Page 47 of Mate Me

“At your service.” She waved her hand in a dramatic gesture.

“All right, advisor. What do you recommend I do here?”

She shrugged. “Oh that’s easy. You give him a chance.”

My mouth fell open, then I shook my head. “Nope. Never mind. You’re fired.”

Clara’s head tilted back, and she barked a laugh. “I’m serious, though, Rea. Give him a chance. You have six months. Do something with it.”

“Oh my god, you are serious ...”

She set down the polish and shuffled her body forward to give me her full attention. “Yes, I am. I’ve been sneaking around and listening to people talk, and I’ve been asking questions to anyone that will have a conversation with me.”

“What’s this have to do with me?”

“Everything. They love him, Reagan. Caius is revered in this place. Supposedly it was awful before he came, but he changed it, and Tartarus is definitely not Hell. The people here have nothing but good things to say about him. He visits the villages and holds townhall meetings where people get to speak up, and apparently, he even attends those. He’s just and fair, a one-with-the-people-type, and ...”

“And?” I prompted when she’d trailed off.

“And they know you’ve rejected him as a mate, and people are upset about it.”

I sighed. “Of course they are. Butting in on something that isn’t their business.”

“They don’t know you’re the guardian or anything like that, at least not that I heard, so they think it’s their business. What they know is they want their king to be happy, and the mate he found has publicly rejected him.”

“I didn’t reject him here. That happened in The Crossroads,” I pointed out.

She shook her head. “When you told Isobel you weren’t his mate, you might as well have rejected him. She told everyone in the kitchen, and it spread like wildfire.”

I sat up straight, feeling defensive even though she wasn’t attacking me. “So you think that because people are mad at me that I should just roll over and give him a chance?”

She scrunched her nose. “Hardly, but I do think maybe learning about him on your own terms might be worth something.”

My defensiveness wilted away, and in its place was my reality. I picked at the end of my braid, tugging at little split ends. “And then what, Clara? I don’t want a mate, and he could have me killed at the end of all this, agreement or not. He doesn’t get his other half returned, or the person he thinks is his mate, and he’s just going to let me walk away with both my heart and his soul? Not likely. He may not hold the knife, but someone else will.”

“Then you’ve got six months to live,” she said with a lift of her shoulder, like it was just easy to announce my upcoming death. “Better to spend it enjoying yourself than in self-imposed imprisonment.”

“I can’t believe you’re advocating for this place,” I muttered, dropping my braid.

“It’s not home, but it’s also not all that terrible here so far. The no sunlight isweird, but otherwise the food is good. Would be better if you cooked for me,” she added with a wink. “The people have actually been really friendly, and the bathtubs are divine.”

“Sure, the tubs are great, but bathing in the Mississippi River is warmer than that water.”

She looked at me in confusion. “What? The water is perfect. The castle is built into the side of a volcano. I guess the water is warmed by it somehow. Natural thermals or something like that.”

I blinked rapidly, processing her words. “Wait, you get hot baths?”

“You don’t?”

Three short raps on the door sounded, and Jana entered. They liked to do that here, just knock and enter whether or not I invited them.

“His Majesty has requested you join him for dinner,” she said flatly, a bored expression on her face.

I stared at her for a moment, realizing just how much she disliked me. Here my cousin was getting the royal treatment and hot water, while I was being shunned. I understood. So I’d obviously made a bad impression, and they wanted to make me suffer for it.

I sighed, glancing at Clara when I mouthed, “Do I have to?”

“Go on,” she urged quietly, shooing me toward the bathroom. “Even Belle had dinner with the Beast.”

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