Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“Her Majesty, Queen Elspeth,” they announced as my mother stepped out into the direct sunlight.
When it was our turn to step out, I felt her grip on my arm. Her feet stilled, her eyes transfixed by the massive crowd waiting.
“Cinderella,” I whispered, and her head whipped back to me.
She stared for a brief moment until the corner of her lips turned upward. Good, she was still in there.
“Everything will be fine. You have me.”
“I—”
“His Royal Highness, Prince Galahad, and Miss Odette Wyntor.”
I squeezed her hand before we were forced out into the sunlight as we walked down the stairs behind my mother, and she squeezed my arm tightly. I wanted to know what her expression was; however, I could not look at her. Instead, I was forced to see the many faces watching us in return. Most notably, the prime minister. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, along with other ministers and members of the government, to pay their respects first.
Like always, the smug-faced fool who was Ivan S. Hermenegild lifted my mother’s hand to kiss it. His blond hair was slicked back as if he had just returned from the 1920s with more archaic world views to force down our throats. When we stopped in front of him as my mother made her way to the next man, I tried to contain my disgust for him, but that was impossible as his disgust was so damn evident.
“Adelaar.” He nodded to me, then cast a downward glance at Odette as if she were beneath him and not the other way around. He did not touch, bow, or truly speak to her, merely said hello before shifting his gaze to Eliza and placing a fake smile as he once again returned to kissing hands.
The son of a whore.
My mother had all but demanded I stay within my bounds. I was not doing anything different from what had always been done or making a scene of any kind. I knew I should not, it was too early in the day for me to send everything to hell, but I could not let it stand.
“Prim—”
“Let it go,” Odette whispered, already pulling me to the next person.
I bit the inside of my jaw.
This was all shit!
All fucking shit!
I could not stand it, and had I not been the Adelaar, had Arthur been alive and still here, I would not have.
I had sensed it before, but I never had sincerely faced it. The truth of the matter was, Odette was not the only one the crown chipped away at—it had gotten to me, too.
“Adelaar. Miss.” We both forced ourselves to smile and nod back at them, making conversation that early in the morning that I would not remember.
How pitiful that this was the state of the monarchy?
This was the life of the great House of Monterey?
“She is unhappy,” Wolfgang lamented next to me with a deep frown as we watched the couple in front of us greet all the guests in the Victory Garden.
So is he, I thought but did not speak, only scanned the crowd. Though everyone was of some level of importance and had been cleared, then double-checked for today’s event, their close proximity to the royal family was unsettling. The fact that anyone could just walk up to them and talk was unsettling.
“What are we going to do to help them?” Wolfgang asked, and I just turned to him.
The desire to hit him was so strong that my hand even rose, but I regained my composure and reminded him. “Wolfgang, I am working.”
“These are the most affluent people on the continent and not just the nation. Who are—”
“This is yet another reason why you did not make the royal guard,” I replied, stepping forward as a man approached from the left somewhat drunkenly. The event had only just begun, and there was this foolishness. I reached up to my ear.
“We have a duck,” I said.
“I have eyes on him. Blocking view now,” Thelma stated from her place a few feet behind Odette. She stepped farther to the side, so no one behind her would see the fool.
“We got him.” Two other undercover security men, dressed in suits and not their uniforms, said, coming up beside the man as if they were his long-lost friends, guiding him away from the Adelaar and Adelina.
“Be prepared for others,” I said, and they nodded. There was no way in hell I was going to let anyone ruin today, not after so much had been sacrificed for it.
“What is a duck?”
My shoulders slightly rose at the whisper behind my ears. I gritted my teeth. “You are about to become a duck, Wolfgang. If you are not needed at your post, find someone else to disturb.”
“And here I thought we were friends. Buddies brought together by our mutual desire to protect these two.” He pouted, watching the pair in front of us again. When they moved, we moved as well.