“I had trouble with our arithmetic homework,” she fibbed. “You know how terrible I am at it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “We didn’t have any arithmetic homework this week.” This time, hedidstep closer, forcing her to step back. “In fact, we haven’t had any homework this week in preparation for the ball.” His head tipped slightly. “Tell me,” he murmured.
But she wouldn’t—couldn’t—because in every scenario she came out the loser. When all’s said and done, Rome and Viv would marry, have a beautiful warrior baby, and live out their happily ever after while Violet watched from the shadows.
With stark clarity, she realized they could no longer be friends. It hurt, possibly worse than seeing Roman and Vivian kiss, but it had to be done. If she didn’t put an end to it now and give herself time to get over Roman before they forced her to watch him live out her dream with Vivian, there would be nothing left of her heart to give someone else.
So, she would end their friendship until her idiocy passed.
But not tonight. Selfishly, she wanted one more night with him before she confessed her sins and distanced herself; one more happy memory to tuck away for later. Besides, a lot of thought went into her birthday gift to him, and it’d be a shame to waste it.
Pushing down her swelling emotions, she wrapped her hand around his. “I have a gift for you, but you have to give up the rest of your party for it.” She’d planned on pulling him away after midnight when the party died down, but now seemed as good a time as any.
Roman opened his mouth to say something but closed it with a snap and squeezed her hand. “I’d give up anything for you, princess.”
* * *
Roman knew he’d look back on this night as one of the happiest of his life. He’d wondered if Violet felt the same way he did, but he’d seen her hurt expression before she’d fled the ballroom.
The tears streaming down her face only cemented his suspicions, and while he wanted to kill Vivian for being the catalyst to Violet’s tears, they were proof his feelings weren’t one-sided.
Only one thing stood in their way, but he vowed to find a way to transfer the mate bond from one twin to the other. Lore suggested identical twins were one soul torn in two. If their souls were once one, why couldn’t the bond transfer from one half of the soul to the other? There had to be a way.
The palace library contained an unfathomable amount of history books, some of them centuries old. They were kept in exclusive rooms not available to anyone except scholars and royals to avoid over-handling and to preserve them as long as possible. When age wore them down, scholars copied them into new books to avoid losing the information to time.
There might be something useful in them about bonds. He’d check old fables and faerietales too. As a child, when his mother would read to him, she’d said they were real tales passed down from person to person. Roman knew she’d only been fueling the imagination of a small child, but what if the old stories were rooted in truth?
Deep down he knew if something existed allowing a royal to bond to someone other than their gods-blessed mate, the knowledge would have leaked by now, but he had to try.
Roman adjusted his hand and threaded his fingers through Violet’s. “Where are we going?”
She smiled beautifully over her shoulder and led him through the wide, ornately decorated hallways. Paintings framed in gold hung from the smoothed and polished stone walls, lit by oil lanterns encased in golden sconces. Roman hated it, but his mother thought the gaudier, the better.
“It’s a secret,” Violet said cryptically. “We’re almost there.”
They turned toward the stairs leading to their classroom, and a grin stretched across his face. “What scheme have you cooked up tonight, princess?”
Roman’s favorite girl released his hand, pulled a few tools from her dress pocket, and crouched in front of the door. “We’re going to flip everything inside.” The mischievous smile she flashed him before starting on the lock made him laugh.
“What exactly does flipping everything entail?” he mused and leaned against the wall beside the door.
When the lock clicked open, Violet pushed open the door and tugged him inside.
After closing the door behind him, he turned to her and folded his arms across his chest. “How long have you been planning this without telling me?”
“Almost a month,” Violet replied slyly, flitting from lantern to lantern to brighten the room. She waved her hand around, gesturing to the entire room. “We’re going to flip all the furniture, paintings, and whatever else we can, upside down. It will look like the world flipped on its head.”
It took a moment for her meaning to register, and when it did, he burst out laughing and Violet brightened with delight. “How do you come up with these things?”
She shrugged and tapped one of the desks. “I’m not strong enough to do the desks, but I can start on the paintings.”
Roman raised an arm and flexed his muscles. “I won’t let you down.”
Together, they turned the room upside down, laughing and talking in hushed whispers as they worked. Roman paused to observe Violet as she flipped every book on the bookshelf. The flush of her cheeks from laughing, the excitement in her eyes, the way she bounced on her toes when she moved—beautiful.
He was hers completely and irrevocably, and he would do whatever it took to make her his, too.
8
