Page 47 of Grand Romantic Delusions and the Madness of Mirth, Part One

“ W hy is he here?” I’m hunched over the sink in my en suite bathroom, face dripping from the handfuls of cold water I subjected myself to while trying to calm down.

“What do you mean?” Anne asks, genuinely confused. She’s leaning against the counter with her back to the mirror an arm’s length away. She tried rubbing my back for a few minutes after I first barreled my way into the bathroom, but I know the energy still spiking off me must be … disconcerting.

“Father would never approve of Bolan as a bond mate.” I press my face into a hand towel as I practically shout, “Not ever!” I momentarily contemplate hiding in the bathroom, never looking up again.

I’m ridiculously embarrassed at my own childish behavior.

What the fuck must everyone else be thinking?

It’s just … that splintering sensation in my chest … the last time that happened, I ended up killing someone … multiple people.

“Fucking Bolan,” I snarl, throwing the towel onto the counter and pawing through a drawer for some face cream. My skin feels stretched tight across my skull. The headache I used as a clumsy excuse to flee the conservatory is becoming a reality.

“Playing with me … acting as if he actually wants me!” I slap too much cream on my face. “Why is he here? Why did he get an invite?”

Anne doesn’t answer me, hasn’t answered me.

Struggling to rub the excess of cream into my face, I transfer it to my hands, then forearms. It’s still too much. Completely exasperated at myself, at my behavior, I finally look over. “Anne?”

She frowns. “Your list.”

“My list?”

It takes me a moment to realize what she’s talking about. Because I didn’t formally present any sort of list. I didn’t object to any of the names on the actual list, even with invitations already going out before I saw it.

“I … didn’t … I thought I hallucinated that …”

Frowning more deeply, Anne reaches over and presses her hand to my forehead. Then she cups my cheek, holding my gaze.

Something about that contact, that … love … settles me more than the mad dash, more than the cold-water face wash.

“I took the list off your desk, darling,” Anne says. “I knew you’d never give it to me. I knew you would just … accept your father’s will.”

My heart aches. “But Anne … that list … that was just … it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be … it had Armin’s name on it.” A terrible sob rips through me. I clap my hand over my mouth, managing to swallow the next sob.

Anne wraps her arms around me. Ignoring my discordant energy, she wraps me in her grounded shifter energy and just holds on. “I know. ”

I press my face into her neck, noting for possibly the first time in my life that I’m actually the taller of the two of us. Anne radiates such confidence, such strength that she has always seemed, would always seem, so … alive.

“I’m … I …” I truly don’t know what to say.

“I had Raoul deliver the invitations to your five,” Anne murmurs. “So he could … impress upon them the seriousness of the situation. It’s time for them to step up.”

Step up? Step up to what?

I open my mouth to ask Anne how she thinks any of those five are viable options to bond with, to help me hold the intersection point, when the full realization of my ridiculously dramatic exit hits me.

It’s a blow to my already pathetic ego.

I invited Bolan.

Then I fled from him.

In front of everyone.

Groaning, I pull away from Anne, slumping against the counter and pressing the heels of my hands to my eyes. Anne starts looking through the cupboards. When she doesn’t find what she’s looking for, she pulls out her phone and sends a text.

I invited Sully. Elias and Christoph would have presumably made my father’s list without my input. But even my father was in on it, as evidenced by his crack to the twins about ruining their sister’s surprise.

“Fuck, fuck.” I did write that list. I did notice it was gone.

But I honestly felt as if I was going crazy that night, before Rian pulled me back from —

My head snaps up.

Anne is still bustling around, pouring a glass of cold water, then wetting a cloth.

“My five?” I echo. “I only crossed Armin off that list. ”

“Yes.” Anne smiles to herself. As if she knows where this conversation is going and finds it preemptively amusing.

I’m not laughing. “You invited Rian.”

“You invited Rian.”

With annoying clarity, I remember that morning in the loft, when Anne had called Rian a good addition to the list. I’d heard it as a suggestion, thinking she was asking me if I wanted him added. But she was telling me she’d already done so.

I huff.

She chuckles, pressing the glass of water into my hands.

“Anne!”

She shakes her head, actually putting her hands on her hips to indicate her willingness to withhold information until I drink. Like the fucking child I am.

I drink the water. It’s actually soothing. Not that I’m going to admit it.

Anne wrings out the wet towel. “Rian was the only guest to refuse.”

