Page 94 of Twin Crowns

Alarik’s fingers tightened around hers and Wren tried not to wince. He swept her in a circle, moving so fast, her feet almost left the dance floor. Just as she was catching her breath, he spun her again. She caught a flash of Tor before the room blurred.

Her head began to spin. “What are you doing?” she gritted out.

“I am leading.” Alarik pulled her roughly against him, his hand pressing into her back. “As you asked.”

The room twirled around Wren, again and again, and again. She glimpsed Tor standing stiff-backed by the wall, then Celeste with her head thrown back in laughter. She tried to get her attention, but Anika was commanding every drop of it, and Wren quickly found herself marooned in a dance that had far outpaced its musical accompaniment.

“I’m feeling a bit dizzy,” she said, trying to pull away.

Alarik pretended not to hear her. He twirled her like a spinning top, Tor’s face giving way to Ansel’s. Then there were Celeste and Anika laughing in blurs of blue and silver, and as they glided closer to the windows, Wren thought she caught a glimpse of something out in the gardens. A figure moving in the darkness.

But...No.

She spun away, sure she had imagined it. The incessant turning was toying with her mind. She was impossibly dizzy now, and it was causing her to hallucinate.

But then she saw it again.

Wren tried to blink the face into focus. Was it her own reflection staring back at her? A trick of the lights or the frostfizz toying with her mind? Her stomach roiled as the world spun again, and a distant panic started to inch up her throat.

“Stop,” she said, digging her heels in. “I’ll be sick.”

“Say please.”

Wren slammed the heel of her shoe into Alarik’s foot.

The king cursed as he released her.

“Oops.” She leaped backward before he could grab her. “I told you I was clumsy.”

Wren quickly lost herself in the milling crowds, winding her way toward the dessert table, which was as far from the dance floor as she could get. She slumped into a chair by a tower of cupcakes and massaged her temples, trying to regain control of her senses.

She looked to the windows, where the world outside was perfectly still. A sigh unfurled from her. “I knew I was seeing things.” She started to laugh at her own absurdity....

And then glimpsed that face again.

Wren’s amusement died, quick and strangled, in her throat.

She was sure of it this time—there was a figure moving in the bushes outside.

“No,” said Wren, rising to her feet. “It isn’t possible.”

She jolted into action, her skirts bunched in her fists as she weaved around prowling leopards and growling wolves, hurrying from the ballroom without looking back.

The palace guards in the hallway regarded her curiously.“Everything all right, Princess Rose?”

“Too much waltzing,” said Wren, fanning herself. “I just need some fresh air.”

Out in the courtyard, she scoured the darkness. “I know you’re here!” she hissed. “Come out before you get us both killed!”

There was a stretch of silence. And then a faint rustling.

Wren stared in horror as Rose stepped out from behind a hydrangea bush.

Rose raised her chin and glared at her sister in the moonlit dark. Wren glared right back, the same emerald-green eyes boring into each other. Rose was a world away from the princess she had been almost one moon ago. She was wearing a bedraggled tunic and her boots were falling apart. Her face was mussed with dirt and sand and sun-borne freckles, and her hair, now streaked with gold, was as tangled as a bird’s nest.

It was Wren who shattered the silence. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she demanded.

Rose balled her fists, her face flashing with pure, undiluted fury. “I could askyouthe same question.”

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