"Fiancée," I echoed, the bottle of water shaking in my grasp.
The word tumbled out of me in a shaky breath. My face went hot and my limbs went cold, both stretching towards the extremities.
"Your Highness!" Brynn gasped upon rounding the corner, the ever stern woman nearly shoving herself into the ground trying to give a proper curtesy. "We didn't know to expect you!"
And then, she began gushing about how delighted she was to be in her presence, glazing her with compliment after compliment, until she was ordered to join the help with carrying the rest of the boxes outside.
"Make yourself useful," I believe those were the woman's exact words.
But there was a wall of air in my ears, a blankness falling over my mind.
The woman's eyes returned to me. Her lips parted to speak, but at the last second, her grey eyes lifted above my shoulder. I felt it half a second later. The steady wall of heat and the smell of Mercer's aftershave.
"Koen," she said in a scathing tone.
