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Why hadn’t I thought of borrowing the matchmaker’s glamour before?

Though Stellon had asked me to assist him only at the beginning of the ball as the guests were entering, I was considering hanging onto the power for the rest of the night.

This was downright entertaining.

Not only was it giving me lots of interesting insight into the unbonded people entering the ballroom, I’d identified quite a few already bonded couples who were in for an eternal lifetime of misery.

Poor souls.

Too bad everyone hadn’t been given this ability at birth. What more important decision was there than choosing the right life partner?

Alas, most of us had to muddle through on our own. Things were the way they were, and we were only given one glamour each, in most cases.

Mine allowed me the experience of learning exactly what I was missing.

More a curse than a blessing.

Father was right, and tonight proved, once again, how I’d drawn the short straw of the bunch.

I pitied the next kid to be born a Gleaner. If there ever was one—I’d never even heard of anyone else with my glamour.

Pull back the reins on the self-pity there, big fella. Got a job to do.

Right. Back to business.

I stood off to one side of the double doors leading into the Grand Ballroom. Everyone entering stepped from the hallway through the doors onto a wide platform with double staircases leading down to the ballroom floor, one flight descending in a curve from each side of the platform.

The horseshoe-shaped architectural feature provided the guests already inside with an excellent opportunity to see those just arriving, and the newcomers had a panoramic view of the festivities.

Happily, from my chosen location, the newly arrived guests could not see me .

I was tucked nearly behind one of the propped-open doors, and they walked right past me.

But I could see them—and more importantly—I could feel them.

Their essence. Their natures. The way their unique personalities and emotional signatures would combine with each and every one of the others I read, if they were to meet and become involved.

It was fascinating, like working an incredibly intricate puzzle. No wonder the matchmaker had been so reluctant to part with her gift tonight.

Naturally she’d had no choice but to hand it over when I asked. I was a son of the king after all.

And I was doing this whole thing on request of his other son, Crown Prince Stellon.

No way could she refuse the both of us.

It was his idea, and I had to admit, it had been a good one. Why waste precious time and energy on someone who was never going to pan out?

Or who was destined to make you miserable in the long run?

Using the glamour, I easily dismissed the majority of the young women coming through the door with little more than a glance.

A few of them I mentally bookmarked to point out to my brother later. Lady Silla of Ratchford seemed particularly promising.

Her intellect and temperament were right for him, and externally, she was exactly Stellon’s type—blonde, icy elegance, highly refined.

And then I saw her.

Actually it was the woman’s voice that first alerted me. She was not quite in my visual field yet, still inside the entry hall, being interrogated by one of the butlers.

I guessed the matchmaking glamour was so finely attuned that even the right voice could set it off?

Her words were coming out rapid-fire. Worried words, expressing fears of being turned away.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Hurriedly stepping from behind the door, I rushed to the opening… then stopped dead in my tracks.

The woman wasn’t speaking aloud. I’d heard what she was thinking.

And all my own thoughts had simply evaporated.

It’s a shock when it happens at last. A moment I would never forget.

While Lady Silla might have been Stellon’s preferred type, this one was mine .

Beautiful, thick-lashed brown eyes. Long, dark hair that fell in curls over her shoulders and back. A lush figure, heart-shaped lips.

And it wasn’t just her voice and appearance. I mean yes, I did love the way she looked, down to the smallest detail.

But it was the internal stuff the borrowed matchmaking glamour revealed that truly captivated me.

The sincerity. The determination. Fierce love for her family.

As my brother and sister were my best friends in the world, I could relate deeply to that.

Her innate humility, not so much, but that was appealing in its own way.

Intelligence, resilience, compassion, self-respect.

A hint of stubbornness and fiery temper when the situation called for it.

The information flooding my system was almost overwhelming.

It was as if I could see a lifetime of scintillating conversation with this person I’d never met.

Fun verbal sparring, laughter, provocative teasing, and… other things I probably had no business visualizing with a woman I’d literally just laid eyes on for the first time.

The butler appeared to be on the verge of dismissing the lady, questioning the handwritten invitation she’d given him.

“Where did you get this?” he demanded. “It’s only signed with a single—”

I lunged forward and snatched it from him, finishing his sentence before he had the chance.

“With a P,” I said. “My handwriting is abominable.”

The man gave me a confused look. The letter scrawled at the bottom of the invitation was quite clearly an “S.”

And the handwriting was unmistakably my brother’s.

What the shaded stars was happening here? Had Stellon invited her personally?

I couldn’t begin to fathom how—or why—that had happened. He certainly hadn’t mentioned meeting an earthbound angel and inviting her to the ball.

Now that we stood a bit closer, I focused the borrowed glamour on her intently.

The result felt almost like a slap across the face.

She was a terrible match for Stellon.

But why? There were a few obvious things I could see, none of them dealbreakers.

But there was something deeper, something clouded, as if obscured by the kind of mist that sometimes moved in off the ocean and surrounded the castle.

For lack of a better word, it was a sense of… wrongness. For him, at least.

As the future king of Avrandar and ruler of the Sixlands, Stellon needed a certain type of woman at his side, a woman of unimpeachable character with no skeletons that could come out of hiding to bite the royal family in the arse.

For reasons that were still murky to me, this woman was not her.

Thank the gods.

If the glamour had told me she was my brother’s perfect match, I wasn’t sure what I would have done. Everything inside of me was screaming, Mine.

Still, the foggy uncertainty surrounding her concerned me.

Was the matchmaker always right? Could her glamour be trusted in every situation?

As the young woman blushed and looked away from my intense gaze, the warning feeling in my gut grew stronger.

So did my attraction to her.

It was bizarre to hold such strongly opposing sensations in the same space.

In the end, I supposed the reasons for her mismatch with Stellon didn’t have to be crystal clear. She wasn’t the one for him.

There were literally hundreds of women present tonight who’d be better potential bond-mates for the future king.

As for me, I doubted I’d even see the other women in the room. All my attention, every cell in my body, my very being, was transfixed on this one.

As I gave her a disarming smile and moved toward her, I knew exactly how this evening would play out.

I’d wine and dine her, sweep her off her feet on the dance floor, charm her with flirtatious conversation.

Whatever it took to unearth all her secrets... and figure out why the matchmaking glamour had pointed to this beautiful stranger… and revealed her as my perfect match.

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