What in the entire world was happening right now?
"Amara?" my mother said. "You've gone pale."
I could not explain to my mother what was happening because I did not have the words or the functioning brain cells.
And then he turned around and his eyes found mine across the crowded ballroom with the same quiet certainty they always did through a bakery window, and something in his expression shifted. Maybe it was relief, or resolve, but something else underneath that made my heart rate do something deeply irresponsible.
He started moving through the crowd toward me.
He was purposeful in his steps, like he had all the time in the world and had already decided exactly how this was going to go.
People stepped aside without him asking.
He stopped in front of me and the scent of him, warm sugar and smoky vanilla, wrapped around me so completely that the rest of the ballroom seemed to go slightly muffled at the edges.
Didn’t it smell like roses a second ago, I blinked looking up at him.
"Amara." His voice was the same as it always was, low and warm and careful.
I opened my mouth and absolutely nothing came out.
He held out his hand, steady and sure. "Will you dance with me?"
"She would love to," Lila said from approximately two inches away, her voice three octaves higher than normal. She had materialized between us with the speed of someone who had been watching from the moment he started moving. Her smile was enormous and aimed entirely at Kael. "I don't think we've been introduced. I'm Lila. Amara's cousin."
Kael looked at her for a brief moment before his eyes came straight back to me.
"It's nice to meet you," he said, in the tone of someone who had been raised with impeccable manners and was currently using them as a very elegant form of dismissal.
Lila blinked, clearly expecting more. She tilted her head, her smile sharpening at the edges. "And you are?"
"My brother," said a voice from somewhere to my left, dripping with amusement, "is His Royal Highness, Prince Kael of House Solas."
A tall blonde man appeared beside us, champagne glass raised in a lazy salute, ice-blue eyes bright with barely concealed delight. He looked between Lila and me like he was watching his favorite television program.
Then he turned and walked away without another word.
The silence that followed was magnificent and Lila's mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again.
Somewhere behind her, I heard Colin make a sound like a man who had just realized the full scope of his mistakes.
My mother said something that might have been "Oh my Lord."
And I stood in the middle of all of it, holding the following information in a brain that had completely ceased to function properly. My baker was a prince. His Royal Highness had been saving me the last honey-ember tart every morning for six months. Lila, who had spent the better part of our lives making me feel like the lesser version of everything, looked like she might need to sit down.
And his HRH, Kael of House Solas, was still looking only at me.
He was acting like having a title was the least interesting thing in the room.
He was staring me down, like I was the most interesting thing in the room, and my stomach was fighting off butterflies.
I put my hand in his.
I was not entirely sure I made that decision consciously. My legs carried me onto the dance floor and his hand settled at my waist and we were moving before my brain had fully caught up with any of it.
