Kerrigan wanted to tear this mountain down from the inside. No wonder they had been trapped away in here for a thousand years. When she had heard that they tortured half-Fae, she had assumed physical abuse. Not… this emotional abuse and, clearly, abuse of the sexual nature. How could property ever say no?

“And did Prince Fordham ever have a half-Fae as an ornament before?”

“No, miss,” Benton said, fear creeping into her voice. “He was entirely against it, as it was a condition of his exile.”

Kerrigan wanted to ask more, but she didn’t need to. Fordham had never done this before. It was a misunderstanding. She would go to this ball and be his little decoration if that was how they needed to be seen publicly. Then, together, they would fix this, as they had fixed everything else. They had just over a week to make this backward society see her for who she really was. It wasn’t long enough. Not by a long shot.

But she knew exactly how to play it in the meantime.

She wouldn’t be going to this ball as she was. Kerrigan of the House of Dragons, the scrappy and rebellious fighter, had to die in these halls. No, tonight, she would don a persona she had long ago discarded, but to survive, it was necessary to become someone else. Tonight, she would be Princess Felicity, First of the House of Cruse, a Bryonican royal.

7

The Ball

“Well,” Wynter said, her clear gaze sweeping Kerrigan’s gown, “this is an improvement.”

She spun her finger in a circle, and Kerrigan obliged, swishing in the sumptuous black-and-silver gown and letting her get a full look at the layers of soft satin. Kerrigan had never seen anyone wear a gown like this. The bone-fitted corset crushed her ribs and pushed her breasts up to her throat. A billowy plume of skirt fell to her feet. At least the bodice was more modern than the typical square neckline she had expected with this design. This one pushed the long, diaphanous, velvety sleeves off of her shoulders with a wide-open neck embroidered with Ollivier silver, accenting her pale throat and collarbone.

Her red hair had been straightened in an exercise that tested her patience like nothing else. She’d had no idea that the mass went down to her waist or that someone was talented enough to control the curls and frizz. That she could look like everyone else in an intricate updo. Even Darby had never managed something like this, and as a child, she never would have sat long enough. Benton had then darkened her lashes, colored in her eyebrows, added a line to her lids, applied careful rouge to her cheeks, and painted her lips the deepest, darkest red.

“You’ll be the talk of the evening,” Wynter said.

“Not next to you.”