Tris entered the throne room and nearly leaped out of his skin. Bianca was on the throne with her neck completely broken. Her irises were white, and her dead eyes stared at him without blinking, without life, without warmth.

  “Bianca!” he said, running to her and falling to his knees. “Curse Rose Trine! What did she do to you?” he bellowed. He took her cold hand in his and kissed her knuckles in a show of respect and care.

  When he opened his eyes, letters appeared on the back of her hand that read, ‘What are you doing?’

  “You’re really noisy in the morning,” Bianca commented, pulling her hand from his and cracking her neck from its impossible angle back into place. She turned around and glared at the stone throne, her eyes reflected black instead of pure white. “For the record, this is a terrible place to sleep.”

  Tris got to his feet and said snarkily. “I don’t know why you’re sleeping here in the first place.”

  “I had to do this because you’re too respectful,” she explained.

  “Too respectful?” he gawked. “Is there such a thing?”

  She nodded. “I want to talk to you, and you would never have entered my room to wake me, even though I sleep with the door open. My news can’t wait.”

  He huffed and didn’t answer. She could guess what he was thinking. No matter what, he didn’t want her to see inside his bedroom. He had to offer her the same courtesy.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” she asked.

  “Nothing to complain about,” he said evenly.

  “How are you feeling about your floral captor?” Bianca questioned carefully. “Feeling in love?”

  “She cast a love spell on me?” he chuckled. “That was her big plan?”

  “I think she’s been arguing with herself about whether or not to do it.”

  Tris shook his head. “She’s been arguing with herself for nine months? I think not.”

  “Well, what have you been doing with yourself for nine months? You said you were bored.”

  “I am bored. I mean, I was bored before you came, but I’m a prince as well as an Archpriest, what do you think I’ve been doing? What would you be doing?”

  “I’d be setting up wards to prevent anyone casting spells on me,” Bianca said, thinking about the way she had been trained to break spells.

  “And if you were me, which spells would you be most concerned about protecting yourself from?”

  “A love spell would be first. Love potion would be second,” Bianca said. “What did you do to protect yourself from emotional attacks?”

  “That’s what I did. I set up a protection spell that would work to thwart a love spell, but I don’t want you to see in my room, so you didn’t see what I did,” he said grudgingly.

  “You don’t have to show me, but can you explain what you did?” she asked using a level, reasonable tone. “It might come in handy for me in the future.”

  He scratched behind his ear. “I made up a girl.”

  Bianca looked around, thinking. “I don’t know what that means.”

  He was hesitant, but he gave in because he wanted to show how clever he had been. He broke the spell with no assistance immediately upon waking. He chose his words carefully as he told of his success. “It means I made up a girl for me to love, so that I would never, ever, fall in love with Rose. She’s not real, but she has attributes I like that Rose doesn’t have. As long as I keep the idea of what I really love, she can’t get me to love something I don’t. What happened this morning was: I woke up, wondering if I had been wrong to reject Rose and her proposal, but then I saw the picture I made of the woman I really love. Then I forgot all about Rose and came downstairs.”

  “Thank you for explaining. That was what you wanted to hide? Now it makes sense why you didn’t want to rearrange your room, not even for our little experiment,” Bianca conceded.

  “Blindfolding you irritated you that much?” he asked, taking a seat on the stone steps next to the throne.

  “I should not have been annoyed,” she agreed, slipping off the throne to sit next to him. “Make any other plans to defend yourself against Rose?”

  “I have been trying to figure out why I can’t take my feline form in the castle. I think it must be a simple trick, something small. I have recited the ritual for transformation a hundred times, but I can’t find the spell that blocks me.”

  “A hundred times? Isn’t that ritual over an hour long?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t had much else to do, and it has helped me feel close to Tigrix and my family during this time. Can I ask you, have you ever considered making a blood pact with Swaneve?”

  Bianca looked at him sharply, thinking of what the words on her skin had told her the night before. Monarchs were expected to make a blood pact with one of the demon gods. Without the pact, they were considered unfit to rule. Angelique was a princess from a northern kingdom to the west that worshiped Arctic wolves, but she had refrained from making a pact until she had married Bianca’s father and then became a follower of Swaneve and sealed a proper blood pact with the Goddess of Black Flight. Bianca had been told to do the same. Was he asking if she was free to make a blood pact with Tigrix? That would only matter to him if he were thinking of her royal trajectory. “I’m not the queen,” she said tersely.

  Tris let a huff of air escape his lips. “You look like a queen from here,” he said, peering across at her.

  Bianca looked ruffled, but her cheeks did not turn pink.

