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My life ran parallel to my sisters’. Once they were gone from the palace, once they walked their own individual paths, my course had always been vague in my mind. A fogged-over path that led into a dark and unknown wood.

Unbidden, the image of Stig flashed across my mind. Strong and noble Stig. His deep brown eyes. The pressure of his mouth on mine. The sensation of his short-cropped beard beneath my fingers. I shifted my weight uneasily on the bench. I should not be thinking of him now.

Mama looked at me in surprise. “No? Not even... Stig?”

I flinched. Had I said or done something to give away my thoughts?

“Stig?” I echoed. Not until last night had I ever considered him as anything more than a very dear friend. He had kissed me. I’d had no idea he harbored such intense feelings for me.

Now, looking at the queen, I marveled that she had seen what I had not.

“Yes, Stig,” she confirmed.

“No. Never.” At least not before he’d appeared in my bedchamber last night. “I never thought marriage even a consideration for me until the princesses were wed.”

She gave a satisfactory nod. “Well, that’s for the best. I’d hate for you to suffer a broken heart.”

“I won’t suffer,” I declared... and wondered if that was true.Indeed, something felt broken inside me as I headed into my future.

Her smile turned tender, encouraging. “Perhaps it will not be so very bad. You will be the wife of a powerful man. And,” she added, “he’s not an unattractive man.” She wrinkled her nose. “If you like that sort.”

That sort. The hard and menacing sort.

If he doesn’t kill me when he learns he has been tricked.

As though she could read my mind, the queen warned, “Keep the wimple over your hair and the veil in place.” Her grip on my hand tightened. “Do not let him see your face until the deed is done.”

“He will eventually discover—”

“Not until after the bedding.”

The bedding.

“And then,” she added, still staring intently at me, willing me to accept what she was saying, “it will be too late.”

It will be too late.

Too late to change that I was married to the Beast.

Too late to save me from my fate—to save me from him.

“Should we be worried how he might react? What if he—”

“Oh.” She waved a hand dismissively. “He will come around. He’s here to sow goodwill. He will accept you as his wife. You will see.”

Hopefully that was true. I nodded dully, retreating inside myself.

I fought to swallow. To breathe. A difficult task when contemplatingthatportion of the evening, when he would climb into bed with me...

I gulped against a giant lump in my throat and shuddered at the idea of something so intimate happening between that brute and myself.

I recalled colliding into the hard wall of him when he caught me emerging from behind the painting. The thick arms and hard hands and that deep, rasping voice that felt like a tremor runningthrough me as he growled:I see this palace comes equipped with spies.

I recalled it all distinctly. The sensation. His scent filling my nose. Wind and earth and horseflesh. The hot animal ripple of my skin. The way it felt to be caught up in his arms. The way my body had arched against the massive pulsing slab of him. The way he had towered over me and made me feel small for the first time in my life. And it had been only for a few moments. Stig’s kiss lasted considerably longer and was much more intimate, and yet it left less of an impression.

Even now, the following day, I could recall little of it specifically. Meanwhile, the memory of the Beast flashed through me like a bolt of lightning across the sky. I supposed it made sense. I was nervous. Afraid of the unknown. My life loomed ahead, stretching out long and winding and hazy. He was the only certainty.

Shortly following the wedding, I would progress to the marriage bed, where he would join me. I moistened my suddenly dry lips. I was untried in the act of bedplay, but I knew how to handle physical discomfort. Pain was fleeting. I could take it. I would survive.