Gia snorted, winking at me. “Too bad you were born to be a Queen and those boys know it.”
I shot her the bird and laughed. “Idiots. The three of them.”
After girl talk with Gia, I spent the next hour reading.
Max came in at one point, fresh out of the shower, and crawled onto bed beside me. All but face-planting onto the pillows, he threw an arm over my lap and peered at the annotated pages in my dad’s book. He jerked his chin toward a spot I’d been tracing with my fingers.
“It’s wax residue. My dad must’ve spilled it while he was reading at his desk.”
His eyes, heavy with sleep, scanned the faint circle. “Why’s it bothering you?”
“This is the scene where Buttercup is introduced to the crowd as Humperdinck’s future Queen. He wants to keep her hidden away inside, but she wants to walk among the people. So, she does.”
Max huffed a laugh. “Sounds like a Princess thing to do.”
I nudged him playfully. “Har. Har. She was right, wasn’t she? He wanted to isolate her.Shewanted to be a good Queen.”
“Yeah, but what about that part there that’s underlined?” I followed his gaze to the passage in the book. “It says three people in the crowd wanted her dead. And what about this fool dressed in all black?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Fool in all black? I can only assume who that brings to your mind.”
He shrugged a shoulder and smirked.
“Thatfoolmight surprise you, if you look closer.Blackest of all were his flashing eyesreminds me of someone else, too.”
“I don’t see the comparison.”
I snorted. “Of course, you don’t. Because he’s described like a killer. But—” an idea came to me and I flipped ahead, to thescene where the man in black gets described like a hero. “This is after the scene where Buttercup is saved from Vizzini, there’s poisoned wine, and she’s watching her protector while he stands on a mountain path. Sound familiar?”
Max murmured his approval. “Now, that’s a guy I can get behind. Sounds like a hero.”
I rolled my eyes and shot him an exasperated look. “They’re the same character, you brute.”
His brow furrowed. “What? No way. Let me see that.”
I reopened the book and pointed to the first description, the part at the bottom describing the man in black’s eyes, and then I flipped to the page where Buttercup observes him later.
“The man in black stopped then.” I read quietly, emotion in my throat, like each time I returned to their story. “There were a million stars fighting for prominence and…he seemed to be intent on nothing less than studying them all, as Buttercup watched his eyes flick from constellation to constellation behind the mask.”
I shut the book.
“So, the guy hid who he really was and he’s the good guy?”
I nodded, watching him as carefully as Buttercup had watched the man in black. “He was angry, cold toward her, because he felt unloved and rejected. But she fights with him on everything he says about her. She proves she always loved him, so he reveals who he really is. And it didn’t matter what had happened or how they got there. Because they were reunited.”
He grunted. “Sounds alright. If you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Wesley and the man in black, they’re both the good guy. That’s all I’m saying.” Tapping his temple, I smirked. “Every coin has two sides, you got me?”
Max huffed, acting like he might nip my finger. “Yeah, Princess. I got you.”
I pulled my hand to my chest with a laugh.
Even though I needed to talk to him about the statute and share my big secret with him, I didn’t want to exacerbate the tension between him and Landon when it was already high.
Maybe...if I held onto it a little longer, bridging the gap between them first, it wouldn’t be a big blow up. It wasn’t even that I thought Max would care about not being first.
Well, I did a little bit, but it was more than that.
