She didn’t bother looking into the mirror that perched atop the vanity across the small bedroom before she shifted.

Bones cracked. Skin stretched. Muscles bulged in an instant.

Ah, here we are, the parasite thought, unable able to help herself now as she glanced into the mirror.

The woman who stared back at her was the definition of modern beauty. Large, bright eyes. Thick eyelashes. Full lips. Smooth, blemishless skin matched with curves for days.

The parasite couldn’t help but admire her handiwork.

Things had not gone entirely according to plan, but during the past mooncycle, while the parasite had been tucked away, locked up, she had not wasted the passing of time by sulking.

She’d done as she always had.

She watched. She listened. She lurked.

The ball had gone smoothly enough. It had taken little more effort than crossing the prince’s line of vision to catch his attention. Far less effort to hold it.

A dazzling, wanton grin had crossed his handsome face at the sight of her. In less than the time it took for the parasite to breathe, he had been before her, taking her hand in his and kissing her palm.

He’d asked her to dance, and she’d offered a delicate smile in response.

Then he’d whisked her onto the dance floor, and that had been that.

Except that hadn’t been that.

The parasite had attended the ball with a singular focus: seduce the prince into offering her his hand in marriage. She’d had to make the brief encounter count, for she knew she only had hours until she transformed back into the plain girl’s body. That she’d need to secure the prince’s devotion, infiltrate his wildest fantasies, if she expected him to still be pining for her after the passing of a mooncycle.

And she needed the prince to pine. At least, until she could secure the marriage alliance that would make her queen. After she ridded Dwellen of its current monarch, of course.

Then, when she had the entirety of Dwellen’s resources at her disposal, she would use them to find a way to inhabit this body permanently.

Of course, she would have to make sure the marriage bargain between herself and the prince would be specific enough to keep him from taking legal actions against her while she was trapped inside the plain girl during the rest of the month.

But that could be arranged.

The prince already fancied himself obsessed with her, thanks to the talents of Madame LeFleur.

The slipper left on the palace steps had also been intentional—a token of the mystery girl, a promise of yet another dance, something for the prince to remember her by until she returned.

The slipper had been about the only intentional thing that had happened that night.

For example, she’d meant to charm him, and she had, she supposed, but not in the manner she’d planned. When he’d pulled her onto the dance floor and laid his hand upon her waist, grinning down at her in awe, something had tugged—actually tugged—inside of her chest.

She was used to the sexual nature of humans. It was a perk she frequently indulged in during her limited moonsoaked moments.

But this had been different.

It had to have been the girl, she’d realized. This occurred occasionally, if she happened to be in the presence of someone her host had developed intense feelings for—jealousy, love, obsession. She tried to stay far away from such people. They served as a distraction. Besides, the parasite didn’t exactly enjoy getting tangled up in sporadic human emotions. She had to deal with them enough as it was throughout the mooncycle.

But then she was dancing with the prince, and he was dazzling her with his smile, making her poor mortal heart forget to beat.

Human hearts were stupid like that. It was a wonder any of them survived puberty with the way they ceased beating at such little provocation as a crush’s stolen glance.

The plain girl must have known him personally, at least in some stretch of the word, the parasite realized.

She had been right. When the plain girl woke in the streets to a ray of moonlight glowing against her closed lids, her ordinary clothes returned to her body (unbeknownst to her, a dazzling blue gown soiling in the dirt underneath a nearby rosebush), she’d frowned and, thinking Madame LeFleur had scammed her into buying a sleeping draft rather than a beauty elixir, had drummed back to the castle defeated.

She’d stayed up all night tossing and turning, imagining a thousand different scenarios, a thousand different beautiful women vying for the prince’s hand. A thousand different proposals, none of which were made to her.

The parasite had possessed little patience for the girl’s tears, but it wasn’t like she could just leave the room, now could she?

Relief was a moderate term to describe what the girl had felt when she learned the next morning that the prince had squandered all his dances on a mystery woman who’d fled at the stroke of midnight.

Jealousy had existed too, souring the girl’s belly and tasting of lemons to the parasite, but at least the mystery woman was gone.

The day had been a whirl of emotion for the pitiful girl, and when she’d learned of the prince’s accidental betrothal to Ellie Payne, the parasite shared her shock and outrage.

The parasite knew from the beginning that Ellie Payne would try to get out of the marriage, but it didn’t take long for this jealous little girl to figure it out as well.

She’d even grown to like Ellie, in whatever way a human could like the woman betrothed to marry the love of her life.

It helped that Ellie wanted out of the marriage, too.

Naïve little girl.

The magic that bound Ellie’s future to the prince’s was ancient (though not quite as ancient as the parasite), and not to be underestimated. There was no getting out of this marriage without the king’s consent, and the parasite had been in proximity to enough fae rulers to know when a male’s mind was beyond being changed.

No, there was only one way out of this predicament.

If the parasite were human, she might have regretted that Ellie Payne had to die.

CHAPTER 29

ELLIE

That night, I dreamed of Evander.

Well, I wished I had dreamed of Evander.

Because at least then I could have blamed it on my subconscious.

The truth was that I lay awake for hours, playing over every conversation we’d had. Every tease, every smirk I could remember. I searched my memory for moments that we’d touched, though I spent most of my time reliving how long Evander had held my hand in the forest.

Other than that and the time in the workshop, most of the times we’d touched had been constrained to when my life depended on it.

Though I supposed Evander hadn’t needed to risk his life the day of the first trial.

He could have simply let go of my wrists as we traversed the prism.