Page 16 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

I’ve always been overtly proud about walking around with my heart and soul completely exposed. Flashing it over and over, glamming it up, backing it with withering wicked guitar solos in song after hit song .

Not that I ever admitted it to anyone in person. Never confirmed that I was the architect of my own heartbreak.

But since the last time I laid eyes on Armin, since getting the news he died that morning I was supposed to have been with him, I’ve lost even that misplaced arrogance.

I can no longer hold on to the fiction I’ve built around walking away from true fucking love for all the right reasons.

I finally give in. Again. I need something real, something to anchor me. I pull out my phone, deleting every new text notification and every message until my screen is empty.

Mirth hasn’t replied to any of my attempts to reach her since Armin’s death. I scroll through the last few messages we exchanged, going back another six months before that — me flirty as all fuck and her restrained in a way she never was with me until I rejected her.

I fucking throw the phone across the fucking living room, shattering it against the exposed brick wall.

It doesn’t make me feel better.

The security unit beeps. Just once. Drawing my attention to my far left, toward the entrance. Then oddly, the pad goes dark.

Fucking Gus.

The door slams open as if it weren’t locked.

Though I can clearly see that the triple bolt was previously engaged.

I’m opening my mouth, ready to put my fucking bass player in an unmarked fucking grave, when three dark suits flood into the room.

Two of them have weapons — some sort of guns — trained at the ground.

Their steps are completely soundless. On a hardwood fucking floor.

The scent of spent essence hits me hard a moment later, filling my nostrils and coiling along the back of my throat.

One or more of the dark suits are mages. They’ve blasted through the door, and their weapons are probably essence-wrought or essence-fueled as well.

They filter into and through the entire apartment, ignoring me as they silently inspect every room. I just stare at them like a fucking idiot. Half naked, partially stoned, with my mouth still full of dry, sugary cereal.

By the time the suits reconvene in the kitchen, arraying themselves in front of the granite counter across from me, the weapons are tucked away. I can see their mouths moving but not hear the words.

Silencing spells.

My heart starts thrumming in my chest. Fast and hard.

I look toward the still-open door.

And I wait.

I wait for someone — the only person I personally know who travels with this sort of security …

Well, the only person I now know.

But no one walks through the door.

In fact, one of the dark-suit assholes walks over and closes it, reengaging the locks.

“Apologies, Oliver. We heard a crash.” The big dude in the center, the one who never pulled a weapon, speaks. A hint of a French accent colors his words. He’s a shifter. A wolf. Way older than me, not that he really looks it. Even more dominant than me. Darker skinned, seriously stacked.

But then, he isn’t wasting all his muscle away on a steady diet of drugs and alcohol. And sugary-sweet dried cereal, of course.

I manage to chew and swallow another mouthful as I take in the other dark suits.

The other two are mages.

Identical suits.

Identical. But with a subtle coat of arms weaved into their breast pockets .

“It’s Bolan. Not Oliver. No last name either.” I’m suddenly and irrationally pissed again. Because if the person I want and don’t want to see most in this world isn’t walking through that door, there’s really only one reason these assholes have countered my security and busted into my apartment.

It isn’t good news.

Confirming my supposition, the big-ass wolf shifter tugs a thick cream envelope out of his inner pocket. He holds it out to me over the counter, not closing the space between us. I’d have to step forward to take it.

I don’t unfold my arms from across my chest. I’m already shaking. But I don’t care if I look weak in front of these assholes.

For the first time, I get a glimmer of understanding of what might have driven Armin to take the risks he did. Instead of barely existing like I’m barely —

“The last time the royal guard hand-delivered an envelope, it informed me that one of the only people I loved in the entire fucking world was dead,” I say scathingly.

Just my chosen name had been written across that particular envelope. Written in Mirth’s too-perfect handwriting — handwriting I spent years watching her perfect because she felt like it was a fundamental part of her role, her duty.

She sent me a carefully handwritten note instead of making a phone call. Instead of asking me to come to her. Or even giving me the barest hint that she would accept me coming to her, grieving with her.

I eye the envelope the wolf shifter holds steadily toward me. The note informing me of Armin’s death wasn’t nearly as thick.

