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Things were not going well for Feyre on that particular morning. Juggling two jobs and university was already difficult enough, but pulling a double shift in the middle of midterms was taking her stress levels to the extreme. She probably had the blood pressure of an 82 year old.
Perhaps it was the stress that was throwing her routine off kilter, because as she rushed to her car she swore that absolutely nothing was going her way. After a late night of studying, she’d accidentally overslept her alarm and was half an hour late to her morning shift at the cafe. As recompense, her manager had made her stay an extra hour at the end of her shift. Which of course had eaten into the time Feyre had scheduled in between jobs, and now she barely had enough time to make it across town before the party started.
In an ordinary job, her predicament may not have been such a crisis situation. But Feyre needed to turn herself into a princess in the span of five minutes. She was still in her uniform for the cafe, her hair tied hurriedly into a ponytail, and her face bare of makeup.
And there was also the issues that she had no time to stop and find a dressing room .
As she approached the neighborhood of the address she’d been given, Feyre noticed the street was already filling with cars. Great. She parked a few houses down, thinking that maybe it was a mercy she wouldn’t be in front of the house as she clambered into the backseat.
Then, the gesture lacking any measure of grace, Feyre hurriedly began stripping, swearing vehemently as she did so. She’d need to get into her princess costume and makeup at Broadyway-quick-change level speeds.
As if needing to get dressed in the backseat was not humiliating enough, to Feyre’s utter mortification, when she removed the dress from the window hanger, she suddenly revealed three much too handsome men walking on the pavement next to her car.
Only one of them glanced her way at the motion—the most beautiful of the three. His eyes were the most peculiar color, a blue so vivid they almost looked purple. And as those curious pairs of violets met her gaze, he raised his brows and smirked as if to say thanks for the view .
Feyre’s cheeks flamed, especially as she noticed he was carrying a cake in one hand and a gift bag in the other. He was going to be at the party, and he’d just seen the hired princess stripped to her underwear. This day truly was one that kept on giving.
Mercifully, purple-eyes didn’t call attention to the half-naked woman in the car, and the three of them went on their way.
Now, Feyre only had three minutes to recover her pride and make herself look like the Queen of Arendelle. Thankfully, she was well practiced in her princess-transformation. As for the pride, she didn’t think she’d ever truly recover that.
Especially not as she rang the doorbell and came face-to-face with purple-eyes.
“Queen Elsa,” he drawled with a knowing grin, inclining his head in a small bow. “How honored I am for you to join us.”
Shit . Feyre recognized that velvety voice right away. He was the one she’d spoken to on the phone, the literal host of the party. Internally, she was panicking, wondering if he was going to leave her a bad review for being inappropriate.
Externally, she offered him her practiced, regal smile. “Please, the pleasure is all mine. I’m very excited to meet the birthday girl.”
Maybe if they both pretend nothing happened, she’d actually be able to get through this party.
“Believe me, not as excited as she is to see you . Selene’s been talking about nothing else since she heard that the Queen of Arendelle rsvp’d to her party.” There was something in his tone that loosened her anxiety—a gentle affection that melted her heart. Then he pitched his voice low, “but between you and me, I was actually the most excited to meet you. And from what I’ve seen so far, I’m a big fan.”
Oh. My. God. Feyre was going to die from embarrassment. This is it , she thought, I’m just going to melt away right here in shame. That seemed a much better option than actually enduring the rest of the party.
She briefly contemplated turning around and bolting back towards her car. Any bad review he left for her would be better than having those stupidly gorgeous eyes mocking her for the next 3 hours. Feyre had nearly talked herself into fleeing when suddenly a voice sounded behind the raven-haired man.
“Rhysie? Who’s here?”
Rhysie? Was that his name? Another pair of strange-colored eyes peered behind him. Except this pair belonged to a little girl, who Feyre guessed was Selene. Their resemblance was uncanny, and since Selene hadn’t called him dad , Feyre assumed that meant Rhysie was Selene’s older brother.
The little girl’s eyes went as wide as the moon when she saw Feyre in her Elsa costume, and her immediate squeal of delight paralyzed Feyre in her spot. How could she possibly leave now, knowing it would devastate this little girl?
Feyre was an actress. She could act like nothing happened. She could get through this damn party.
So, ignoring Rhysie entirely, Feyre crouched so that she was eye level with Selene. She offered the birthday girl a wide smile. “Happy birthday, Selene! I’ve heard you’re turning six years old today, is that right?”
Selene immediately turned bashful, tucking herself behind her older brother’s legs to stare at Feyre in muted awe and disbelief.
Not unaccustomed to shy children, Feyre immediately went into the satchel she carried, retrieving a small tiara.
