Page 20 of The Prince and His Stolen Throne

I snorted, then covered it up with a cough.

Fitz sighed. “I’m only ten months younger than them, but they’ve always done this. Anytime the toys needed to be cleaned up, they’d suddenly remember some pressing assignment to complete.”

Cough, cough, cough—“Sorry, sorry,” I wheezed, waving for him to continue.

Something cool touched my hand and I looked down to see that sometime during my fake coughing fit, Maximus had fetched me a glass of water. He silently waited for me to take it.

All that acting had irritated my throat, so I drank it gladly. “Thanks.”

“I’m an only child,” Angelica said, flipping her golden curls over her shoulder. “Once my parents had me, they knew they’d created perfection, so why bother trying for more?”

“Trey and I are only children too!” Delilah piped up, bouncing in her seat and sloshing tea onto the furniture.

Angelica’s delicate nose scrunched up. “Your parents both have suchunusualmarriages. I’m surprised they had any children at all.” She tapped the edge of her teacup thoughtfully. “Howdidthey have children? I knowyouwere out of wedlock,” she said, pointing an incriminating finger at me.

New drinking game—take a shot every time someone points. Actually, no, bad idea. Someone might die of alcohol poisoning.

“But what about you?” she continued, frowning at Delilah. “How do two women have a baby? Did you simply show up on their doorstep one day?”

“Ha ha, ha ha, what a crazy random thing to say!” Delilah practically shouted in her eagerness to dismiss Angelica’s hypothesis. “Of course my parents are my parents!”

I frowned, then started doing the math. Aunt Franny and Kit had married later than my parents, who had recently celebrated their seventeenth anniversary, but Delilah was already eighteen … Maybe she was Kit’s daughter prior to marriage? Which would technically not make her royalty—exactly like me.Are her parents hoping the spell doesn’t care about technicalities?

Since Delilah was acting as suspicious as humanly possible, I spoke up to draw attention away from her. “Maximus has a good point. There are five of us, which is an awkward number for marriage. Unless three of us are willing to experiment, our best bet is the quest.”

Angelica pursed her lips. “I don’t want to marry any of you, let alonetwoof you.”

“You forgot to add ‘no offense,’” Delilah said.

“No, I didn’t.”

Delilah’s lips pulled back to expose normal incisors, and I could practically see her hackles rising. “Maybe none of us want to marryyoueither.”

“As previously stated, I am her cousin, so I can’t,” Fitz said. “You and Trey are the only ones not related to her.”

“Again,” I raised my voice, “marriage is not the only option,andit sounds like it’s more of a clusterfuck than it’s worth.”

Angelica grimaced. “Must you swear?”

If it means you’ll refuse to marry me so we can direct our attention to the quest. “Fuck yes.”

A quiet snort came from beside me. When I glanced at Maximus, his expression was carefully blank. Maybe I’d heard wrong.

“A quest would change things up,” Fitz said. “However, it could be a great deal more dangerous. How many of us are heirs to the throne?”

Angelica and Delilah raised their hands. After a moment, Delilah looked at me pointedly, then at my hand, then raised hers higher.

“My grandparents haven’t abdicated yet, so my father is officially the heir,” I explained.

“I’m counting you anyway,” Fitz said, scribbling my name in his notes. “One of the reasons our great-grandparents chose marriage as a condition for the spell was because of how dangerous quests are. If any of you three die, a whole kingdom’s future is thrown into turmoil.”

“If I am forced to marry Angelica,twokingdoms’ futures will be in turmoil because I will rip out her throat and then I will be hanged for treason,” Delilah said.

Angelica reared back as far away from Delilah as she could, one delicate hand covering her throat. “You’re an uncouth, uncivilized littlebeast.”

Delilah leaned on the table separating them, dull teeth on full display. Any second now, she would get on all fours and start hissing. We didn’t need to add her feline-delusions into the mix.

“Would you rather marry Delilah or sic her on an evil mage?” I asked.