But hating him wasn’t quite so simple anymore. Now all I could feel was irritation when I remembered how foolish he’d been… how wasteful. How he’d squandered years of his immortal life and riches on parties and women when he could have been helping, well, someone. Anyone. Funding orphanages or building homes for the widows who roamed the streets of Othian.
And now I was angry at him for not being that person. For not being benevolent or wise or…
Well, for not being his brother.
My heart twinged at the thought. I didn’t want to be like his father, requiring Evander to be someone he wasn’t. But it wasn’t as though I expected him to become a different person entirely, to change his personality and dreams and demeanor just to fit someone more adequate to take the throne. No. That wasn’t it at all. Because there was something about the mischief in the corners of his glances, the eagerness with which he teased… Something about how, even in his grief, he found a way to make others laugh… That was what he’d done with me, wasn’t it? Seen my distress on the platform of the first trial and gotten under my skin until the anxiety was…not gone. But bearable.
That part of him, I didn’t want to change.
But a person didn’t have to change themselves entirely to become kinder, more generous. To consider the needs of others.
Or perhaps they did.
My heart sank. Who was I to expect Evander to change at all? Sure, I was his betrothed, and if I survived the next trial, I would become his wife.
Just not the wife he wanted.
I figured he had resigned himself to our fate well enough, just as I had. He found me pleasant to talk to, an interesting enough person to have around.
A friend.
The mingled delight and torture that word provoked within my stomach threatened to make me ill.
And then there was the mystery woman, this Cinderella. The girl from the ball he’d been so quick to try to snag into marriage. I knew I shouldn’t waste my thoughts on her, that it was unproductive to do so. But that was easier said than done. At least during the day, I typically had something to distract me. A duel with Blaise or a luncheon with the queen or a trial to prepare for.
But now there was only the moonlight slipping through my window, spilling light like glowing white ink onto the floor. And it wasn’t much of a distraction, was it? During the last full moon, Evander had been whisking a beautiful stranger onto the dance floor, laughing and talking and falling in love.
Was Evander still in love with that woman? Even after he’d had time for the facts to settle in, the undeniable truth that she was nothing but a petty thief? And if so, what was so special about her, other than her apparent ravishing beauty—obviously—that gave her such a hold over him?
The night Evander had invited me to dinner, he’d told me she was the only person who’d ever treated his brother’s death as a matter deserving of grief rather than a political discussion. She’d spoken to him as a person, not a prince.
But, I realized, hadn’t I done the same, if not better?
The thought settled uncomfortably in my stomach. It was the kind of arrogance that my mother would have had me cleaning the window sills for as a child. Hadn’t the prince mentioned earlier how, all his life, women had assumed they had a right to his affections? What I had begun to expect was little better. I was playing into that same age-old assumption.
That because I loved him, I deserved his affections in return.
I stumbled into sleep over a bed of cold, sharp thoughts.
CHAPTER 30
She stalked in a cool blanket of shadows, a predator as much as a parasite. The plain girl’s bedroom allowed quick access to the kitchen, so it had been no trouble to snatch a carving knife.
It really couldn’t have worked out better than this, the parasite mused—a royal servant wandering into the Madame’s shop. She knew every winding staircase. Every long passageway. Each shortcut to Ellie Payne’s room.
They’d locked her in for the night. It had taken little effort to secure the key.
When she crept into Ellie Payne’s room, the woman didn’t stir. Moonlight danced across her face, highlighting her deep brown cheeks as she slept. Even unconscious, the woman was breathtakingly beautiful, her cheekbones high, her lips full, her eyelashes thick and curling.
Before, the parasite had considered it a shame that Ellie Payne must die, her talents with her.
But now, as she stared at the woman’s beautiful face, something unpleasant stirred within her, puncturing her insides and making them ooze bile.
Perhaps I’ve made a mistake, the parasite thought, examining the woman’s flawless details. Perhaps I chose the wrong sort of beautiful. Suddenly the perfect body she’d just admired in the mirror only minutes ago seemed cliche. Predictable. Unremarkable, in Ellie’s Payne’s presence.
The venom in her gut heated as she thought of the way the prince sometimes looked at Ellie Payne.
It made it that much easier to plunge the knife into Ellie Payne’s stomach.
CHAPTER 31
ELLIE
Something was wrong.
I woke to a gasp escaping my lips, to a hazy awareness that I hadn’t woken from a nightmare or bodily needs or even anxieties, but from something else.
Someone else.
I opened my eyes and promptly screamed.
The shadow over my bed was a woman’s and, in a moment of unclarity, I thought she must be the messenger of death. Her pale white skin and hair were so fair they almost blended into the moonlight coming from my window. And in her hands was a knife, glinting in that same light. Dripping from the knife was a dark, scarlet substance. Blood.
My blood.
The sound that clawed through my throat was not my voice, but something more primal. An ancient survival instinct. Another being, who had resided in the back of my mind all this time, who had never alerted me that I was sharing my body with someone else.
