Chapter 8: The Prince's Offer

I didn't say anything.

There was nothing I could say that he hadn't already heard through the hedge.

Prince Lucan leaned back on his hands and looked up at the moon.

"Don't look so frightened, Lady Vivi," he said. "I'm not going to shout for the guards."

"Why not?"

"Because I love my brother."

He said it so simply that I almost believed it.

In the book, I had believed it for two hundred chapters.

"Think about it," he said. "The Emperor lied in front of forty riders to keep a Montclair out of trouble."

He turned his grey eyes on me.

"If the council heard that, they'd say he's lost his mind over a Montclair. Half of them hate your father. They'd use it."

"Use it how?"

"Emperors have been pushed off thrones for less."

He said it lightly.

I looked at his soft grey coat and his empty belt.

Prince Lucan never carried a sword.

The book said it was because he had a gentle heart.

"So I'll keep quiet," he said. "For him, not for you."

"Thank you, Your Highness."

"Don't thank me yet."

He smiled, and the dimple came back.

"I want something too."

Of course he did.

"What?"

"Rose."

The fountain splashed behind us.

"You know how I feel about her," he said. "The whole court knows. I've followed her around like a dog since the first day of summer."

That was true.

In the book, he gave Rose his mother's hairpin in chapter eleven, and she gave it back in chapter forty, and he kept it until he died.

"But she only has eyes for my brother," he said. "Every girl in the Selection does. Except you, apparently."