Switched (31 page)

“You’re lying!” I shouted, feeling a tear slip down my cheek. “You promised you would never lie to me!”

“Wendy! I need you to leave!” Finn growled.

He was breathing heavily, and his back was still to me, but he had stopped moving around. He leaned against his bookshelf, his shoulders hunched forward. This was my last chance to convince him, and I knew it. I touched his back, and he tried to pull away from me, but I wouldn’t move my 226

hand. He whirled on me, grabbing my wrist. He pushed me until my back was against the wall, pinning me there. His body was pressed tightly against mine, the strong counters of his muscles against the soft curves of mine, and I could feel his heart hammering against my chest. His hand was still around my wrist, restraining one of my hands against the wall. I’m not sure what he intended to do, but he looked down at me, his dark eyes smoldering. Then suddenly, I felt his lips pressed roughly against mine.

He kissed me desperately, like a drowning man and I was his oxygen. I felt his stubble scraping against my cheeks, my lips, my neck, everywhere he dared press his mouth against me. He let go of my wrist, allowing me to wrap my arms around him and pull him even closer to me. Seconds ago, I had been crying, and I could taste the salt from my tears on his lips. Tangling my fingers in his hair, I pushed his mouth more eagerly against mine, kissing him until I couldn’t breathe. My heart beat so fast, it hurt, and an intense heat spread through me. I had never wanted anything more than I wanted him.

“No…” Finn said hoarsely, and somehow he managed to pull his mouth from mine. His hands gripped my shoulders, holding me to the wall and he took a step back. Breathing hard, he looked at the ground instead of at me, and his dark lashed laid on his cheeks. “This is why I have to go, Wendy. I can’t do this to you.”

“To me? You’re not doing anything to me!” I persisted and tried to reach out for him, but he held me back. “Just let me go with you.”

“Wendy…” He put his hand back on my cheek, using his thumb to brush away a fresh tear, and looked at me intently. “You trust me, don’t you?” I nodded hesitantly. “Then you have to trust me on this. You
need
to stay here, and I need to go. Okay?”

“Finn!”

I

protested.

“I’m sorry.” Finn let go of me and grabbed his half-packed suitcase off his bed. “I stayed too long.” He started walking to the door, and I ran after him.

“Wendy! Enough!”

“But you can’t just leave…” I pleaded.

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He hesitated at the doorway but shook his head. Finn opened the door and left.

I could’ve followed him, but I didn’t have anymore arguments. His kiss had left me feeling dazed and disarmed, and I wondered dimly if that had been his plan all along. He knew his kiss would leave me too weak to chase after him and too confused to argue with him. After he had gone, I just sat down on the bed that still smelled like him, and I started to sob.

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20

I’m not sure I had slept at all when Willa burst in my room the next morning to wake me for the party. My eyes were red and swollen, but she made very little comment about it. She just started in on getting me ready and talking excitedly about how much fun it was all going to be. I didn’t really believe her, but she didn’t notice. Almost everything I did required verbal and physical prompts.

She even had to remind me rinse the shampoo from my hair, and I was just lucky that modesty had never been her strong suit.

It was impossible to combine fresh heartbreak with the fervor of a ball.

Willa kept trying to get me excited or at least nervous about anything, but it was completely futile. The only way I managed to function was by being completely numb. I didn’t even understand how this had happened. When I had first met Finn, he had seemed creepy, and then he was just irritating. Repeatedly, I had rejected him and told him that I didn’t need him or want to be around him. I had even run away from Förening before thinking I would never see him again.

How had it turned into this? I had lived my whole stupid life without him, and now I could barely make it through the hour.

“Wendy,” Willa sighed. I was sitting on a stool, wrapped in my robe, while she did something to my hair. She had offered to do it in front of a mirror so I could see her progress, but I didn’t care. Holding a bottle of spray in her hand, she stopped what she was doing and just looked at me. “I know Finn’s gone, and you’re obviously taking it pretty hard. But he’s just a stork, and you are a
Princess
.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumbled.

I had thought about defending him, but in all honesty, I was kind of pissed that he had left without me. There was no way that I could’ve left him after that kiss. As it was, it had been torture to stay behind. I just lowered my eyes and tried to close the subject.

