Bookish and the Beast - Ashley Poston
PART ONE
VILLAIN
He takes Amara roughly by the chin and whispers quietly, “I care about duty, princess.” Their lips are so close, he feels the moment her breath hitches. She shudders as he runs his finger down the soft line of her cheek, the freckles that glow like constellations. “And you will not get in my way.”
He leans in toward the princess, toward her lips, when he feels a sharp point at his chest, and glances down to the dagger.
Amara narrows her eyes. “I’m no fool, Ambrose Sond, and I will not let you jeopardize my mission, either. I know you’re working for my father.”
“I am working with him. There’s a difference.”
“I see none. You commit the same evil.”
He leans closer to her, smelling the salty sweat on her skin and the lingering particles of gunpowder, even as the dagger presses more intently against his chest. One thrust, and it would pierce his heart, but he knows the princess better than she knows herself, he thinks.
“Then you aren’t looking close enough,” he murmurs, and then steps away, leaving her alone on the observation deck of the Skystalker.
WHENEVER YOU THINK YOUR LOVE LIFE SUCKS, just remember that I fell in love with a boy whose name I didn’t know.
Let’s be clear: I didn’t mean to fall in love. It just sort of happened, the way falling usually does. You trip on something you didn’t see and, if you’re me, you lose your heel and go stumbling into a stranger at the ExcelsiCon Ball who just so happened to be holding a glass of neon-yellow Galactic Twist punch that goes…absolutely everywhere.
And so now the front of your skirt is drenched with the sticky yellow Kool-Aid that looks more like, well, pee than Galactic Twist, and there isn’t a bathroom in sight. With one glance, I could already tell my cosplay was ruined. So was the other person’s cosplay, but he didn’t seem to care as he stumbled on.
He wasn’t who I fell in love with, by the way.
He’s just the reason I met him.
If I didn’t have my stupid mask on I probably would’ve seen the prop sword lying on the ground. Who puts a prop sword on the ground in the middle of the dance floor, anyway?
Apparently, with a quick look around, a person cosplaying as Cloud Strife did just before he broke down the Electric Slide.
I looped back for my heel, grabbed it off the ground before someone could kick it away, and left the dance floor to see if I could salvage my outfit. If I didn’t love my friends so much, I would’ve just stayed in my hotel room and watched reruns of The Great British Bake Off. I was still contemplating the possibility, honestly.
Quinn and Annie had told me the ball would be good for me. They told me it would take my mind off what had happened this past summer. They told me…well, I guess it didn’t really matter what lies those lying liars peddled to get me to come out of my hotel room. What mattered was the universal question:
How early was too early to leave a ball?
“You don’t want to miss the magic, do you?” Annie had asked as she pulled me out of the room toward the elevators. “Last year we saw Jessica Stone—the Amara!—stand on a food truck to Romeo and Juliet her girlfriend. And the year before that, Darien—Darien Freeman! Carmindor himself!—proclaimed his undying love for Geekerella! What if this is your year?”
I’d never been to ExcelsiCon before—it always seemed too big and too loud—but I knew that Quinn and Annie were trying to get me to have as much fun as I could, because the last year has sucked.
It’s sucked so terribly hard.
“Well, last I checked, Darien Freeman’s taken,” I had replied. “And so is Jess Stone.”
“Yes, but look across this great expanse, Rosie.” Quinn looped their arm into my free one, and they led me toward the hall balcony where, thirty floors below, the ExcelsiCon Ball began to come to life. “Do you smell that possibility?”
“All I smell is vom and con stink,” I replied.
Yet I caved, because wouldn’t it have been wonderful to find Prince Charming at the ball? They knew I was a romantic at heart—my mom fed me a healthy dose of fairy tales and romance novels when I was little—and they knew I was a sucker for every rom-com known to humankind, and so they tempted me with lies of Happily Ever After.
After all, if anyone was