“What?”

She lays the cool cloth along the back of my neck. I flinch, surprised that even though I still feel partially frozen within, my skin is obviously heated.

“He refused. In your father’s presence.” Anne shrugs, as if such a thing is an everyday occurrence.

Except no one refuses anything having to do with my father.

I’m feeling displaced. And in a completely different way than before. I feel rooted to the marble floor under my feet, to the marble counter I’m leaning on. But also as if my head has disconnected and is now floating a few centimeters above my neck.

“He refused.” A few beads of water from the cloth trickle over my collarbone, soaking into the collar of the sweater.

“He said you didn’t want him involved.” Anne just keeps dropping these truths as if they aren’t absolutely earthshaking.

“To my father. Rian spoke to my father. About me?”

“Yes.” Anne is clearly trying hard to not laugh at me. But before I can figure out how to get my head reattached to my body, there’s a knock at the door to the rooms, and she turns to answer it.

I stare unthinkingly into the walk-in shower. The combination of Bolan serenading me, the list being real, and Rian refusing my father has broken my brain.

Rian … refusing … me.

A sharp ache shoots through my chest. I curl forward involuntarily, losing the wet towel from my neck.

Anne hustles in with a small silver tray and a peeved look. On the tray, a single pill sits in the center of a tiny crystal bowl set on a stiffly pressed gold-brocade napkin.

“Took them longer to put the tray together than to collect the painkiller. Mage crafted.” Anne holds the tray out to me.

My hand lifts seemingly of its own accord — because my brain really still isn’t functioning. I pluck the pill out of the bowl.

“It’s one of those you put under your tongue,” Anne says, setting the tray on the counter and picking up the wet towel from the floor.

I put the pill under my tongue, even though I know it can’t cure everything rushing through my head. Anne rinses the cloth in the sink.

“Rian refused,” I say, feeling as if I’m slicing open a vein just by uttering the words.

“Did you not tell him to stay out of it? ”

“I … I guess I did.”

“Well then?” Anne huffs.

“Well, then … he … I thought …”

Anne is apparently a mind reader, at least in this moment, because she puts me out of the misery of actually articulating myself.

“If he didn’t want you,” she says gently, “why would he have transported Armin’s horses to the stables here? He’s moved himself in. Do you know how much work the stables need? They aren’t remotely set up for training multiple horses, let alone for breeding.”

“He … what?”

“Rian informed your father that the climate is better for the horses here. Didn’t even ask permission.”

I just blink at her.

And she just smirks knowingly at me.

“Rian is … here?”

She snorts a laugh. “Yes.” Then she attempts to put the cloth on the back of my neck again.

I intercept it, straightening off the counter. “Rian is here right now. In the stables? He defied Father —”

“Well, I wouldn’t say defied —”

I’m already running out of the bathroom and through my bedroom.

Anne calls after me, “I’ll let the medic know that pill works miracles.”

“Hilarious!” I snark back at her in the time it takes me to stop and yank open the door. Then I’m running again.

And this time, I’m running toward something I want … someone I want just for myself.

This time, I’m hoping … I’m hoping maybe I can figure out a way to keep Rian in my life. For as long as he’s willing to be with me.

I’ll deal with Bolan later. I’ve been putting off that confrontation for eleven years, so a few more hours makes no difference.

The stables are situated on the other side of the extensive gardens, but with no direct route connecting them.

Forcing myself into a swift walk, so as not to draw too much attention from the gardeners and other staff, I cross out to the single-lane service road that runs along the far boundary of the property.

Light rain mists my face, dampening my hair, but I can’t wipe the grin from my face. In anticipation of seeing Rian? In disbelief that he not only refused my father, but then just informed him that the horses were better situated at Lake Thun …

Better situated near me?

The sound of tires on wet pavement calls my attention back into the now. I raise my hand in polite greeting but don’t bother looking back as I automatically step to the edge of the road to let a panel van pass.

The van slows. So as not to sideswipe me, I assume.

But then, just as it pulls abreast of me, moving slowly — the side door slips open.

Startled, I pivot.

In a flash of movement, someone tosses something silky over my head, covering my eyes.

Then that same someone, chuckling madly, hauls me into the van. A shifter, given how swiftly they move and how easily they pluck me from the side of the road.

Hands clamp over my wrists, gently pinning them together .

“What the fuck!” someone shouts from the front of the van. The driver?