Stealing Glass: A Cinderella Retelling (Tales of Bones and Roses Book 1) by Liv Strom

Author:Liv Strom [Strom, Liv]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SM Press
Published: 2023-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter seventeen

Dimitri

Alexei fell in silently next to me, sensing my dark thoughts. Together we entered the stables and walked up the creaking stairs. We were late. Not that anything this morning after the princess’s cry had gone as planned.

I should not have gotten so close. I should have seen the shine of magic fever earlier, taken her directly to the hospital. We should not have been alone, though a larger audience to our embrace would not have improved the situation. The touch had broken something inside me, cracked the walls I’d built. A tearing midwinter storm now threatened to pull it all down—another moment together and there was no knowing what I might have revealed. The only thing to do was wait until the wall could be rebuilt.

Helia’s and Eki’s crying faces mixed, past and present. The princess had been so small when I lifted her off the ground and barked at everyone to leave us. So frail compared to the woman who argued and fought me. Part of me wanted to return, to hear Gennady say she would be fine. To kiss her again and breathe in lavender and hope.

It had already gone too far. She wanted out of the engagement, and I would abandon her after the wedding.

In the stable attic, I moved on light feet though my mind was far away. Only the shuffling of the griffons below could be heard. Alexei and I replaced our finery with borrowed stable hand’s uniforms of brown and once-black shirt and trousers, as we had when we snuck out as teens. Alexei raised an eyebrow but refrained from commenting at the magnificent bruise forming on my side, a reminder of how my bride threw me across the room the night before.

I stuffed my hair under a wide-brimmed hat and tied a patch over my brown eye. What would the princess think if she saw me dressed like this? Laugh? Arch an eyebrow in question? Lecture me on how I should spend more time with my people? It did not matter, and this was not the time for idle thoughts.

We entered as two of the most powerful people in Tal and left as commoners.

“Seemed cozy back there,” Alexei said, taking a bite from an apple he had found somewhere. I should have known better than to expect him to leave what he had seen alone.

“None of your business.”

He snickered. “In public makes it everyone’s business.”

I snatched the apple away and stole a bite as he danced after me like when we were boys. How I missed those days.

We walked out the front gate and along the ever-busy Palace Road.

“Have you found anything in the princess’s chambers?” I asked, steering the conversation away from recent events as we turned into a mostly deserted side street covered by ochre cloth, the merchant stalls still closed, and rubbish from the night before littering the alleys.

“There wasn’t much as the princess hasn’t even received her luggage. There is no sign of the crown. So far,

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