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“I know.” He pressed a kiss to my temple, and there was something so unbearably tender in it that I almost forgot the hundred people bustling around us. “Which is why I will not leave your side for a moment. You have my word.”

And the worst, most ruinous part was that I believed him.

Eventually, regretfully, the day caught up with us. A steward appeared at the edge of the hall with the careful, apologetic air of a man who knew exactly how unwelcome he was, and I felt Atlas sigh against my hair before he even spoke.

“Duty,” he muttered.

“Kingly duty,” I agreed, with a great deal less grace.

He walked me back through the maze of his castle himself, refusing to hand me off to a single servant, until we reached the tall carved doors of his bedchamber. There he stopped, turned me gently to face him, and looked at me as though he was trying to memorize this version of me. One, flushed and happy, not yet poured into something terrifying and formal.

I tilted my head up at him, fighting a smile.

“So, I take it the tour is over?”

His mouth curved, slow and wicked.

“For now.” He bent and kissed me, unhurried, thorough, the kind of kiss that made my toes curl against the cool stone floor. When he finally drew back, his eyes were dark, and his voice was rough velvet. “You, little bird, have a banquet to get ready for.”

I groaned, dropping my forehead against his chest.

“How could I possibly forget?” He chuckled at this.

“I have every faith in you.” He was already stepping back, already grinning, the maddening man, thoroughly enjoying my suffering. “Try not to start a war with the wardrobe.”

“No promises.”

His laughter followed him all the way down the corridor, and I stood there watching him go with my heart doing something foolish and enormous in my chest, until he turned a corner and was gone.

Then I pushed open the doors and stepped into his chambers, and of course, the bath had already been drawn.

I could see it through the open bathroom door, steam curling lazily up toward the high windows, the water’s surface scattered with white petals that perfumed the entire space. And who was there waiting for me, smoothing a fold in the most beautiful gown I had ever seen laid across the foot of the bed, was a girl I recognized.

“Thalia,” I said, and the maid startled, then dropped into a quick, flustered curtsy.

“My lady. Damn it… I mean… Alex.” She corrected herself with a small, shy smile, her cheeks coloring. “His Majesty asked that everything be prepared. I hope the temperature is to your liking. I wasn’t sure how hot you mortals like your water, so I, um.” She gestured vaguely at the steaming bath. “I guessed.”

“I’m sure it’s perfect, thank you,” I said, giving her what I hoped was a reassuring smile as she seemed so nervous. As if she were always expecting to mess up or something, and it made me wonder what made her so nervous. Was it me…?

Or was it something else?

She was such a beautiful girl, with her pale golden skin and long chestnut hair braided over one shoulder. She looked far more fit for royalty than I did. But it was those large hazel eyes that kept darting to me and away again as though she couldn’t quite decide whether looking directly at me was permitted that really did me in. Like some frightened doe, terrified of getting caught out as a fraud or something.

I wanted to ask her if she was alright. If she needed help in any way, but what basis did I have to do so? I also didn’t know what she was, as well… she wasn’t human. No one here was, so it made me wonder even more about her.

She’d helped me into a gown the morning before, all nervous efficiency, but we’d hardly spoken. Now, alone, the quiet stretched between us, and I watched her twist her fingers together in that anxious way she had.

I decided then and there that I liked her.

“You can stop looking like I might bite,” I told her, kicking off my shoes with absolutely no elegance whatsoever. “I promise I’m the least frightening thing in this entire castle. I once cried because I couldn’t get a dress off and had to sleep in it… of course, I had been six at the time and sleeping at a friend’s house, but still.”

Thalia’s lips pressed together. She was fighting it. I could see her fighting it… a smile.

“Go on,” I said. “You can laugh. Everyone else does.”

And she did.

It burst out of her, sudden and bright and utterly without warning. A clear, musical lilt of a laugh that climbed up at the end into the most ridiculous, endearing little hiccupping snort I had ever heard in my life. The moment it escaped her, her eyes went wide, and her hand flew up to clamp over her mouth, mortified, her whole face flooding scarlet.