“Hold still,” Katarina admonishes me.

“It tickles.”

“Then stop being ticklish,” she says.

I clench my teeth together, and she keeps lightly brushing powder onto my face.

“I’m almost done,” she says, giving my cheekbones a few more swipes as her enormous belly brushes against me.

Katarina steps back and admires her handiwork.

“There,” she says. “You look almost human.”

“Maybe we’re going the wrong direction with this,” I say, giving myself a once-over in the mirror. “Maybe I should look like a swamp monster so Prince Leo takes one look and runs right back to Szegravia.”

Katarina just rolls her eyes.

“You’re overreacting,” she says. “Give the poor guy a chance. He’s been cooped up in that castle for years, the least you can do is be nice, Jo.”

“There’s a reason he’s been in the castle for years,” I mutter.

“No, there’s a rumor,” Katarina says firmly. “Remember when you were allegedly snorting a combination of cocaine and industrial cleaner off a stripper’s ass in Moscow last year?”

I wasn’t, obviously, but it didn’t stop the tabloids from reporting it.

“That was different.”

“That was also a rumor.”

“I think it’s romantic,” sighs Florentina, from her chair behind us.

She’s been quiet most of this time, half listening to us and half staring off into space, day dreaming. It’s kind of her thing.

Katarina and I both just look at her and wait.

“You know, the prince locked away in the tower, some kind of tortured soul, and he can only truly be understood by his one love?”

She sighs dramatically. Katarina and I look at her, then at each other.

“Or, he’s a perfectly nice guy with a very shitty public relations team, and he picked the wrong way to deal with infamy at a young age,” Katarina says.

“I hope you’re right,” I say.

She grabs a sapphire blue gown on a hangar, unzips it, and bunches it all together so it’s just fabric around a hole.

“Arms up,” she orders. “Florrie, come make sure the dress doesn’t screw up her hair, will you?”

Between the two of them, they maneuver the gown over my hair and makeup, and Florentina zips it up my back as I check myself out in the mirror.

I’ve gotta give it to them, because I look good. You can’t even tell that I spent an hour crying this morning.

“You sure do clean up nice,” Katarina says, and pats my butt.

I make a face at her, but for an instant I think of the guy who saved my ass at the bar last night. Despite everything that’s about to happen, I keep thinking about him.

His eyes, deep brown and almost feral. The way he barely smiled at me.

His muscles. Good Lord, his muscles.

And I didn’t even get his name. Of all the dumb things I did yesterday, that was probably the dumbest.

“Go get ‘em tiger,” Katarina says, and the three of us leave my dressing room.

* * *

In the throne room, I feel like I’m having an out of body experience. Like I’m actually somewhere else, just watching Princess Josephine of Tomassia sit behind her parents, smiling prettily, greeting foreign dignitaries one by one.

Every time the massive door to the throne room opens again, my heart leaps into my throat, pins and needles prickling along my skin as I think, is that him? Is that him?

I’m supposed to marry the man, and I don’t even know what he looks like. No one does, except his family and servants.

There are no pictures of Prince Leo. Rumor has it that he hasn’t left his castle in almost fifteen years, not since the incident. That’s how the tabloids and the newspapers always talk about it.

The incident.

But there are rumors that he’s an enormous, brutish beast of a man, and that he’s so ugly that mirrors crack when he walks by. I’ve heard that he only speaks in grunts and growls, and that once when he got angry, he threw a table out a window.

And I’m supposed to marry him.

My parents just rolled their eyes at the rumors, of course, because according to them he’s perfectly nice, just shy.

But there’s shy, and then there’s beastly.

The Duke and Duchess of Canterview bow once more, then move off to the side, sitting in the gallery. Every head turns toward the huge doors at the end of the hall, and yet again, my stomach clenches.

They open, and then, for a long moment, nothing happens. The darkness beyond them yawns, the space deep and empty, and my heart seizes in my chest.

It’s him. It has to be him.

Anyone else would just walk in like a normal person.

Suddenly, a man strides into the room. Even from the other side of the room I can tell that he’s huge, tall and wide and built, and there’s something wild and untamed about him, despite the perfectly tailored suit he’s wearing.

And he’s powerful, walking in like he owns this room and this castle and this whole country, an aura of pure domination surrounding him.

No one has to tell me who he is. Just from the reaction he gets, all the nobles and royals in the room going silent at once, I know.

It’s Prince Leo. The man my parents want me to marry. Anxiety stabs through my chest, and I feel dizzy, like I can’t breathe.

Not him, I think. Anyone but him, please.

At the dais, the man kneels, head bent, in front of my parents, the King and Queen.

“Your majesties,” he says.

Something about his voice suddenly jars my breath loose, and I exhale in a rush because I recognize his voice from somewhere, but I can’t remember where. He’s familiar but he can’t be familiar, he’s a weirdo who hasn’t left his castle in years and year.

I feel like the world is tilting and I’m trying to grab onto something familiar.

Think, Josephine, I order myself, but my brain freezes.

“Prince Leopold of Szegravia, please rise,” my father says, his voice perfectly formal.

The man stands, lifting his head.

The second I see his face, I gasp out loud. This terrifying, feral, beast of a man has a scar running the length of his face, from his hairline to his jaw.

Prince Leo was my rescuer last night, and now he’s staring right at me.