Page 7 of The Gilded Fae (Royal Fae of Rose Briar Woods 2)

ALEX

I wake with a start, breathing hard. Pressing my hand to my chest, I remember things best left in the past: a princess with golden hair and a pretty smile. The innocent way she blushed. The feel of her soft lips against mine.

I secured fifty fluots that night, winning a bet everyone thought I was a fool to make. But the joke ended up on me. Instead of stealing a kiss from the heir of the Auvenridge Court, Sabine captured my heart and has held it prisoner these long years.

Why do I still dream of her? Why is her voice so clear in my memory?

Groaning, I rub my hand over my face and leave my bed, staggering thanks to the splitting headache that threatens to crack my head in two. I push aside the heavy damask drapes that block the window and look at the theater that stands across the street, surveying my kingdom in the light of early dawn.

I shouldn’t drink—I know better. Sabine finds me in those drunken dreams every time.

But it was the eve of her birthday, and I’m weak. Five years ago today, the heir to the West Faerie throne turned sixteen. Sometimes it feels like longer, and other times it feels like yesterday.

I’m bewitched, or so Madame Corsavina claims. But everyone knows the old fortune-teller is a fraud we brought in off the streets to entertain the rich and easily impressed theatergoers in the foyer before shows. She’s human, not even one of the Fae. What does she know?

I rest my cheek against the glass, reliving dark memories that mar the pleasant ones. A year of captivity. Parties, masquerades, pain, and shackles.

Our troupe’s gesture of goodwill turned into a trap, one I barely escaped. The others weren’t so fortunate. It turns out Queen Marison is just as ruthless as the rumors claim. I should have listened to my father—I should have never crossed the bridge into West Faerie.

Our troupe was deceived by the royal Fae; we were tricked and snared like unsuspecting animals. And yet the princess remains in my head, haunting me still.

Loathing myself, I drop the curtain and return to my bed. With one eye closed to ward off the thrumming pain, I slosh whiskey into a crystal glass, down the whole thing in one go, and then pass out once more.

* * *

I waketo an insistent knock at the door.

“Mr. Devereaux!” my housekeeper loudly shrills from the hall beyond. “Mr. Devereaux! If you don’t crawl out of bed and answer me, I’ll fetch a pitcher of water—I swear I will. You have a meeting with the investors in fifteen minutes. Did you hear me? Fifteen minutes!”

I mumble into my pillow, cursing the woman and wondering why I pay her to squawk at me. Then I roll over, squinting at the bright sunlight streaming through cracks between the drapes.

“I’m awake,” I croak.

I run my tongue over my top teeth and groan. My mouth feels like a parched desert.

After pulling myself out of bed, I throw the door open. Leaning my forearm against the doorframe, I grit out, “Wait, Ms. Kettinson.”

Trying to focus on the blonde-haired harpy of a woman as she turns back, I blink several times. “The investors’ meeting isn’t until three.”

“And it’s two forty-seven,” she says sharply, pointing at the grandfather clock that stands against the wall in the hallway of my suite.

I peer at the face, squinting at the blurry hands as they point to squiggles that should be numbers, certain she must be wrong. “I couldn’t have slept all day.”

“You did,” she says, exasperated.

Every day the harried woman threatens to put in her resignation.

And yet she’s still here.

“Why are you just standing there?” she demands. With a great sigh, she hurries to me, her starched black skirt swaying angrily as she walks. “You’ll be late!”

“I’m going,” I tell her, waving her away before she can shove me back into the room. “I’m going.”

Ten minutes later, I leave the hotel, looking as respectable as any man can when he’s spent most of the day in a drunken coma.

Frederick meets me at the entrance, frowning as he looks me over. “Did you go out last night without me?”

“I didn’t go anywhere.” I fix my cuff links as we walk across the street.