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Prologue

Six years ago

“S o gods do walk the earth!”

Clarissa D’Agostino frowned at her friend’s breathless exclamation as she dabbed at the stain on the décolleté of her lavender chiffon gown

She cursed herself for biting into that overripe plu a fool of herself when she was supposed to be Castaldini’s princess, all grown up and fit for court appearances at last It see at the top of her class fro to improve her ability to handle public appearances

She gri on about?”

“I’od over there!”

Clarissa swung around Not to search out the proclains of intoxication

She found Luci fanning herself “And I thought his profile was hard-hitting His full-frontal assault is devastating”

Clarissa gaped at her Luciana Montgomery, whose feminist outlook and American side dominated her Castaldinian roots, was the last woman she kneho’d drool over a man She’d never seen Luci react like this to anyone—not in the States, where they’d gone to college together and where hunks had regularly pursued the vivacious redhead, and not in Castaldini, which was crawling with gorgeous men The only men Luci had ever even said were drool-worthy were Clarissa’s brothers and a few of her cousins And she hadn’t reacted this way to any of the out

The weirdness took a turn into the absurd when Luci grabbed her ar our way!”

“I could have sworn you had only one glass of chaate the phenomenon who had made the most poised twenty-two-year-old woirl “I’ll have to see if so the…”

The words backed up in her throat

There were so nize She’d been away for so long and had never been active in court life, and she was the one ot existed, just the way she wanted them to But there could be only one man arranted Luci’s overreaction

There was only one man who Clarissa could see

He wasn’t a god He surpassed all depictions of gods she’d ever seen, with all the perfections worshippers’ iined him She certainly hadn’t She could barely believe he was real

He was And he was looking their way Her way

Her heart plunged into the pit of her stoed onto one thing His eyes Stor, all their focus and power targeting her But what started treh her hat she saw in them; a reflection of her own state, stunned free fall into the awareness that crackled between them

Suddenly he blinked, turned his face away Through the fugue enco her, she realized why he had severed their connection Her father

King Benedetto had appeared beside thesince she was a s across his lips