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When you know, you know. I guess I can believe that.
Especially after meeting Alden. After spending those few precious hours with him, and hearing him murmur sweet, filthy nothings in my ear, and spinning around with him on the dance floor.Isure as hell know.
My face crumples.
“Oh, Bea!” I’m snatched into my sister’s arms again, and this time I cling on tight. I’m still mad enough to spit, but she’s my twin. My best friend. Ineedher right now. “Was it really awful?”
I can barely speak for sobbing. She rubs soothing circles on my back. “Y-yes.”
Not for the reasons she thinks, but because Alden is too perfect. Too off limits. I’ve tasted true happiness with him, and now it’s gone forever.
Because he did it. He announced their engagement.
And I should have told him earlier. Should have—should have stopped it somehow.
There are so many things I should have done differently, but I was blinded by nerves. Paralyzed by my own lies.
And even if I confessed earlier, he’d hate me anyway. I’m not the twin he wants. I’m just the stand-in until the real star arrives.
“I can practically hear your pity party.” Olympia plucks my hair pins out as she talks, letting them drop to the wooden boards. A heavy curtain of hair falls down my back. “I know I’ve fucked up, but I promise you, Bea. I’ll make it up to you, and it’s definitely not as bad as you think.”
Easy for her to say. She’s got freakingGerond, who at this moment is nosing around the boathouse windows with his hands in his pockets, whistling out of tune. And while I personally don’t see the attraction, that man came to face down a prince for my sister.
I wipe my nose on her bare shoulder. The first of many petty acts of vengeance.
“Ew,” Olympia says flatly.
Don’t care. She deserves it.
“Come on.” As the sun crests over the horizon, my twin tugs me to my feet. Gerond rakes back his hair beside the boathouse. “God knows what’s waiting for us in that palace, but we won’t find out hiding away on this jetty.”
Alden
She ran last night. I suppose I can’t blame her. My fiance was visibly tense throughout the evening; she did well to make it through the announcement and to hold her nerve as long as she did, and I’m proud of her for shouldering such a burden already.
It’s ridiculous to be hurt that she fled alone. Without me.
And beyond foolish to obsess over the fact that she wasn’t in her suite when I knocked. That she didn’t take me up on my offer to crawl under her dress.
I’m clearly ahead of her. Further along in my feelings.
That’s fine. I have a lifetime to make her feel the same way.
But I’m still brooding like a wretch when Danika raps on my study door. I came here straight after breakfast, determined to lose myself in work, and instead I’ve been staring blindly at a blank screen.
“Yes?” My voice is rough with exhaustion. It was a long, sleepless night.
Danika’s head pokes through the doorway, her eyeliner sharpened to points. Her eyes, though, are soft with concern. “Olympia is here to see you, Your Highness.”
I lurch to my feet so quickly, my desk chair skids away over the rug. “Send her in.”
The door swings wider. My fiance steps through.
Or…
I frown, rubbing a palm over my chest. The young woman before me is as beautiful as ever, her brown eyes soulful and her dark hair wild, but despite her familiar features, something is wrong.
I know it. My instincts are screaming, bouncing around my skull.
