“Why wouldn’t he be breathing?” Hart snaps. “What did you do?”
“I was protecting Gwyneth’s floof.”
“Her what?” Malachi says as Hart releases me. “Nothing you say makes any sense.”
“She means my virtue,” Gwyneth adds. I side-eye her. Virtue, my ass. She is as innocent as me. Not with Hansel. That would be weird, sister code and all that. Don’t let the same man play with your floof. Her one night wonder was with a wannabe Gaston. He was a handsome fellow, but not a smart one, and to ensnare my sister, you need to seduce her mind and her body.
“So you drugged him?” Theo concludes.
“I didn’t mean to give him so much. He was meant to be awake enough to get back to his chambers, then pass out.”Put a stocking in it, Daphne. You can’t trust these brothers.They are Hallowed, after all—and would sooner look after their own than sympathize with a pair of drug wielding Burghers.
“Then he would be too embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t remember our night together,” Gwyneth says as she folds her arms.
Theo bellows a laugh which might wake the realm. “It’s no less than he deserves. But you should know his chambers are on the third floor.”
I give Gwyneth a helpless look. There is no way in Blazes we can haul him upstairs. We’d have to chop him up and that would defeat the object of him continuing to breathe. Wait, do we want him to continue breathing? Perhaps we’ve been going about this the wrong way? She bites her bottom lip as the brothers watch us with suspicion and amusement. The suspicion is coming from Hart, who appears to be missing his namesake.
“What areyoudoing with the body you are carting around?” Gwyneth asks. Good plan, switch the focus to their misdeeds. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
“It’s hard to deflect from a body bag, pretty mouse,” Theo says as his lips twitch.
I said that out loud too? Ugh, my poor Burgher brain can’t deal with these shiny Stirling brothers.
“She does that a lot,” Gwyneth advises.
I roll my eyes. “There are too many words to contain in my mind. I have to speak them or I’ll lose them and that would be a waste. What would be the point of thinking them in the first place?”
Everyone stares at me like I’m an unknown species that has climbed from the depths of So Far Away.
“Stop staring,” I mutter. “We each have our secrets to keep, so let’s just be on our way.”
I turn and grab the rope before hauling it over my shoulder and spinning to face the grumpiest of the Stirlings. “Excuse me, Hart, I have an unconscious prince to hide.”
“Was it Dranton root?” Hart grinds out.
“Yes, what of it?”
“You overdosed him?”
“In my defense, it was an accident.”
He sighs. “Mal, get the antidote and meet me in Charming’s chambers.” Malachi salutes him and dashes down the hallway. Theo grins at me as he strolls away with his own body.
“You’re helping us?”
“You’ll never get him up the stairs,” Hart says, bending and throwing Charming over his shoulder like he weighs a bag of feathers. “Plus, I’d rather not see your pretty head rolling across the grounds come dawn. In return, you will keep quiet about what you saw here tonight.”
“Aw, you think I’m pretty.”
“Your blood would make a mess of the clean castle courtyard. I prefer my morning meal with a view of the realm, not your intestines.”
“But you think I’m pretty?” I say as Gwyneth and I follow him along the hallway and up three flights of stairs. There’s no way we’d have gotten him up here. We would have had to hide him behind the potted plants, and he no doubt would have been discovered by the dawn rise. Then, we would have been hung, drawn, and quartered like Hart indicated.
Hart grunts in response. I grin wildly, having his measure now. We pass various closed doors before stopping outside one with a gold slipper etched into it. It occurs to me that the symbol for Prince Charming isn’t something about him, it’s about his princess, his Cinderella, like it’s her that defines his blessed status. Without Cinderella, what is Charming? Just another prince roaming The Hallows in search of their destiny. What a sad life. I’m glad I’m not tied to any destiny but that which I make on my own. No male is going to define me. Daphne Stone will write her own fairy tale and there won’t be a prince in sight.
Gwyneth pushes open the door and we enter a candlelit room, where a giant four-poster bed takes center stage. Rose petals are scattered everywhere—like Beauty sneezed and doomed her people to a curse of a lifetime. “He had quite the night planned.” Hart sneers, his disgust at the liberties Charming takes with his position clear. Despite his cold attitude, my opinion of him inches up a few notches.
He drops Charming on the bed, making the petals bounce in the air. “Do you plan to return to your town tomorrow?”