The shifter isn’t shaking in the least. And his tone, his face, softens at my overly dramatic declaration. “This is not that, Ollie.”

I look at him sharply.

He huffs, removing his sunglasses.

I finally recognize him. From the few times Mirth’s father actually deigned to visit our school.

He’s head of the royal guard. But also, if the rumors even then were true, I’m looking at one of the chancellor’s chosen.

Though he keeps way, way out of the spotlight now, he was already one of the most infamous shifters in the world before that — Raoul, aka Le Loup.

He knew my father. Worked with him.

His presence in my apartments as a mere messenger confuses me enough that I frown at the envelope. Then I finally step forward to take it.

My hand does shake. Some sort of spell dissipates under my touch. Some kind of security measures, maybe. All of Mirth’s family have too much fucking power, either that they themselves wield or among their rabidly loyal extended family and staff.

My birth name — Oliver Yates — and current address are written across the front of the envelope.

Not in Mirth’s handwriting. Likewise, the midnight-black seal on the back of the cream linen paper stock isn’t hers.

She seals and inks her letters in rose gold.

Not that I’ve personally ever received more than the one letter from her, but she writes my family multiple times a year.

Not in the last six months, though.

Yes, I’ve asked.

Yes, my mother gives me a pitying look every time I do.

“What does the lofty chancellor want with the likes of me?” I ask with a snarl. Because once I’m up on my dramatic high horse, I have a hard time getting off —but also …

Also, Armin never would have risked his life, over and over again, if he had a different father. I’ll believe that over fucked-up brain chemistry or mental instability every day, anytime.

“I gather it’s his daughter you have to thank for this honor,” Le Loup says, with a pointed look and a displeased huff at the disrespect I’ve shown his mate.

He glances around, curling his lip dismissively.

“You’ve got less than a month to get yourself straight. I can refer you to a discreet facili —”

“Your concern might have been more helpful directed elsewhere six fucking months ago.”

Instead of rising to my challenge, instead of beating me down, Raoul grimaces.

I so desperately need that beating, though.

I won’t be able to refrain from defending myself, but I’m in seriously bad shape, and there are three of them.

They could quell the beast that resides within me, uneasily.

Only skin deep. Even if only long enough for me to fully heal.

The beast I’ve driven near to madness by denying it what it most wants.

Her.

“You’re right.” Pained regret flashes across Raoul’s face.

Fuck me.

I don’t want his pain.

I can’t handle his pain on top of mine.

“But …” The shifter asshole steps forward, stretching his arm across the counter and laying a hand on my shoulder. “We all have another chance to make different choices with what’s right in front of us.”

I have no fucking idea what he means, and he doesn’t clarify. He just squeezes my shoulder as if I’m a fucking toddler, then nods toward the envelope I’ve crushed in my hand.

Like a complete chump, I crack the seal and draw out two different documents— a triple-page folded letter of some sort, along with a single card printed on both sides.

With all the gold embossing and the overly frilly lettering, it takes me a moment to understand that the card is actually an invitation to a spring equinox ball.

Before I can wrap my head around being invited to an actual fucking ball, Raoul says, “The other one is more important.”

I open the sheaf of linen paper. Then I just stare and stare at the typed words that fill it completely, uncomprehending.

Raoul seems to get that my brain has gone on break, so he spells it out for me. “Princess Euphrosyne will begin the process of selecting her chosen on the spring equinox. Fifty have been shortlisted.”

My mouth, my face, is numb, even as my mind is firing off in too many directions. “But … it’s only been six months.” I sound broken, distraught, even to my own ears.

Raoul sighs. The sound is heavy with unspoken emotion. Then he leans in, grasping my shoulder even harder and speaking so quietly that I doubt the mages can pick up the words. “Bast has his reasons.”

I snap my head up at the intimate whisper. The intimacy of him touching me, yes — even elder to younger wolf shifter, we are not pack. But more so at the exceedingly personal bit of info he’s just gifted me.

I meet his intense dark-eyed gaze.

I don’t look away.

I can feel it. I can feel it uncurling in my chest. I can feel those almost-burned-out embers igniting. Hope.

“Why … why me?”