“Ah, so you do know me. I suppose that means we aren’t doing the oldI didn’t recognize youbit.”
“—I did not come here to corner you, throw myself upon you, or offer you atryst against the alley wall.” I say this last part through my teeth. “As hard as it might be for you to believe, not every young woman in Faerwyvae goes weak and mewling in your presence, begging to bed and marry you. In fact, anyone with half a brain would know to avoid you entirely.”
He barks a laugh. “Is that so? Because of my impressive reputation?”
He means his rakish reputation. Everyone knows the prince is nothing but a rogue. I’ve heard the rumors about his many lovers, how he breaks hearts with hardly a care. I never gave these sensational tales much weight before, but now…
“Well, this is cute,” he says flatly, “and yet I’ve heard it all before. You hate me, you find me despicable, you’re not like other girls…and yet it always ends with someone trying to kiss me.” A corner of his mouth lifts in a suggestive smirk that has my cheeks heating further.
“You couldn’t pay me to kiss you!” I say. “I would rather kiss a troll’s—”
“Your thirty seconds are up,” he says, and I startle as an enormous pair of black feathered wings sprouts from his back as if from nowhere. They expand nearly from one side of the alley to the other. I leap back as they lift and beat the air around us, nearly sending my bonnet flying off my head. Then, pushing off from the ground, the prince darts into the sky.
“It was a valiant effort,” I hear him call overhead before he soars over the buildings and out of sight.
“I would rather kiss a troll’sass! That’s what I was going to say!” I shout at the empty sky but get no response. For several minutes, I remain in place, scowling at the clouds. No matter how much time ticks by, my anger refuses to dissipate and instead roars through my veins. My curled fingers dig so hard into my palms, I’m sure they’ve left crescent moons. I release my clenched fists, shaking out my hands. If I had a piano right now, I’d probably smash the keys to pieces while expressing my rage. With no musical outlet at my disposal, I’m left to growl under my breath. And when that doesn’t work, I point a rude gesture at the innocent sky.
“Ember, what is taking you so long?” I lower my hand and whirl to find Clara standing at the mouth of the alley. She crosses her arms and pins me with a glare. “We’ve been finished for an entire minute at least.”
With a few steadying breaths, I gather my composure, smoothing my skirts with trembling hands. “Sorry,” I say as I hurry toward her. She walks away before I reach her, which allows me a few more moments to try and forget my irritating exchange with the prince.
* * *
“The prince,”Clara says with a wistful sigh as she turns in a circle. The skirts of her glamoured dress swirl around her ankles and brush up against the cramped furniture in our apartment’s front room. “Do you think he’ll like my glamour?”
The honest answer is no. After my meeting with that crude son-of-a-harpy, I’m convinced the prince only likes himself. But since the question isn’t directed at me, I swallow my remark and continue to scrub the floor around the stove. Harder. Like it’s the prince’s face.
“It won’t matter if he’ll like it or not if we can’t secure an invitation to the ball,” Imogen says, turning the page of a book I doubt she’s even reading. She reclines on the couch, no longer in the fine outfit she wore to town. Instead, she wears a threadbare morning dress, something she never would have dared to wear a year ago. After Mrs. Coleman sold all but a few articles of the family’s finest clothing, what remains must be worn sparingly to avoid stains and tears. “I wish Mother would tell us her plan.”
Clara ceases her twirling and peels off a pair of silk gloves. As soon as the first glove is removed, the glamour disappears, leaving Clara in a drab gray skirt and blouse. “Mother’s original plan already failed,” she whispers, casting a quick glance toward Mrs. Coleman’s bedroom. “Why didn’t we see the prince? He was supposed to be there.”
Imogen shrugs. “Maybe Madame Flora wove him an invisibility glamour.”
I smirk at the ground as I continue to scrub the filthy floor. Shortly after rejoining my stepfamily to make our way back home, it became clear something had gone amiss. Even though their shopping appeared successful, the proof being the three boxes they had me carry home for them, my stepmother was in an even pricklier mood than she normally is. If only they knew how little they missed in not having seen the prince. Then again, I would have paid dearly to see one of my stepsisters ridiculed in my place. Would he have treated them the way he treated me? Or would the playboy prince have been flattered by the attentions of someone not dressed like a maid?
Clara takes a seat next to her sister on the couch. “Maybe he went out another entrance.”
Imogen freezes, slams her book shut, and whirls toward me. “Ember, did you see him? Did he exit through the alley?”
For not the first time, I’m grateful I can lie. Only the pureblood fae are plagued by the inability to tell direct untruths. “I did not.”
“Can you imagine Ember meeting the prince?” Imogen says to Clara. “What would she even say to him?”
I’d tell him I hope the All of All smites him in his sleep and drags him to hell in a burning iron chariot. The thought makes me smile as I scrub the stones even harder.
Clara faces me with cruel mischief in her eyes. “Ember doesn’t care about meeting the prince, I’m sure. She’s of no mind to marry.”
I say nothing to argue her statement because it’s true. Even if Mrs. Coleman hadn’t forbidden me from marrying until both her daughters are wed, I still wouldn’t harbor any hopes for matrimony. No one wants to marry someone like me, a girl too wild to be human, and too tame to be fae. A girl who fits nowhere with no one. A girl guilty of killing the person she loved most…
A knock sounds on the apartment door, making me pause my scrubbing, brow furrowed. We rarely receive visitors, since Mrs. Coleman likes to pretend we don’t live here at all. Not even the post comes to our door, for my stepmother insists on picking it up in town. We already stopped there on our way home today, and after Mrs. Coleman flipped through the sparse letters without opening a single one, she shoved them into her purse with far more contempt than necessary. It was clear she’d been expecting something important.
“What are you doing down there?” Imogen eyes me with a sneer. “Go answer the door.”
With a sigh, I drop my scrub brush into the wash bucket and dry my hands on my apron. By the time I reach the door and open it, there’s no one there…
I glance down, finding an enormous white owl perched upon a slender box. In one taloned foot, it holds an envelope. “Are you Ember Montgomery?” the owl asks, the deep female voice coming not from her beak but somewhere within the creature.
“I am,” I say with no small amount of hesitation.
