,” I said, unable to help but smile at her reaction to my sap. “To be honest, I didn’t think she was any different from the rest at first. But she was gorgeous, and I thought, who better to dance the night away with than the most stunning woman in the room? But when we danced, it was almost like… almost like she knew me.”
