I shook my head. “It’s different this time.”

If you’re saying one’s the wrong woman, I’m going to take a gander and guess there’s a right woman?

I chuckled, but it sounded more like a cough.

And what, exactly, makes her the right woman?

“Well, she’s my betrothed, for starters. I’m to marry her in just a few days.”

Ah, yes. It would have been convenient for you to fall in love with the woman you were actually planning to marry, wouldn’t it?

“Not just convenient,” I said. “It would be… it would be perfect. I’ve never met a woman like her, Jed. She’s got this drive that would level a continent if she thought that was what needed to happen to reach her goals. And she’s so stinking clever. Not just with her craft. I mean, the art she can make with her hands—that’s amazing. But she’s just so funny. I never know what’s about to come out of her mouth, but it has me flabbergasted and exasperated and delighted all at once. You would have liked her. Probably would have stolen her from me, honestly. Though I would have let you have her. She deserves to be loved. Deserves better than what I can give her. Besides, I think she would like you better than she likes me. The two of you could be boring and responsible together.

I thought you said she was hilarious. She doesn’t sound boring to me.

“You’re probably right,” I said, breaking apart pieces of a leaf and tossing it to the side.

Probably.

I sat in silence for a while. Knowing someone for two hundred years is like that. You can sit there and have a conversation with them like they never left you, like they never died, and you even know where exactly and for how long they would insert dramatic pauses for effect.

So about the other woman? The wrong woman?

“What about her?” The pile of dead, torn up leaves was growing before me, getting to be bulbous at the top.

Well, that’s just it. You’ve said nothing about her at all. Other than that you’re in love with her.

I tossed the rest of the leaf at his grave. “What more is there to tell?”

You had plenty to say about the other woman. The woman you’re not in love with. There was knowing in his voice, the kind that made him sound like Mother and made me want to strangle him.

“Jed, do you believe in Fated mates?”

My brother would have squinted at a question like that. Do you?

“I didn’t. Not before. But you don’t understand. It’s like when I’m around her… It’s like there’s something feral inside me, and that thing wakes up, and it’s…and I’m obsessed with her.”

Hm. I can’t say I’ve ever seen much evidence for a Fated mating bond. Perhaps there’s something about her that you love so intensely that it feels as though it’s Fated? Can you think of what that might be?

“You know, after you…you know, left…” I swallowed. In my mind, his brow would have quirked at that—at my refusal to acknowledge aloud that he was dead. But he would have let me continue, so I did. “I didn’t meet a single woman who wouldn’t bring up you and my new responsibilities as heir in the same breath. ‘Oh, Your Highness, what a weight you must bear now that you’re the heir in the wake of your brother’s passing. Oh, my condolences about that, by the way. Now back to the part about how you’ll be the richest and most powerful male in all of Dwellen should you be fortunate enough to suffer the death of your father as well.’”

I’m sure they didn’t say it quite like that.

It was my turn to quirk a brow. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, I just got so tired of it. So tired of women so blinded by my position that they forgot how much…” I swallowed again. “How much…”

I couldn’t do it, couldn’t say it, not even to the forest brush and my brother who couldn’t hear me, not really.

“She was the first woman, other than Blaise, of course—”

Does our dear Blaise count as a woman?

“Hardly. She tells me she’s eighteen now, but I think she must be lying. She can’t be more than seven.”

Jerad smiled fondly, and I couldn’t help but allow it to spread to my face.

“Cinderella was the only one in a year who looked at me and saw my situation for what it was. Who looked at me and remembered that I wasn’t thinking about being the heir or what I had gained. All I could ever think about is what I lost that day, Jerad. And so I know you think me foolish for giving my heart to a woman I hardly know… Fates, you don’t even know the half of how foolish it is…”

I’m just a memory, a figment of your imagination, Evander. I know as much as you do.

I swallowed, wincing, somewhat delirious at this point. “Then you know I’m in love with a lunatic. She’s insane. Out of her mind, crazy psycho jealous. Remember Nightingale? A thousand times worse. She’s already tried to kill Ellie. Twice. And I had the chance to stop her, the chance to imprison her, to keep Ellie safe, and I…”

My brother waited.

“It would be nice if you’d say something about now.”

I’d rather let you finish.

“Ellie’s a good person. Sure, she gets under my skin, and half the time I think she thinks she’s better than me. Which, she’s a smart woman, so what else would she think, I suppose? But she’s good in her heart, and she’s my friend. Well, she was my friend. I think I might have ruined any chance of her staying that way. And she’s going to be my wife…” My breath caught. Had I said that aloud before? Surely I had.

“Ellie Payne is going to be my wife.” It shouldn’t have felt the way it did on my lips. It should have felt like dread, and it did in some ways. Ellie hated me. She wouldn’t forget that I’d chosen Cinderella’s freedom over her safety, not for a long while. Perhaps never.

But Ellie Payne was going to be my wife. For some reason, the way my chest clenched at that thought seemed a whole lot less like the anxiety of a male forced into an undesirable marriage, and a whole lot more like nervous jitters.

The nice kind.

“You know, you really haven’t given me much advice. You’ve mostly just asked me questions and given me non-responses. I should have known you wouldn’t be that helpful,” I said to the trees or my brother or the squirrels or whoever might be patient enough to listen to my ramblings.

Do you need advice, Evander?

“Why do you think I’m sitting out here in the cold?”

My brother’s eyes wrinkled, tugging at something in my chest. Very well. But I have little to say, and I fear my advice also comes in the form of a question.

“Typical,” I said, tossing a pine cone at his grave this time.

This Cinderella woman—you say she was the first to see your pain.

“That doesn’t sound like much of a question, or advice, for that matter.”

That’s because I’m not finished.

I gestured for him to go on.

She might have been the first to see your pain, but who do you anticipate will be the last?

CHAPTER 47

ELLIE