“I brought you a birthday present,” Feyre said, extending the glittering tiara into the space between them. “Everyone should feel like a princess on their birthday. And as Queen of Arendelle, I have the power to officially anoint you as one of our princesses. That is… if you accept.”
Selene glanced from the crown to her older brother, as if asking for permission. The encouraging smile he returned was all Selene needed to excitedly bow her head, allowing Feyre to gently fix the combs into her hair. Once the tiara was secured, Selene looked up with a delighted grin blooming on her delicate face.
“Princess Selene of Arendelle,” Feyre cooed, tilting her head respectfully. “Thank you very much for inviting me to your birthday party.”
Selene was a flurry of giggles and excited squeals as she promptly ran back into the party, calling to her friends and family to excitedly gesture to her crown and explain her new royal title. Feyre stood, watching the girl disappear with a satisfied smile.
“She’s going to be so disappointed when she learns how monarchies work,” said that rich voice in her ear. She had thought it sounded like velvet over the phone, but now she realized there was a scrape to it, something raspy and sensual that sent her stomach tumbling, especially as she realized she could feel his breath on her neck . He was standing so close she could feel the heat of his body through his black rolled up long sleeve, could smell his cologne as it wafted the space around them. It was something sharp and summery, like orange slices at the beach.
Feyre suppressed a shudder. She couldn’t tell if he was flirting or messing with her, but he was certainly playing a game of some description. And if Feyre was going to have to stay here as entertainment for the next three hours, then she’d be damned if she didn’t give as good as she got.
So she tilted her face so her mouth was at his ear as well. As she spoke, her lips ghosted against his earlobe. “I reckon by that point, she’ll have realized I’m not actually Elsa.”
“Who are you really, then?” he asked, practically purred from the way the words rolled off his tongue. Her name, he was asking for her name. Which acknowledging in character was a big taboo, but this wasn’t Disneyland and he wasn’t some kid.
She bit her lip as she momentarily considered how far she wanted to push him. He was technically her customer, but any level of professionalism had been tossed out that car window when he’d seen her topless. But he didn’t seem dettered by her indecency, and there was something eclectic crackling in the air between them.
Feeling drunk on his proximity, and egged on by the way he seemed to hold his breath, she let that wanton desire seep into her voice, dripping like honey as she whispered to him, “maybe if you really impress me by the end of this party, I’ll give it to you.”
She meant her name, but she realized as she took a step back and registered the way those twin pairs of amethyst had blown wide that perhaps she’d sounded as if she was suggesting she would give him more than that.
Sensing that the situation was slipping wildly out of her control, Feyre took a step back and offered him a cool in-character smile before stepping past him into the party, trying to remember that she was here as a character actor and not some harlot, no matter how stunning her customer’s eyes.
Rhysie seemed to watch her go from the doorway, seemingly stunned by her audacity—which frankly, Feyre was too. This wasn’t like her at all. She didn’t flirt with strangers. She didn’t misbehave at work. She was in way over her head.
Fortunately the squealing, excited children—that was familiar to her. It was easy enough to pretend with them, and escape to the fantasy of being a queen with ice powers (which were of course unsafe to use indoors, as they could damage the furniture).
She could feel those watchful eyes perpetually at her back, and every so often she would meet his gaze to see him smiling at her with that smug expression on his face, like he knew a secret no one else did. In those moments, the room felt impossibly hot and unbearably small, like it wasn’t big enough to contain this strange, burning thing that lived between them.
A small tug at her dress tore her attention away from those glittering purple embers.
“Elsa! Are you going to play the party games with us?”
As a general rule, Feyre didn’t participate in party games when she worked. She’d already humiliated herself enough today to be resolved in making no exceptions to that rule, but suddenly an arm looped around her elbow.
“Sorry, Lena. Elsa’s going to be my partner for the games.”
Selene pouted. “No fair, Rhysie! I wanted Elsa to be my partner.”
He was unfazed by the birthday girl’s puppy dog eyes. “I’ve taught you better than that. Since Elsa’s so much taller than you, you’d be at a disadvantage in the three legged race. Where’s that competitive spirit, birthday girl?”
The puppy-eyes melted into something steely and determined. “Fine,” she haughtily, flipping her hair behind her shoulder. “Then you’re both going down!”
Feyre stifled a surprised laugh. Selene certainly turned on her beloved Queen rather quickly. Rhysie chuckled as Selene turned to go find a different partner, and once she was out of earshot, Feyre turned to face him.
“I am not doing a three legged race.”
“You told me I had to impress you, didn’t you?” he mused, that irritatingly dashing smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “I figured, how better to show off my merit than by besting a bunch of 6 year olds at party games? Besides, it won’t just be a three-legged race.”
