Page 87 of The Prince of Broken Crowns

“Thank you.” I take a bite. “But FYI, there’s no way in hell I believe you couldn’t eat an entire pizza by yourself.”

He gives me this cocky smile as he collects a slice for himself. “My record is three pizzas in one night.”

My jaw drops. “What the hell is your stomach made of, bro?”

He busts up laughing, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “It was for a dare. And I won a hundred bucks.”

“And three pizzas,” I add, causing him to laugh harder.

“I love how you just say things how they are.” He sinks his teeth into the slice of pizza and tears a chunk off. “And how you’re always calling me bro and dude. It’s not normal around here for women to talk like that.”

“Why? Because their ladies?” My eye roll is evident through my tone.

“I mean, yeah, that’s how they’re raised to be.” He pauses. “Not that all of them are like that. They just act that way in public. I mean, River and I have a lot of responsibilities—River in particular—but I feel bad for Lily, who spent most of her childhood attending ballroom and manners.”

“Ew, that’s a real thing?” I take another bite of my pizza, eating like a savage and owning the heck out of it.

He wolfs down half a slice of pizza. “Yep. There’sa ton of weird classes she had to go to, and she hated every one of them. And they changed her, even if she didn’t want them to.”

“That’s sad.” I’ve never even thought about how royal women might have it just as bad as north-siders, but in a different way. It makes me think of this whole betrothed thing.

“I’m guessing this Isla girl had to go through the same thing, but maybe even more because she’s betrothed?” I’m being nosey about River, and I don’t like it—how I’m this interested in him, enough that I’m prying.

And Finn reads right through my shit.

“Ah, the betrothed,” he muses then sighs. He grabs a napkin from the stack that’s on top of the pizza box and wipes his fingers clean. “We used to kind of be friends with Isla when we were kids, but once we got old enough to realize what being betrothed entails, our friendship dissolved. Isla has been through a lot of shit. Her mother is a freaking lunatic. I once saw her smack a waiter because he brought her the wrong drink.”

I break off a piece of the pizza crust. “What did the waiter do?”

“Nothing. He got fired.” He rotates his upper body and reaches for another slice of pizza.

“That’s so messed up,” I say, frowning.

“That’s the royal world, Mads. The rich get what they want, even if they don’t deserve it, and they treat anyone beneath them like they’re worth absolutely nothing.”

“I thought you said not all of them are bad?”

“They’re not. But there’s enough vipers crawling around here that the risk of getting poisoned is high.” He gives me a pressing look. “The best way to reduce the risk is to stay as far away from the danger as possible.”

His warning is loud and clear, even if he doesn’t say the words aloud—stop asking questions about the library before I get bit.

Little does he know I’ve been poisoned my entire life, to the point where I’m pretty certain I’m immune to it.

Maddison

It takes forever for the alarm system to realize it’s not a banshee. Eventually, it has a psychological breakthrough, and the air grows quiet. Cheers erupt from everyone, and just like that, we all head back into the academy.

Despite my protests, Finn walks me to my door. When we arrive, I swipe the QR code in front of the knob and then move to go inside.

“Thanks for the massage and pizza,” I tell him as I stroll in.

Instead of walking away, he lingers in the doorway, staring at me with this weirdly hesitant look.

I spin around to face him. “What’s up, dude?”

He scrubs his hand across his mouth, I think to conceal a smile. Then he straightens, resting his hands on the doorjamb. This causes his shirt to ride up enough that I get a glimpse of his lean abs.

You know when you see a car wreck, and you know you shouldn’t stare, but then you do, and you end up rear-ending the car in front of you? That’s about how my attempt not to stare at his muscles go. I stare, and he notices, and grins.

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