Not that she blamed them. Not after what she’d done.

While she hadn’t participated in Darling’s kidnapping or torture, she hadn’t stopped it. And that made her every bit as guilty as the others. She wasn’t about to sugarcoat the bitter truth. It wasn’t in her to shirk responsibility. “We are all the masters of our own decisions. Right or wrong, Stupid or intelligent. Only we are to blame for our missteps and mistakes.” Her father’s words haunted her. She’d turned a blind eye to Clarion while she’d searched relentlessly for the very man they’d held.

How stupid could one person be? How cruel were the fates?

Part of her wanted to blame Darling for it. Why hadn’t he told her his identity just one day sooner?

But she knew why. His fear the last time they’d been together had said it all.

“My greatest prayer is that my face doesn’t offend you so much that you forget your promise to me. I could never bear to be rejected by the only woman who has ever held my heart.”

And what had she done?

She’d spit on him. Literally and figuratively. When he’d needed her the most, she’d been right there and done nothing to help save him from…

Her own people.

His people.

Every time she thought about it, she wanted to vomit.

After all of her promises to him, she’d done the very thing he’d feared. Not because he was scarred.

Because he was a prince.

Sickeningly ironic. Most women dreamed of a prince to come and sweep them off their feet. She’d had one and she’d spurned him. He had promised her the world and she’d slapped him in the face.

She was ill from it all. Even more so because as a child, Darling had been her hero. Before the death of her mother and sister, before his father had been murdered, they had played together. Not often. But from time to time, whenever his father had visited hers, Darling would come with him. It was something she’d forgotten about completely over the years.

Until a dream a few weeks ago.

Somehow those long buried memories of a happy childhood had come back to haunt her with a vicious vegeance. Her first memory of Darling was when she’d been five and he nine. Her cat had climbed out of her room, onto the roof after her sister had left their window open. Terrified it would die or get hurt, she’d asked her older brother Geritt for help, but the rotten little beast had refused, saying he hoped her cat jumped to its death so that it wouldn’t bite or claw him anymore.

Without hesitation and after chiding her brother for his cruelty, Darling had bravely climbed out after it, onto her steep roof. Twice he’d almost slipped off. But instead of saving himself and returning inside where he’d be safe, he’d gone the whole way to the gutter and then brought her beloved pet back to her. Even now, she could see the way he’d looked as he came back through the window with her cat cradled in his bloodied hand—her cat had clawed and bitten him the whole time he’d been rescuing it.