If she didn’t need to act like a dignified queen, Feyre would have been groaning, or rolling her eyes, or both. Instead she gave him a tight smile. “If I tell you my name,” she said quietly, “will that excuse me from the party games?”
“Where’s the fun in that, darling? Are you truly going to take away my prize before I’ve had a chance to earn it? Besides, aren’t you dying to know my name as well?”
Feyre blinked. “I already know your name. It’s Rhysie, isn’t it?”
The smirk broadened in wicked delight. “You can call me Rhysie if you want. But it’s a bit forward to call me by my sister’s pet name when we’ve only just met, don’t you think?”
Her cheeks burned. Of course it was a nickname.
“I think I’d rather call you prick,” she sniped, but then immediately regretted it. What was she doing? He’s her host . She turned to him in a blind panic, hoping he’d forgive the insult, but he was already tipping his head back in laughter.
The sound was full and boisterous; her heart felt lighter from it, dancing in response to the sound as if it were music.
“Oh, I like you. My name’s Rhysand, but you can call me Rhys. Or prick, if it really strikes your fancy.”
“I’d say it’s a pleasure, Rhysand, but that remains to be seen.”
He grinned at the challenge in her words. “Oh trust me, darling. It will be.”
The party games were held in the garden and went as well as Feyre had expected, with about equal parts stumbling awkwardness and suffocating sexual tension. It was difficult to play the part of a reserved, dignified Queen while racing against a bunch of six year olds with a ridiculously handsome man, who was provoking her at every available turn.
Rhysand was doing everything in his power to win and Feyre, who didn’t feel like taking the fun away from the children, was doing everything in her power to lose.That dynamic, paired with the constant eye-fucking, was breeding something strange and tense between them, like two ends of the string pulled increasingly taught.
While Rhys practically carried her across the finish line for the three-legged race, Feyre threw their egg a bit too hard in the egg-toss, splattering it against his hand. In trying to carry a tennis ball between their foreheads, Rhys had to grip her hips after Feyre kept “accidentally” putting too much space between them. In truth, she’d found the proximity much too intimidating. Those deep purple eyes had bored into hers, and when she found the gaze too intense to match, she’d taken to staring at the cupid’s bow of his lips. That hadn’t been much better, especially not when she’d realized she could feel his breath fan against her face
Eventually they’d carried the tennis ball to their target and dropped it into the bucket.
Stepping away from him had felt like waking from a fever dream. Cool air rushed into the space he had occupied, but Feyre suspected she’d need a blizzard to calm her rising flush.
When they were sat back to back with a balloon pressed between them, tasked with standing without popping it, Feyre let herself be a dead weight against the lean pull of his body.
He seemed to drop his head back in resignation, his soft hair tickling the back of her head.
“You’re going to keep making this difficult for me, aren’t you?”
Feyre couldn’t see his face, but she could practically hear that stupidly smug smile in his voice.
“Is your ego so fragile that you can’t handle losing to a bunch of little girls?”
“On the contrary, princess, I—”
“Queen,” Feyre interrupted.
“Pardon?”
“Queen. I’m not a princess, I’m a queen.”
He gave a soft laugh. “Damn right, you are.”
“I’m talking about Elsa,” she mumbled, shaking her head as she watched the surrounding teams of little girls struggling to stand. Some balloons popped, and there were scatterings of surprised shrieks and giggles. “Anyway, you were saying?”
“I was saying that I made a little bet with my sister. If she beats me in these party games, I agreed to buy her a puppy.”
Feyre grinned, delighted to know that he was being motivated by something much more wholesome than she’d expected. “Well now I’m definitely not going to help you win.”
“Not even curious what I wagered?”
“Go on then, enlighten me.”
Rhysand hummed in amusement. “Now I’m thinking maybe I should keep it a secret to help motivate you.”
Feyre shook her head. “No way. I’m team puppy.”
Rhys heaved a long, dramatic sigh. “I suppose there’s no coming back after this and the egg toss.” He removed his arms from where they were linked through hers, picking himself to his feet.
“Care to lend me a hand in setting up the cake?”
He extended his hand to her, and after a moment of deliberation Feyre accepted.
Since the party had moved into the garden, the house was empty save for Feyre and Rhys. Without the pressure of having to maintain the composed image of a Disney Queen, Feyre let herself breathe a bit once they were in the kitchen. She leaned against the counter, watching Rhys curiously as he retrieved the Frozen-themed cake from the fridge.
“You seem a bit tired,” Rhys noted as he painstakingly placed the candles in the light blue icing.
