Ashby March was next in line for the House of Medallion. If they had wed, it was entirely possible that when the regents from the House of Drame went into the void, she and March would have succeeded them as king and queen. That showed in every movement. She and March had been built for this moment. They were supposed to be the stars. Even if she was no longer that person.

“You’re even more beautiful than I envisioned,” he whispered against her ear.

“I didn’t know that you thought of me at all.”

“Of course I did,” he said, pulling back to look into her eyes. His blue ones so sincere that her distrust wavered.

Kerrigan didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t thought of March at all. In fact, she’d been glad to be rid of him. And she was too busy to deal with whatever was lurking there in those blue eyes.

The music ended. Kerrigan stepped back, putting much-needed distance between her and March. Her heart thudded in her chest from the exertion of the dance. There were faint notes of applause all around them, as if they had danced for everyone else’s spectacle. She hadn’t even noticed.

“Another?” he asked.

And then there was another hand there. “May I have the next dance?”

Kerrigan turned to find Fordham with one hand behind his back, the other before her. His gray eyes were as mercurial as ever, the black of his hair tipping forward toward his eyes. Her heart thudded for a whole other reason.

“I’ve already claimed this one,” March said, reaching out and grasping her arm.

She stumbled a step back toward him.

“Now, March,” she said easily, “you cannot commandeer all of my attention.” She extracted herself from March’s grasp and let it rest in Fordham’s hand. The dance she’d really wanted tonight.

She could feel March fuming next to her, but she was unprepared for the next words out of his mouth.

“I must object. Unhand my fiancée,” March declared.

The ball went silent at the pronouncement, and then, whispers tittered around the room. People were too polite to point, but their eyes did the talking for them.

Kerrigan’s face was beet red. Her stomach flopped around on the floor like a fish. Her jaw unhinged as she turned to see the man she had been betrothed to twelve years earlier. Fordham’s hand still held her own. And though the whispers only grew, Kerrigan heard none of it. Only focused on the singular word that had left March’s mouth—fiancée.

“Excuse me?” Kerrigan forced out, quickly removing her hand from Fordham’s.

March shot her a beguiling smile. “We’re still betrothed, my lady.”

“No,” she whispered. “That’s not possible. I was gone for twelve years. I’m not even Bryonican anymore.”