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I don’t argue with the woman who raised me as she stands behind me in the mirror, fussing with my veil.
Ilsa and my father returned from their Spanish villa for the wedding. My stepmother is thrilled that this marriage will surely settle Father’s debts once and for all.
A smile on this day will never reach my eyes, however. A smile can only reach my eyes if it comes from my heart. My heart lies with Etienne, in a way, but he does not love me.
“Good advice, thank you, Ilsa,” I say.
The older woman gives a resigned sigh and turns away from the mirror.
She does indeed give good advice. Or so one would assume, as she’s the headmistress of the most prominent finishing school in the land. My father and Ilsa met and married quickly after my mother passed away when I was nine years old. I was, from then on, groomed to be a queen.
The older woman moves on to tugging the laces tighter at the back of the bodice, constricting my ribcage and causing me to gasp.
“Make it any tighter and I won’t be able to enjoy the cake,” I tease.
I turn from the mirror and watch Ilsa bend over to lift the dress hem as I carefully step into my heels.
“Take one bite at the cake-cutting ceremony—for the photographs—and be done with it,” she offers.
I scoff, but say nothing. One bite indeed. The cake is the only part I’ve been looking forward to today. My dreams are coming true, yet my heart is breaking at the same time. I will stuff my face with cake. That will solve everything.
Once Ilsa is upright again, she takes a few steps back and looks me up and down.
And then, she’s bawling.
“Oh my gods. My darling. I wish your mother could be here to see this.”
I do not. I am relieved that my mother never lived to see me married to someone who does not love me. I imagine the woman of my flesh and bone would see right through him and call the whole thing off.
And especially considering the groom is, at the present moment, missing.
Missing.
Who goes missing on their wedding day?
Well, that would be Etienne Haart of the royal family of Gravenland. Of course.
Because seventeen years after being rejected by the eldest—the Favored Prince, the one everyone in the kingdom wants or wants to be—I am now to marry Number Two.
Why, at 33, would I debase myself like this?
Well, my family’s farms and businesses hang in the balance, and I’m the only person who feels the true weight of it.
My great-grandfather grew and built his barley and hops farm from one simple parcel of land into the country’s biggest beer producer.
He passed his legacy down to his son, who passed it to my father, who low-key ran the business into the ground. I didn’t know until I received a panicked phone call from the CEO months ago after Father “retired” to Spain.
Things were so bad that payroll was short. On top of that, an American beer company offered a laughably small amount that even if the next payroll could be met, everyone, down to the workers and the farm hands, would have to take a pay cut. So I’d rejected the deal, and now everything is in flux.
And the king knows. So, if I don’t marry Etienne? The capricious king can recall the loan to be paid in full, which would mean liquidating our assets and shuttering our doors.
The land on which our crops and facilities sit will transfer to the palace, and the king will do with it what he will.
How different my life would have been if my mother had lived.
I might never have been sent to finishing school. I might never have had the same tutors, attended the same schools, or been strategically placed before the king’s nose as a young girl for him to notice me.
I might never have been used as a bargaining chip.