  Tris thought that perhaps she wasn’t complimented by what he said, so he extended the sentence, “Like the queen of the dead!”

  Bianca didn’t mind being teased about looking dead. It made her feel comfortable and like there was that gentle camaraderie between them. She enjoyed his smile very much, and for a moment, she recalled the words on her arm. They thought she should marry him. There was some truth in what the words said. If she came home with him, she had no doubt she could squash whatever plot had risen up against her. Her father would be delighted with Tris, as would the entire kingdom. It would be the highest triumph of her life… Except that Tris had cast a spell on himself to make sure that he never fell in love with anyone. It was the only thing he could have done to retain his autonomy, but she felt it was at a very high price. If he never met the equivalent of the woman he fantasized about, he would probably never fall in love.

  Actually, Bianca couldn’t think of anything more fairytalish. He was the prince of every girl’s dreams, except better, and he had cursed himself to live a life without real love.

  The words on Bianca’s arm told her that she should make him fall in love with her. How could she do that if he had cursed himself? She rubbed her arm and forced herself to remember the truth. The words on her skin were there to hurt her.

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  Tris did not love her, nor did he see the value in a union between their two countries. She didn’t need to ask him if he wanted to be the King of Forest Spire because he obviously didn’t. He probably couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do besides leave the castle and find the woman he’d invented.

  What was happening between them was only because circumstances had driven them together.

  Regardless, Bianca would help him with whatever he needed. Without powerful allies, she was on the run anyway. He was an excellent ally, even if he couldn’t be her Prince Charming.

  “Well, pack up anything you want to take with you, because we’re breaking out tonight,” Bianca said, gathering the blankets she had brought down.

  “What about the cut in your neck?”

  Bianca poked it with her finger. “It’s not better yet, but I don’t have a fever, so it isn’t infected. Look, this castle is not an illusion. I explored much of it before I found you. Either she’s making a portal, or there is a door or a flap that leads to the part of the castle that is forbidden to you. We’ll figure out how Rose Trine is getting in, and we’ll go out the same way. I’m going to take a few sets of extra clothes, and you should too. We’re not close to Sun Vine, and that is clearly where we need to go.”

  “Why not to your castle? You said you came from there on foot,” he asked in confusion.

  Bianca rolled her eyes. “People there are trying to kill me. We need to get to Sun Vine and go to a ball.”

  Tris got to his feet and brushed himself off. “You must be super bitter about missing so many parties. They aren’t as much fun as you think.”

  “No. Idiot! We need to go to a ball so you can announce your return to normal society and tell everyone boldly that you are not married to Rose Trine and that she held you captive for all the time you have been away.”

  He put his face down, and for a second, Bianca thought he was going to throw up. “I can’t tell them she held me captive.”

  “Why not? What other explanation can you offer for your absence?”

  He still looked like he might be sick. “I don’t know, but I can’t let her reputation grow like that. If it gets out that she imprisoned me, a prince of Sun Vine and an Archpriest of Tigrix, it will make diplomacy with her kingdom of Sap Stone impossible. I have to come up with another story, and dismissing her assertion that she and I are married should be simple.”

  “So, what are you going to say you were doing for nine moons?”

  He turned to Bianca suddenly. “Looking for you!”

  “Looking for me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, gaining sudden inspiration. “You have been out in court for about that time, so it will be perfect. I’ll say I heard rumors of your... perfect beauty.” He failed at saying the last two words smoothly.

  Bianca stopped him. “No one is going to believe that. You’re practically choking on your bile saying that aloud, and we’re alone. It’s not going to work. Even with the two of us just sitting here, the way you look at me is like you’re afraid I’m going to drop dead on the spot, and I get it. I’m creepy. Black eyes that sometimes look all white, bloody lips, weird, hideous scrawling all over my dead-white skin. I get it. I’m not like the sunny beauties of Sun Vine with their perfect tans, crystal blue eyes, and sun-bleached hair. I get it. I’m not your type.”

  “Our story doesn’t have to be convincing for long,” Tris said slowly, like asking for the favor was excruciating. “All I want to say is that I was interested in you, that I was nearby when you went missing, and I rescued you when you were attacked. That’s not such a hard pill to swallow, is it?” He was turning on the charm, something he had not done until now.

  “What attack? Blackwell? I get it. It’s okay for you to hide the way you were trapped, but it’s okay for you to spill my secrets all over the place? How will that look for me?”

  “We’ll say you were attacked by a bear,” he amended peacefully.

