Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

STORY

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Cross your legs, Remember to smile, Own the room, Wear your best, Never apologize, and Eat your vegetables.

“Are you wearing your CROWNE?”

I jumped, finding Gemma watching me, brow arched.

I rubbed my neck. “Possibly.”

She picked up a cranberry tart, pausing before her plump pink lips to say, “You forgot the most important one.”

I mentally went through the list again, panicking. Cross your legs, Remember to smile, Own the room, Wear your best, Never apologize, and Eat your vegetables.

Had I apologized?

“Eat your fucking vegetables.” She laughed, dropping the tart into her mouth. “Welcome to our royally dysfunctional family, I guess.”

“I’m not—I’m just…I’m…”

Gemma made a tsking sound. “You’re forgetting your O.”

Own the room.

Gemma wore a flowing gold gown with intricate leaves embroidered in the tulle, a color like many others in the room. Other than Abigail, I was the only one not in gold or brown. And I was the only one in green.

I didn’t blend in.

Anxiety made intricate knots in my chest.

Gemma lingered, not quite looking at me but not totally ignoring my presence either. It was weird. Gemma Crowne had laughed with me. Had acknowledged me. And now was standing next to me, around paparazzi, in a place where we could be photographed.

“So…how do you know Grim?”

Ah. Now it made sense.

Her clear blue eyes lingered on me.

I shrugged. “I just do.”

I knew him the way everyone who isn’t rich knows everyone in Crowne Point, the way I was learning everyone who was rich knew everyone. We were a small town. You’re involved in people’s business even if you wished you weren’t.

She looked like she wanted to press, when really I wanted to press how someone like Gemma Crowne knew Grim.

“Are you, um…” I swallowed, remembering the tattoo, but also stuck feeling like it still wasn’t my place. “Okay?”

She shrugged. “They have the best drugs.”

That made sense, more sense than a guy like Grim getting inked for a fucking Crowne, and a girl like Gemma taking that dark contract.

They’d have been bound together forever.

The Horsemen provided everyone with drugs, but a Crowne usually didn’t buy them themselves. I know, because I knew the servants who did.

“You haven’t told anyone you saw me there,” she said after a moment.

I arched a brow. “How do you know?”