Page 1 of A Prince of Smoke and Mirrors

PART ONE

lexi byrne

CHAPTER 1

speak now

when the preacher says, “speak now,”

and someone actually speaks,

when a woman in a flirty little sundress

steps out of the crowd and announces to the church thatsheis the one

the groom should be with,

then the story follows the plucky girl who stood up for love

and convinced the guy to meet her by the back door,

to run away with her.

the story ignores the bride who’s left

shaking at the altar

in her confection of a dress

she’d bought with her own money

she’d saved,

on the day she’d spent hundreds of hours

preparing every detail for, watching

the man she loved,

who was her whole heart and her whole life for six years, walk away.

CHAPTER 2

the most important day

LEXI BYRNE

My wedding daywas the worst day of my life.

And it was my own damned fault.

Looking back, someone should’ve stepped in and said, “Lexi, look around you. Take a deep breath and justthink.Something isn’t right.”

I would have done the tough love for any friend of mine.

The bride’s room in the chapel on the grounds of the Monaco Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was stocked with dark furniture, ebony-stained from decades of brides’ sweaty palms rubbing the wood. The last fumes of the final cigarettes long-ago brides had smoked as single ladies occasionally slipped from the stained upholstery into the air, a faint staleness that caught my attention even though five years separated me from the last time my lips had wrapped around a cigarette and sucked thick, calming smoke into my mouth and body.

The chair’s skinny dowels were knobby against the row of tiny buttons running down my spine, and I sat carefully so as not to crumple my bouffant white dress.