When best friends Claire and Jo wake up trapped in a fantasy romance novel, Claire thinks it's a dream come true while Jo knows it's her worst nightmare - especially after they are almost killed by a monster and end up on the wrong end of a handsome...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I SHIFTED IN my seat, or I tried to. Every time I so much as breathed, my dress bunched and pinched around me. I picked at my food, the corset not only cinching my ribs, but my appetite as well. Or maybe it was the view: the horror of witnessing Prince Elric flirting with Claire, and Claire being completely oblivious to it.
I didn't know which act I wanted to commit first: rip off my dress, or pluck out my eyes with one of the three dinner forks still spread out before me. And then my gaze landed on the stupid bowl of water and I wanted to die.
And what made it all worse was Sir Monster Extinguisher, Nico, or whatever he wanted to call himself constantly glancing at me and smirking the whole time. "What a peculiar creature you are," he'd said. If only he knew in my world, everyone here would be the peculiar ones. Even Claire.
I knew she was playing the part of a noble – from the way she spoke, sat up straighter in her chair than she ever had in our classes, to the very way she took delicate bites of her food. I pushed mine around on my plate, trying my best to lay low, play cool, not make an idiot of myself. Or at least not make any more of an idiot out of myself than I already did with the stupid water incident.
I thought tonight would be different than this afternoon. My original plan had been to sit through this dinner as I was now, only less mortified, maybe even ask an intelligent question so I could learn a little more about what was going on here.
I'd only gotten through one chapter of Claire's book, but it'd been enough to pique my interest – not that I could ever, ever tell her that. Swords weren't really my thing, roses even less so, but the words were pretty and the world was big and I understood why Claire loved the book as much as she did. But I didn't get the chance to read enough, and I needed to understand. I wanted to understand, because there had to be a clue as to how to get out of this place inside those pages. We couldn't have ended up here on some fluke.
"You must come," Elric said, pulling my attention back to the conversation. "Even if only for the first day. Nico and I will be taking part in the swordsman tournament and the joust, respectively."
Not these festivals again.
"You will?" Claire asked, appropriately demure, but what she needed to say was no. She had us playing the roles of noblewomen. Surely we could say no to a prince if we wanted to.
"Yes," Elric replied, like a dog who'd just been thrown a bone. "I think you might bring me luck, considering our fortunate meeting in the woods."
The first thing I thought of was the monster and how fortunate that hadn't been for anyone. I forcibly stabbed a boiled potato with my fork. I thought princes were supposed to be smart. Couldn't this one take a hint that we weren't interested –
But Claire's answering smile had my breath catching in my chest. "Well, how could I deny a prince his luck?"
I rolled my eyes, then caught the dark gaze of Sir Nico or whatever beside me. And he was smirking. Again! Probably waiting for me to do something even more dumb than before. I couldn't take it. I wouldn't take it.
