Page 45 of A Court Bright and Broken

Bond-mate? Was that the purpose of this ball—helping the Crown Prince find a bride?

“Nevertheless,” the butler responded in a bored sounding tone. “This does not appear to be an official invitation. It’s a fake.”

He nodded to a pair of armored soldiers standing nearby. They moved swiftly, grabbing the loudly protesting woman and escorting her away.

To where? Her carriage?

A dungeon?

I started looking around for an escape route. My own invitation hardly looked official. It was hastily written and not even signed with a full name—only the letter S.

No one would notice if I left the line and slipped out the nearest exit, would they?

And then there was no more line.

It was my turn to present my invitation.

If I ran now, I wouldcertainlyout myself as a pretender. There was no course but to forge ahead and hope for the best.

Maybe the Earthwife had altered my invitation the same way she’d transformed me, sprinkling some of her magic onto it so it would fit in with the others.

With shaking fingers, I extracted the paper from my evening bag and handed it over to the intimidating butler.

Just as he had with the woman before me, he turned it over several times, squinted at it, scowled at it.

“This is very… irregular,” he said, and my heart dropped to my sparkling shoes. He glanced up at the armored guards, obviously preparing to call them forward.

“Where did you get this? It’s only signed with a single—”

Another man stepped out into the entry hall from inside the ballroom and plucked the invitation from the butler’s hand.

“With a P,” the newcomer said. “My handwriting isabominable.”

Dark-haired and exceedingly tall, the stranger shifted his gaze from the gatekeeper to me.

Everything stopped, as if the world had been flash-frozen.

No music drifting from the ballroom, no witty conversation around me. No air left in the room.

While I’d found Sam’s eyes exceptionally pretty, this man’s eyes literally stunned me. They were a shade of blue-green so vibrant they put the ocean outside the castle walls to shame.

There was certainly nothing like them to be found in the human world.

Ashamed to have been caught staring so blatantly, I clamped my gaping jaw shut and darted my eyes away, swallowing down the extra heartbeats bubbling up my throat.

When I dared to glance back a few seconds later, the man was still looking at me.

Then he blinked, and his wide mouth broke into a brilliant smile that caused my stomach to drop to the floor, bounce back up, and slam against my sternum.

Suddenly, he was in motion, coming toward me.

“There you are, darling,” he said, as if he’d been anticipating my arrival for hours.

Reaching me, he leaned down and kissed my cheek, drawing my hand into the crook of his arm and tucking it against his sizable bicep.

To the butler, he said, “I’ve been waiting for this one’s arrival. Carry on, Niland.”

What is going on?

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