I got to my knees, adjusting the snow-white A-line hem that just barely touched the floor. She was barefoot. She would need shoes. I repeated it over and over, looking for shoes, until I found the pair of glittering silver-and-glass Jimmy Choos that matched the dress.

Why did it have to be glass?

I slid one of her feet into them, then the other. I stood up, finished. She looked like a princess in her white dress. All that was missing was a tiara.

“I’m going to be his wife,” she said, rubbing the lace that clung just above her elbows.

“And I’ll still be your girl.”

We let the unsaid words linger between us like carbon monoxide. Invisible. Choking.

She’s going to be his wife. I’m going to be her girl, and I slept with her husband.

I loved her husband.

I still do, even though I should hate him.

Tears edged the ridges of her lids, and I reached for the nearest handkerchief on her vanity.

“Don’t cry on your wedding day, Ms. du Lac,” I teased without humor.

“Call me Lottie,” she said absently, then sighed. “I’m marrying a man who loves someone else…do you think fate hears what you want, and so she decides to give it to you, but in, like, the most fucked-up way possible?”

I laughed darkly.

Maybe.

“He chose you,” I said, heart breaking. “He loves you. This has always been about one thing, you. I was just…” I took a rocky breath that cut me all the way down to my lungs. “I was a thief. I stole him, and now I’m giving him back. This was the way it was supposed to be.”

It was a wedding, but it felt like a funeral.

Lottie du Lac was always the princess, and I was always the thief. I could never look so right as she did in this moment.

She frowned at me in the mirror, touching her ears. “They forgot to put in my pearls.”

I set down the handkerchief, searching for the pearls. When I found them, I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach her. She was a bit taller than me. Add in the heels, and it meant I was stretching.

“I hate you a little bit, Story,” she said quietly, and I swallowed, trying to focus on putting in her earring. “I hate you because I know he’s going to be thinking of you tonight.”

The earrings fell from my hand with a clang so loud compared to her soft voice, clattering, disappearing into shadows I couldn’t see. I didn’t move away, close enough to smell her light, floral perfume, to see the resigned sadness in her dark eyes.

“The same way, maybe, you hate me,” she whispered. “Because after tonight, he’ll be mine.”

I swallowed.

Yeah.