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“Fine. I don’t.” Willa rolled her eyes and went back to spraying my hair. “But you’re still a Princess, and this is your night.” I didn’t say anything as she yanked and teased my hair. “You’re still young. You don’t understand how many fish there really are in the sea, especially your sea. The most eligible, attractive men are gonna be all over you, and you’re not even gonna remember that stupid stork that brought you here.”

“I don’t like fishing,” I muttered dryly, but she ignored me.

“You know who is a catch? Tove Kroner.” Willa made a pleased sound, and I groaned inwardly. “I wish my dad would set me up with him.” She sighed wistfully and pulled painfully on a strand of my hair. “He’s really foxy, really rich, and he’s like the highest Markis in the world, which is so weird. The Marksinna are usually the ones with all the abilities. Of course guys have some things, but they almost always pale in comparison to what women have, but Tove has more than anybody else. He tries not to show off, but I’ve seen some of the stuff he can do, and it’s amazing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could read minds.”

“I thought nobody could do that,” I commented, amazed that I was even following her.

“No. Only very, very few can. So few it’s almost the stuff of legends anymore.” She gently fluffed at my hair. “But Tove is the stuff of legends, so that makes sense. And if you play your cards right, you’ll be pretty damn legendary yourself.” She whipped me around so she was facing me again and smiled at her handiwork. “Now we just need to get you in your gown.”

Somehow, while getting me ready, Willa had managed to ready herself.

She had on a floor length light blue gown that swept around her, and she looked so beautiful, I had no hope of topping that. After she had finally gotten me into my own dress, she forced me in front of the mirror, insisting that I looked too amazing to ignore.

“Oh wow.” Saying that to my reflection, I felt egotistical, but I couldn’t help it. I had never looked better in my life, and I doubted that I would ever look this good again.

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The dress was a shimmery silver and white that flowed out around me.

It was strapless in an elegant way, and the diamond necklace Willa had chosen set it off. My dark curls fell perfectly behind me, and Willa had added subtle touches of diamond clips in my hair. For the first time in my entire life, I actually looked like a Princess.

“You’re gonna rock it tonight, Princess,” Willa promised with a sly smile.

That was the last calm moment of the night. As soon as we stepped out of my bedroom, we were swept off by aides and staff that I didn’t even know Elora had. They were giving me a rundown of the times that everything was set to happen and where I had to be and who I had to meet and what I had to do.

It was already more than I could comprehend, and at least momentarily, I was pushed out of the dull heartache that I got from thinking of Finn. I looked helplessly for Willa, and later on, I knew I would have to try and make this up to her. Without her, it would’ve been completely impossible for me to make it through.

First, there was some kind of meet and greet in the ball room. Elora stood on one side, and thankfully, Willa was allowed to stay on my other side, explaining herself as some kind of personal assistant to me. The three of us stood at one end of the ballroom, flanked by security that had the same stoic posture as Finn, and a long line of people waited to meet me. Most of them were famous and Willa filled in the names and titles as they approached, but Elora explained that anybody could come meet me today, so the line was absolutely endless. My face hurt from smiling, and there were only so many different ways I could say “pleased to meet you” and “thank you.”

After that, we went to the dining hall, and that was a more exclusive function. The table only seated a hundred (that’s right –
only
a hundred), but Willa was five places down from me, making me feel strangely lost. Whenever I felt insecure, I felt my eyes instinctively searching for Finn, only to remember that he wasn’t there. I tried to concentrate on eating my food properly, which 231

wasn’t that easy considering how nauseous I felt and how badly my jaw hurt from the forced smiles.

My mother was sitting to my right at the head of the table, and Tove was sitting next to me on my left. Throughout the dinner, he’d said hardly a thing to me, and Elora had gone about making polite conversation with the current Chancellor, an obese balding man named Antonsson. Personally, the way he looked at me creeped me out, and I found it impossible to smile at him out of fear I might vomit.

“Drink more wine,” Tove suggested quietly. Holding a wine glass in his hand, he leaned in a bit towards me to be heard over the echo of everyone talking. His mossy eyes rested on my briefly before averting and staring at an empty space across from us. “It relaxes the muscles.”

