The guard who had situated himself to my left laughed. “You really think we’re escorting you to the castle so you can get a patent on your shoes?”

“I—” My hands trembled, causing the slipper to shake in my sweaty palms.

What was this?

There had been a misunderstanding, of course, but surely the prince wouldn’t punish me for claiming the shoes his missing lover had stolen from me. I scooted toward the coat door, but the guard rested a firm, threatening grip on my shoulder.

“Miss Payne,” the courier drawled, leaning forward so that his hot breath wet my face, making me cringe, “as much as I regret this to be the case, you, my dear, are now the prince’s betrothed.”

CHAPTER 3

EVANDER

Breakfast with the royal family—my family—was typically conducted in long stretches of silence punctuated by my precious mother’s occasional attempts at prompting conversation between my father and me.

Most mornings, I found the silence agonizing.

Today?

What I would have given for my father to ignore my existence.

“My dear Evangeline, do you imagine the envoy has caught up with our son’s future bride yet?”

Okay, so he was technically still ignoring me, talking about me instead of to me as if I hadn’t been sitting at his right hand for the past half hour.

My mother’s ageless face lit up; she must have considered this progress.

Great.

“I don’t imagine she could have gone far,” my mother said, her rosy cheeks rounding in delight. “That would defeat the purpose of playing hard to get.”

My mother reached for my hand and beamed at me.

Playing hard to get.

I couldn’t help the grin that tugged on the edges of my lips. Leave it to my mother to spin the fact that my betrothed quite literally ran away from me into the romantic beginnings of a faerietale.

To most, it might have seemed like the end.

I knew better.

Apparently, so did my mother.

“Hard to get?” my father drawled, cruel amusement flickering on his lips, though his gray eyes remained untouched. “Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what it is.”

Something about his tone suggested otherwise.

Shocker.

I leaned back in my chair, placing my hands behind my head and interlocking my fingers, mirroring that amused confidence of his in my smirk.

This was the game we played, he and I. Who could show their hatred for the other the most without ever coming out and saying so?

If my mother hadn’t been sitting across from me, I might have volleyed back something like, What, Father? Are you jealous that you missed out on the chance to pursue my dear mother when you bought her from her father in Avelea? Do you regret missing out on the chase?

But, alas, I’d sooner pick my teeth with wasp stingers than embarrass my mother like that.

So instead I went with, “What, Your Majesty? Am I sensing regret that the heir to your throne will have human blood running through their veins? Was it not you who commanded me to select a human bride in the first place?”

My father dabbed his lips with his napkin, his piercing gray eyes glinting like a double-edged sword as he folded his napkin and placed it over his finished plate. “It is not the human blood I regret, son.”

The barbs in his words pierced deeper than just my skin.

My only regret is that the bloodline runs through you, and not your brother.

Yeah, well, he wasn’t the only one.

My smirk didn’t falter, though. I’d had two hundred years of this to perfect it.

Besides, my father was at a distinct disadvantage this morning. Most days, the sting of his words would have lingered longer, but most days, I hadn’t just danced the night away with the most dazzling woman in all of Alondria.

He’d meant it as a punishment, forcing me to select a bride from the humans. While our human citizens assumed it was a demonstration of goodwill toward them, I knew better.

My father had done it to shame me. It didn’t matter that my father maintained the facade of caring for his human citizens, that he both appointed and catered to the human ambassadors to keep the humans well-fed and blissfully apathetic. It didn’t matter how popular it had become for the fae to select a bride from among the humans since the King of Naenden had done it and succeeded. My father knew it was simply a fad, one that would fade in a few short years, and that then I’d be stuck with a wife who would wither away in less than a century.

Then, there was the other reason.

He also wanted an heir to the throne, and heirs were much easier to produce with human women. While most fae females found conception elusive, only occurring after decades or even centuries of trying, human women could produce several offspring within their short time under the sun.

At first, this had puzzled me. It seemed out of character for my father, who turned his sharp nose up at the humans (unbeknownst to them), to accept a half-fae as an heir.

But then I’d realized.

He simply hated me that much. Even an heir soiled with human blood would be a better alternative to his disappointment of a son ruling in his place. While it wasn’t common by any means, it wasn’t unheard of for a Dwellen king to name his grandchild as heir in place of his child.

Joke was on him; I never wanted the throne, anyway. Not when Jerad had been such a perfect, obvious choice, deserving of every bit of respect and adoration the Dwellen people had bestowed upon him.

My chest clenched at the thought of my brother.

The ball was meant to be a punishment. Of that much, I was sure. Meant to shackle me to a new bride as well, as my father disapproved of my nightly company. My father assumed the worst of me in almost every regard, except in the cases in which assuming the best of me could be twisted into a punishment of some sort and used against me.

I was a lot of things by his standards—a whore, a partier, a drunkard.

But I wasn’t a cheat.

And he’d shackle me to a human woman I had no interest in, just to deprive me of my pleasures for a few decades.

Well, the joke was on him in that area, too.