  She wrinkled her nose distastefully as she thought it over. “And what’s the backside?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No? There has to be a backside. You say you admired me, you rescued me, then what? We came to Sun Vine, and what? I’m a refugee? We hang out for a little while, and then you get bored and dump me? That way, I’m unwanted on top of being a recluse?”

  “Or you got bored with me,” he offered. “I could handle the shame of that. I could take it. Really, anything, except I was held prisoner by a debutante princess for close to a year.”

  Bianca frowned. She agreed with him. That did sound inexcusably bad. She paused and considered everything, tracing every possibility with her mind. “It won’t work. No one will believe I got bored with you. But if you got tired of me, maybe that would be good for my reputation.”

  “Why would that be good for your reputation?” he asked blankly. “Didn’t you just say it made you sound bad?”

  “That was what I first thought, but maybe it would help me because if you got bored with me, that would mean that I’m not a threat to the other princesses. You saw me up close, you didn’t think that I was much to look at. Maybe courtiers would follow your lead and get bored with me, too. Maybe I could go to a ball without my heels breaking, my tea spilling, losing my voice, or losing my dress.”

  Tris interjected, “You know, you make them sound like a pack of hyenas. I’ll never find a wife from that pack.”

  Bianca sighed. “I didn’t know you were looking for a wife.”

  “You’re looking for a husband, aren’t you? Isn’t that why you want to go to the ball?” he observed.

  She put a hand up as if to ask him to slow down. “I agree that finding a husband would be best for my cause, but finding someone who can fall in love with me without some despicable curiosity regarding my curses is not going to be easy. I want to start small and just dance.”

  “Dance?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked around the empty throne room. “You can dance anywhere. You could dance here.”

  Bianca suddenly felt sad, dropped the blankets in her arms, and sat on them. “You can only dance so much and so often without a partner. I want a partner.”

  “A husband?” Tris offered.

  “Don’t twist my words,” she rebuked sullenly.

  Tris suddenly pointed out, “Your hand is proposing to me.”

  “What?” Bianca yelped, trying to cover the words, ‘Marry me’ written on the back of her hand, only to see that it was written on the back of the other hand too. With blazing cheeks, she shoved them behind her back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m cursed. Please don’t pay too much attention to what’s written on my skin. They’re all lies.”

  He peered across at her, and she realized that his eyes were golden. His eyes were not like human eyes, but like a cat’s. His pupils were still round, but something about the way he looked at her was feline.

  “You’re not thinking about eating me, are you?” she ventured.

  “I am thinking that you are right. No one is going to believe that I bored you. I have never bored a woman in my life, but it’s equally ridiculous to think that I got bored with you.”

  “You have said repeatedly that I look like a corpse,” she reminded him.

  “And you do, but I’ve thought about it, and regardless of everything I find unattractive in you, there is something about your whole cursed, tragic, spirit of the night thing that is undeniably compelling. Like you’re a puzzle or a game, but in an adult way, because there is a feminine appeal in your gaze, and in your voice.”

  “Are you saying you want to rescue me like I’m a damsel in distress?”

  He cocked his head in a way only animals do. “I’m not sure I want to storm your stepmother’s castle. It’s more that I don’t want to leave your side. I want to stay to observe you. Wherever we go after we leave this place, I don’t want you to go one way and me go a separate way. We should stay together. I can protect you, and you can protect me.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until our problems are solved,” he supplied impatiently. “I want to settle the score with Rose Trine, and you need to find out what happened to cause Angelique to turn on you. Rose Trine is probably easier, so we’ll do as you say and go to Sun Vine first, but… I want you to promise me we’ll be partners in revenge.”

  Bianca smiled. “I don’t see any other allies, so I’m with you, but you’ll need to explain how you think I might be useful.”

  “Those women who played those tricks on you could see it. Even without the words on your skin, you make everyone so curious… I’m a man, and I was curious when I first saw you. Your whole mystique is probably impossible for them and their daughters to compete with. The words make the curiosity canker. There are almost always words on your hands, and they’re like hooks in my mind because the letters go under your cuff, and it’s a mystery how the sentence finishes. I know I’ve acted cool, but more than once, I have wanted to grab your hand and pull up your cuff to see what is written further down.”

  “Don’t be fooled by the words on me. They’re a giant lie. They go on in a run-on sentence until I’m completely undressed. I’ve followed the words myself.”

  He pushed her concerns aside with a motion of his hand. “That’s not the important thing. The important thing is that you are too interesting for me to claim boredom. Yesterday, I read a line about how you, Bianca, want to read the invisible words on my skin. It made me swallow a lump in my throat the size of a kiwi. But if you are not actively searching for a husband, then maybe we can still come to an agreement.”

  Bianca raised an eyebrow.