“I beg your pardon?” I crinkled my forehead, not understanding what he was saying.

“From smiling.” He gestured to his own mouth and forced a smile before quickly dropping it. “It’s starting to hurt, right?”

“Yeah.” I smiled lightly at him, feeling a growing soreness in the corners of my mouth.

“The wine helps. Trust me.” Tove took a long drink from his wine, much larger than was polite, and I saw Elora eying him up as she chatted with Antonsson.

“Thanks.” I took his suggestion, but I drank much more slowly than he did, afraid of inciting the wrath of Elora. I didn’t think she’d do anything publicly, but then again, I didn’t really think she’d let me get away with anything either.

As the dinner wore on, Tove apparently started getting restless. He leaned back in his seat, leaving his hand lying on the table. His wine glass would suddenly slowly slide over to his hand, then it would slowly slide away, without him ever having to touch it. It was a similar trick that I had seen him pull before, but I couldn’t help but stare.

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“You have persuasion, right?” Tove asked, glancing at me. I’m not sure if he caught me watching his trick or not, but I looked down at my plate either way.

“Mmm, yes,” I nodded.

“Is it pretty powerful? I heard it was.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, and I could imagine that Elora was livid.

“I don’t think so. Not now anyway,” I stabbed absently at some kind of vegetable I had no intention of eating. “Since I’ve lived here, I haven’t used it at all.”

“Yeah, they do that on purpose,” Tove muttered disdainfully. He leaned in closer to me, lowering his voice, and he looked intently at me. “I can’t explain it but… I know what you can do.” He chewed his lip. “And your persuasion is going to be immensely powerful.”

“Maybe,” I allowed. His gaze was unnerving, and I didn’t want to disagree with him.

“Here’s a tip: use it tonight,” Tove was barely audible over the chatter.

“You’re trying to please so many people and it’s exhausting. You can’t be everything to everyone, so I try not to be anything to anyone. My mother hates me for it but…” He shrugged. “Just use it a little bit, and you’ll charm everyone.

Without really trying.”

“I have to try to use persuasion,” I whispered. I could feel Elora listening to us, and I didn’t think she’d approve of what we were saying. “It would be just as exhausting.”

“Hmm,” Tove mused, then leaned back in his seat.

“Tove, the Chancellor was just telling me that you had discussed working for him this spring,” Elora interjected brightly. I barely glanced up at her, but in that second, she managed to glare icily at me before instantly returning to her overly cheery expression.

“My mother was discussing it,” Tove corrected her. “I’ve never said a word to the Chancellor, and I have no interest in the position.” I was 233

increasingly becoming a fan of Tove, even if he weirded me out and I didn’t understand what he meant most of the time.

“I see.” Elora raised an eyebrow, and the Chancellor started saying something about the wine they were drinking.

Tove managed to look bored and irritated the rest of the dinner, chewing his nails and looking at everything except for me. His dark hair had soft, natural highlights coursing through it, and it was longer and more unruly than most of the men’s. His skin was darker, too, tanned with a mossy undertone, the green complexion that Finn had told me about. Nobody here had skin like that at all, except maybe his mother, but hers was even fainter than Tove’s already subtle coloring. He was definitely handsome, but I couldn’t see why Willa would describe him as such a catch. There was something very strange and unstable about him. He belonged in this world even less than I did, but I imagined that there really wasn’t any place that he fit in.

Moving on to the ballroom after dinner was by far the worst experience of the evening. Meeting people had been rough, but this was forced one-on-one interaction that went for several minutes. That doesn’t sound that bad, but when I was trapped in a waltz with a sixty-year-old man who talked only of some great war two centuries ago while staring at me with glazed eyes, yeah, that got old very fast.

The ballroom looked positively magical when it was all done up, and I couldn’t help but think of the brief dance I shared with Finn a few days before.

That, of course, reminded me of the passionate kiss we had shared last night, making me feel weak and sick. I couldn’t even force a smile when I thought of Finn. The fact that I didn’t sob uncontrollably on the dance floor was a miracle.