Feyre frowned. Had it been a mistake to let her guard down? It seemed he’d been enjoying their push and pull, but perhaps he’d actually taken her into the kitchen to reprimand her for being unprofessional.
The words fell from her lips of their own volition. “I’m so sorry. I know it’s no excuse, but this has been a really brutal week for me. It’s midterms and I worked a double today and—”
Rhys put a hand up, causing Feyre to abruptly stop her rambling.
“I wasn’t saying it to make you apologize. You’ve done a great job; Selene is ecstatic. I was going to offer to let you leave early.”
“Oh,” Feyre said, stunned. He kept taking her by surprise. “No, that’s okay. I appreciate it, but I only have 30 minutes left in the booking anyway.”
He’d gone back to arranging the cake, now sticking candied decorations into the blank spaces. She thought it was charming, the care that he was putting into his little sister’s cake. Really, into her whole birthday.
“Has it really gone so quickly?”
“Well you know what they say, time flies when you’re harassing queens,” she teased, shrugging her shoulders.
It was the wrong thing to say. Rhys stepped away from the cake to prowl towards Feyre with a predatory gleam in his eyes. “Is that what I’ve been doing then, harassing you?”
He stopped close enough so that Feyre had to incline her head to look at him, his arms bracing themselves on either side of her against the counter, caging her in.
Feyre raised her brows, pretending as if her pulse hadn’t gone erratic, a heavy bass hammering at her chest as if trying to get closer to him. “ This ,” she gestured vaguely at his chest, which was pressing increasingly close, “certainly seems to qualify as workplace harassment.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
His voice was at her ear, low and rough. He was definitely close enough to hear the staccato of her breath. If he kissed her, she would let him.
But he didn’t move, and it took Feyre a moment too long to realize he was waiting for an answer.
“No,” she breathed, feeling mortified by the admission and how quickly this energy between them had boiled over.
Three hours. Three hours she’d known this man and she was half ready to tear his clothes off.
Rhysand’s hands slid from where they gripped the counter, edging closer to her hips.
“Are you going to tell me your name, darling?” He’d moved away from her ear and was now staring down at her with all the intensity contained within those starkissed eyes.
Feyre tilted her chin up, parting her lips in a sultry smile that made her feel reckless. “Do you deserve to know it?”
Perhaps her answer didn’t matter to him, or perhaps he was trying to prove that he did, in fact, deserve it, but suddenly his hands were on her hips and he was leaning in to kiss her.
He was giving her time to turn away. And she should, because she was at work and one of the kids could walk in at any moment.
But she’d already crossed so many lines today, what was one more? So Feyre surged up to claim his lips with her own, her arms following the movement to wrap around his neck, tugging him closer.
Rhys grunted in response, his lips moving softly against her own. For all the charged air between them, the kiss was surprisingly tender. The way he touched her was heated, but it burned slowly, moving like molten rock through her body.
He seemed so intense. When she’d been mentally undressing him she’d assumed touching him would be a heady, desperate thing. But this was raw, burning her slowly from the inside-out, destroying everything in his path.
She could tell he loved in the all-consuming kind of way.
Feyre worried that if she committed herself to something like that, she could easily drown in it, lose herself in that rampaging fire.
But she’d learned to swim by jumping in the deep end and hoping she’d float. Maybe she was made for the kind of love that scorched your bones, left its imprint on your soul.
Maybe she craved that intensity. She certainly craved him.
They broke apart when the door to the garden opened, and a small voice called, “Rhysie! Is it time for the cake yet!?”
“Right,” he breathed as he pulled away, his pupils blown wide. “It’s my sister’s birthday party.”
Feyre nodded, resisting the urge to chase away the space he’d created. She was still reeling from the kiss, still feeling the pull of his gravity.
“I need to bring out the cake,” he said reluctantly, his hands still gripped on her hips.
Maybe he felt the magnetism between them too. Maybe they hadn’t stopped feeling it since they’d made eye contact through that car window.
“I should go,” Feyre said softly.
Rhysand’s face seemed to fall. “I’d like you to stay.”
“It’s probably better if I didn’t. I have midterms and stuff, so…”
“Right.” She felt the air die between them. Where there had been that passionate, roaring flame, there was suddenly ice. It was alarming how quickly it could change, or perhaps it was alarming how in-tune she was with his energy. “Well, thank you for coming.”
The words were cordial, but cold.
Feyre swallowed, watching as he strode back to the cake. “Rhys?”
He glanced over to her with an arched brow, a wordless question.
“My name’s Feyre.”
He blinked, then slowly that irritating smile bloomed back on his face. She never wanted it to leave again.
“Feyre,” he repeated, as if testing the name on his lips. “It’s been a pleasure.”