I want to.
But...hasn’t she heard about there being a first time for everything?
I walk back to my room on legs that feel like they belong to someone else.
Devyn is in New Jersey. Fighting. With guns. And knives. And whatever else people use when they're trying to kill each other.
And tomorrow is our wedding day.
THE CLOCK ON MY NIGHTSTANDticks past midnight. One. Two.
Every time I start to drift off, my brain conjures images I don't want to see. Devyn bleeding. Devyn surrounded. Devyn taking four bullets and not stopping.
Tomorrow I'm supposed to get married.
Tomorrow I'm supposed to walk down an aisle and stand beside a man I've known for less than a week and promise to be his.
If he comes back.
If he's still alive.
I stare at the ceiling.
I don't know when I started caring. I don't know when this shifted from terror to something else.
He almost kissed me. He said he doesn't share. He noticed my dimple and tracked who I showed it to like it mattered.
LikeImattered.
And now he's somewhere in New Jersey, fighting people who want to kill him, and I'm lying here in silk sheets wondering if I'm going to be a bride tomorrow or something else entirely.
The clock ticks past three.
Past four.
Wedding or funeral?
I don't know.
I won't know until morning.
And morning, whether I'm ready or not, is already here.
Chapter Six
"MY LADY. MY LADY,please."
I pry my eyes open and find a young maid standing over me, her face tight with barely concealed panic. My head feels stuffed with cotton. My body feels like it's been filled with sand.
"What time is it?"
"Past nine, my lady. The ceremony begins at eleven. We need to start preparing younow."
Nine. I finally fell asleep sometime after dawn, which means I got maybe three hours.
But the maid saidceremony.
Which means there's a ceremony to attend.
