Page 39 of Every Eligible Man

Good.

Boot: too small.

"But I didn't even."

"Your brother's foot was on the edge of fitting. Yours is clearly smaller." I let my gaze drift downward again. "Is everything smaller on you, Garrick, or just the extremities?"

His face goes purple.

"I'll take that as a yes. You may leave. Tell your father I said hello and that I remember what he looks like naked and I'm still recovering from the visual."

Baron Grimwald makes a sound like a dying seal and flees the hall, his sons scrambling after him.

Behind me, Mira adds to her tally:

Grimwald sons humiliated: 2 Worth it: YES

I'm inclined to agree.

HOUR TWELVE: MIDNIGHT APPROACHES

The candles have burned low. The crowd has thinned. My ass went numb three hours ago and I'm fairly certain I'll never feel joy again.

Two hundred and forty-seven men.

Two hundred and forty-seven disappointments.

Not a single cock that makes me feel even a fraction of what I felt that night.

Gerald is asleep in my lap again, twitching with ferret dreams. I stroke his fur absently, letting myself wallow in defeat.

Where are they?

My masked strangers. My three perfect disasters. They ruined me, actually ruined me, not just physically but mentally, and then they vanished into the night in a disintegrating carriage like some kind of fever dream.

Maybe they aren't real. Maybe I hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe the wine was poisoned and I invented three perfect men and the best sex of my life.

No.

Gerald is real. The boot is real. The glove is real.

They're out there. Somewhere.

"Tomorrow," I say, sitting up straighter. "We expand the search."

Mira looks at me with the hollow eyes of a woman who has seen too much. "My lady?"

"Every village. Every farm. Every man from here to the mountains." I scratch behind Gerald's ears and feel him purr, a tiny, violent sound of approval. "The boot was well-worn. That's a working man's boot. The glove had dirt under the fingernails. And this ferret?"

Gerald wakes up, yawns, and attempts to steal my ring.

"This ferret is feral in a way that suggests a rural upbringing. They're not nobility. They're not city dwellers." A slow smile crosses my face. "They're somewhere in the countryside. And I'm going to find them if I have to inspect every cock from here to the mountains."

Mira writes something on her tally sheet.

I catch a glimpse:

Cinder: fully unhinged