Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Free Prequel Novella
About the Author
Also by T.A. Lawrence
PROLOGUE
The parasite had worn many bodies over the centuries.
The frantic girl who shuffled into Madame LeFleur’s Cosmetics Boutique: Your One-Stop Shop for All Things Alluring would be her next.
The pyrite bell dangling above the shop entrance jingled, alerting the Madame to the girl’s arrival. The shop owner jerked, spilling her last bottle of LeFleur’s Specialty Vanishing Ink across the counter, causing it to soak into the previously pristine wood and drip onto the floor.
The ink did not vanish as advertised.
Madame LeFleur spun the bottle to hide its label lest her lone customer take notice. But the young girl wasn’t paying attention. Instead, she lingered by a shelf of products that claimed to alleviate sudden bursts of heat in aging women.
The shop owner narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t been expecting a customer tonight. In fact, she’d closed up an hour early for a handful of reasons.
One, Prince Evander’s ball was to be held at Othian Castle tonight. As the Madame’s business model revolved around preying upon the insecurities and groundless hopes of women wishing to make themselves prettier than nature had blessed them with the capability of being, it made no sense to keep the shop open past sundown.
Every human girl in the city of Othian would attend the ball, vying for the chance to snag the handsome fae prince. The Madame estimated not one of them would chance spending fewer than three hours preparing their skin with fragrant oils, arranging their hair in ornate braids, and stuffing their corsets with her bestselling LeFleur’s Miracle Endowment Enhancer—which was really just dyed cotton and the Madame’s most lucrative idea yet.
It didn’t matter how much the entire kingdom detested the Heir to the Throne of Dwellen.
The opportunity to become a princess had presented itself, and there wasn’t a woman in Dwellen who wouldn’t grasp at it.
Except, perhaps, for Ellie Payne. If all went according to plan, the parasite would be seeking her out later.
In the past few hours, the traffic in the shop had dwindled to almost nothing, and the Madame had purchased too expensive a porcelain tub and too exotic a collection of foreign soaps not to be soaking in lavender bubbles. All for the sake of a stray sale here and there.
At least, that was what the Madame told herself.
Then there was the real reason—one from which the parasite lurking in the corners of the Madame’s consciousness derived no small amount of satisfaction.
Tonight was a full moon, and the Madame was superstitious about this heavenly occurrence above all others. All her neighbors knew as much.
Rather, everyone thought they knew as much.
That was the thing about humans, the parasite mused; they always assumed they knew more than they did.
The parasite, of course, knew perfectly well that Madame LeFleur’s superstitions regarding the monthly celestial event were more than well-founded, the parasite herself having planted the gnarled roots by which these superstitions fed.
Madame LeFleur paid little attention to the girl as she tried and failed to wipe the spilled non-vanishing ink with a nearby terrycloth. “Silly me, forgetting to lock up. We’re closed, dearie.”
If the parasite could have rolled her eyes, she would have. Madame LeFleur had the irksome habit of floundering about, using the same sort of language one might hear from an elderly woman whose only concerns were that of who had accidentally dyed their hair blue recently when attempting to go silver-plated, or whose grandchild had disgraced their family by eloping with a farmhand.
The parasite knew better than to be fooled by her host’s carefully crafted facade.
Underneath the cheery disposition and altogether silly demeanor, the Madame’s mind was sharp as an adder’s fang.
