I shook my head. “How the fuck I keep finding myself in these situations, I’ll never know.”
Jordan stalked across the room toward me. There was literally no other way to describe his walk, filled with arrogance and long-legged grace. I had a feeling he might be almost as good a fighter as Rafe, judging on the way he moved. “Maybe you like trouble, little princess.”
I was shaking my head before he even finished. “No. that’s not it at all. Trouble finds me, I don’t go searching for it.”
Liar.Yeah, I kinda was. But for the most part I kept myself out of anything too dark. I had limits. I’d always drawn a line and I’d stayed firmly on the side closer to the light. But now. Now I kept slipping and finding myself in these murky shades of gray. Pretty soon I would be in too deep.
“Why did you bring me here?” I asked, standing. He was towering over me, staring down, and it had shifted the balance of power too much for my liking.
Jordan shrugged, but his eyes weren’t giving me the same indifference. “It’s private. Figured you didn’t want this spread around the school.”
I sobered at the thought. “It’s kind of life and death right now,” I admitted. “So private is definitely best.”
Sucking in a deep breath, I quickly blurted out my next line. “I have to pretend to date Alex otherwise he basically told me I’d end up the same as Jasmine. I’m trapped like a fucking mouse that was too stupid to see the danger until it was too late. Kissing Alex in the hall made my skin fucking crawl and if I could have killed him without repercussions, right then and there, I would have.”
Needing to do something, because the intensity of his gaze was almost as disconcerting as Rafe’s when he locked me in, I started to wander around the room, trying to find something personal about Jordan in here. There were a few photos only, mostly of him and Rafe, but also two with his parents. I recognized the king and queen of New America. Unlike their heirs, they were often in the public eye.
“I’ll head back in summer for a week,” he said from right behind me, and I would have jumped, but I’d felt him at my back a second before he spoke. “Be nice to see them and my little sister.”
I spun, blinking up at him. “You have a sister?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she’s twelve. Pain in my ass, but also the best fucking kid in the world.”
His face got all soft when he spoke about her, and I felt my heart start pounding like a drum in my chest. When he leaned in close, I started breathing embarrassingly hard. “What are we going to do about Alex?” he asked, and it took me far too long to register the question.
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Reading between the lines of what he said, this is much deeper than any of us realized. It’s beyond just a simple arrogant fuck who thought he could force me to be his baby maker. The princess ballot was created with the sole purpose of ensuring genetically perfect royal heirs, whenever there wasn’t a match found in the royal circles. These women probably don’t even realize they are being manipulated, but it’s pretty clear that the dudes they marry are well aware of the situation.”
Since my royal friends didn’t seem to know about it, it had to be one of those “need to know” situations where you only found out if you were one without a match.
Jordan was quiet, his gaze assessing. “We should check in on the previous winners. See where they all ended up.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to do it without alerting whoever might be watching that we’re looking into it.”
Jordan just grinned, white teeth blinding me with their perfect straight sheen. Genetically blessed bastards, him and Rafe both. “You’re in safe hands. There’s a way to disable tracking on these palm readers. If you know what you’re doing.”
I shook my head. “Mattie didn’t mention it to me.”
He let out a rumble of laughter. “Mattie doesn’t know. It’s New American technology. Not available to everyone, even that ratty little nation that developed one of the most important advances in war that we’ve seen in a hundred years.”
I nudged him as I went past, back to the bed. “They’re not ratty, you snobby jerk.”
He shrugged. “Facts are facts, Vi.”
Their arrogance knew no bounds. “Who decided that two of the most powerful princes in the world would be best friends?” I grumbled. “How you two fit both your heads in the same room is beyond me.”
Jordan didn’t look remotely offended. “We’re good at a lot of things together. If you’re interested in finding out.”
I met his gaze fully then, wondering if I’d just heard him right. “Are you telling me that Rafe is okay with sharing a woman with you?” I couldn’t imagine that scenario, not if Rafe truly cared about someone.
But… stranger things had happened.
Jordan shook his head, as darkness filled his eyes. The joking flirt was gone then, replaced with someone that had a core of steel and shadows. “Talk to me about the game plan for Alex.”
And just like that, we were back to business.
Chapter 7
Jordan and I ended up spending most of the day in his bedroom. After he did something technologically impressive to disable any tracking bots from my palm reader, we spent hours pouring over old news articles about previous ballot winners. When we’d exhausted those resources, we moved on to even older information about the rise of monarchies and rumors of an infertility problem.
