Page 72 of Princess of Thorns and Ruin

He drills holes into the back of my white dress with his eyes, the effect as tangible as a graze of his fingers. “My offer still stands. You just have to say the word.”

The tight corset barely allows me to breathe. “Am I so lucky now, Mr. Beaumont?”

“Why are you going along with this marriage?” His voice is quieter than I thought possible, but his lips moved, so I know I didn’t just read his thoughts.

I spin around to face him. “It’s my duty. When I’m queen, I might be able to steer this court toward reform.” I bite my lips, knowing I sound naive at best considering all that we saw last night. “If not now, then after the king’s death… Upholding the laws of Hatten is my family’s sacred responsibility.”

Alec’s phone buzzes in his pocket, but he quickly turns it off. “Your family… Don’t get me wrong, Lucky, but vampires, especially kings, are all violent and greedy. Your family makes no exception.”

“Victor is a good man,” I say, more as a knee-jerk reaction than true conviction. After all that happened in France, I’m not sure I even know my brother at all. “If we don’t change this court, we’re all doomed.”

Alec paces the room, shaking his head. “Victor might be good in the sense that he doesn’t torture people for pleasure, but he’s about as good at hiding his real appetites as my younger brother is. If he cared so much about our laws, he’d start by reforming his own court.”

“What in the name of Nyx do you mean?” I crane my neck around to follow his movements and pat down the soft, white silk covering my stomach, his words stroking a chord inside me.

Alec squints the same way he did when I asked him to stay the night with me, as though he doesn’t fully trust me. “You really don’t know?”

I shake my head, afraid I’ll shatter if I speak too loud or move too fast, feeling like the rose from the fairytale, suspended inside a glass jar for the rest of time, condemned to wither one petal at a time.

“The king might be married to Adele Chastain, but he prefers his blood slaves—and his lovers—to be male. He might have gone through with the arranged marriage your brother imposed, but everyone knows it’s all for show. A ploy to produce heirs. Peter Chastain is so obsessed with his legacy, I’m surprised he didn’t convince your brother to marry you to his son.”

It shouldn’t surprise me considering how Victor tried to vaguely allude to a possible affair with Lucas, but my face wrinkles. “I don’t get it. Why would Adele marry him, then? He wasn’t supposed to become king, so she could have married someone else.”

“For the same reason you’re about to marry Felipe Pereira. For duty. Adele gets first-pick at the blood slaves and keeps a handful of lovers in return. Only…Pereira will not let you do as you please. He won’t allow you this sort of freedom.” He curses under his breath as his phone starts buzzing again and glances at the screen only to bury it back inside his jacket. “As soon as Felipe dies, I expect you’ll be pushed aside in favor of his oldest son. Victor knows this. If he said otherwise, he’s been lying to you.”

All my life, I’ve been taught that our power depends on alliances, and that queens can be as powerful as their husbands. Like so many things about my education, it was a diluted, sugary version of the truth. I’ve been fooled by Victor. He sold me on the idea of reform, dangling in front of me the possibility that I’d be queen for centuries after Felipe’s death.

My blood ices at the thought that my brother never breathed a word of the alternative to me, probably hoping I’d remain dutiful and stupid long enough for him to get his way. I grip my throat, the pressure there almost unbearable as I hold in a scream.

“I answer only to you. What do you want me to do?” Alec asks, his quiet tone begging me to make the right decision.

A lost piece of me clicks into place. I don’t have to go through with this and let others dictate my life to fulfill some sort of duty, or to please people.

I’m a Delacroix.

A princess.

A woman.

A demon.

“Get me out of here.” I open my mouth to speak further, but a knock at the door startles us both.

Leo enters the room through the servant’s door and walks over to me, his face ashen, and leans to my ear. “The angel wants to speak to you.”

“Now?” Alec barks.

“I think you should hear him out.” Leo doubles-back to open the door for the Celt.

Keenan’s short brown curls and glacial-blue eyes look even more angelic than last night, the glow of his skin mesmerizing. “Your highness, I was hired to make sure you’d go through with the wedding and kill you if you didn’t.” He shoots a sideways glance to my first-blood. “And Felipe asked me to get rid of Leo during the ceremony.”

“Why hire you? Pereira’s got an army of vampires,” Alec dead-pans.

Keenan holds his deadly gaze without a hint of shame. “They were superstitious. They thought a curse was sure to befall any vampire who raised a hand on Katharina Delacroix’s daughter.”

My mother’s name brings tears to my eyes. “Why are you telling us?”

“What can I say? I’m a sucker for beautiful girls, and though I bargained a hefty price, I don’t like his manners.”

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