But one voice rang out over the others: “Well, lads, your gift from the royal family this season will beyears’worth of gossip. Ye’re welcome!”
I was pretty sure that was Brigid.
But Declan—the verynotHigh Prince—just stared coldly down at me.
“I never pretended to be anyone I wasn’t. You assumed. And the secrets must not have been that dark—or that secret—if you were willing to tell them to a complete stranger.”
His words hit like a slap across my face, making everything inside me sting. Did he not understand?
“They were!” I assured him. “I trusted you! You know more about me than Tadhg and Cian—and I’mover the moonin love with them. The little I know of you, I don’t like. I mean, how dare you?”
I splayed a hand across my chest. “How dare you do something like this to me?”
The High King just stared down at me, his gray eyes so much colder than I remembered.
Then he informed me, “What I dared doesn’t matter. The ceremony is only that—ceremony. We were bound in marriage as soon as I gave my Yea. It’s already done. So you might as well accept your fate, as I’ve reluctantly accepted mine.”
I blinked at him.
And though I never, ever cursed, I found myself telling him, “Fuck this total deception of yours. Fuck this ceremony. And Declan…”
I opened my mouth a little wider here to make sure to use the most enunciated English I’d ever spoken: “Fuck. You. I am more than a deal, and my feelingsmatter.”
I punctuated that last part by throwing the ring at him, which seemed to understand its new role. The piece of jewelry he’d actually expected me to put on his hand bounced off his chest and hit the floor of the dais with a very satisfying clatter.
But still, the High King’s stony expression didn’t change. Nor did he look away from me.
It didn’t matter. I’d made a great speech. Naomi would’ve called it atotal microphone drop.
Our wedding audience was afire with whispers by this point.
“I’ve still absolutely no idea how I got mixed up in this,” said a tall, rotund male with a white streak in his rich-brown hair, seated beside Brigid. He threw up his hands in exasperation.
This was obviously Declan’s brother, Darach. The real plum bear.
That last realization probably should have been my cue to stomp off while my words still echoed in the air.
But before I could turn my back on him in triumph, something else reverberated through the room.
Something that smelled like strawberries…
…but hit with the piercing intensity of an emergency siren.
Underwear.
Specifically, the lack of it.
All the ones in the package Brigid had given me had been so large they created what she’d called an “unsightly panty line you definitely don’t want on your possible wedding day” when she’d convinced me to go without them.
I immediately came to regret that decision when my whole body flushed with a heat unlike anything I’d ever known.
And a damp spot bloomed on the front of my pretty, vanilla fairy-tale dress. Right above my core.
No more whispering.
The room went deathly silent.
Which made the High King’s next words hit like a roar: “Everyone. Leave.Now.”
