Chapter Seventeen
OKAY, BAILEY. FOCUS.
I’m standing on a sidewalk in a wedding dress that isn’t mine, in a timeline that shouldn’t exist, talking to myself like a woman who has completely lost her grip on reality.
Which. Fair.
Mrs. Lyme has already disappeared into the crowd, probably grateful to escape the strange bride-shaped person who accosted her outside the market. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to talk to me either right now.
Focus. What matters?
One: find out the truth about Amos.
Two: save Abigail’s life.
Three: go back to my old world.
Simple. Clean. A nice little list that doesn’t include anything about golden eyes or French vowels or the way he said you are unfit to be my queen in that flat, terrible voice while the staff cried and my heart—
Nope. Not thinking about that.
And if I’m very, very blessed, maybe Hewhay will be merciful and wipe my memory clean when this is over. Maybe I’ll wake up in my tiny apartment with no recollection of underground weddings or mafia kings or what it felt like to be held by someone who looked at me like I was worth keeping.
Maybe I won’t even remember falling in love.
Maybe I won’t remember getting my heart bro—
Is that Abigail?
I blink. Rub my eyes with the heel of my hand. Blink again.
Honey-blonde hair catching the afternoon light at what my photographer brain automatically identifies as golden hour—that perfect 5 PM glow that makes everyone look like they belong in a magazine.
Delicate features. Luminous skin. She’s walking down the street with a shopping bag swinging from one arm, and she’s alive.
She’s alive and I can keep her that way.
I start walking. Then walking faster. Then—okay, “running” is a generous term for what I’m doing. It’s more like aggressive waddling, because wedding dresses were not designed for pursuit, and these heels are actively trying to murder me, and I’m pretty sure I just stepped on my own hem—
I stumble. Catch myself on a lamppost. A man walking his dog gives me a wide berth.
“I’m fine,” I tell him with as much dignity as I can muster. “This is normal. Brides chase people all the time.”
He walks faster.
Abigail turns into a bridal boutique. The bell above the door chimes as she disappears inside.
Perfect. A bridal boutique. At least I’ll blend in.
I follow, yanking my skirt up so I don’t trip again, and push through the door.
The interior is all soft lighting and champagne-colored walls, warm color temperature—maybe 3000K—designed to make every bride look radiant.
Racks of white gowns line the walls like a ghost convention.
The air smells like gardenias and new fabric and the faint chemical sweetness of dress preservation spray.
A saleswoman looks up at my entrance, takes in my disheveled dress, my wind-tangled hair, my slightly manic expression, and her eyebrows climb toward her hairline.
“I’m, um.” I gesture vaguely at myself. “Long story. Very long. Incredibly long. You wouldn’t believe how long.”
She nods slowly, the way you nod at someone you suspect might be about to do something alarming.
Fair enough.
I spot Abigail near the back, being ushered toward a dressing room by another attendant. They’re discussing veils. Lace versus tulle. The attendant is holding up samples while Abigail tilts her head, considering.
This is my chance.
Probably my only chance.
I wait until the attendant steps away to fetch more options. Then I move, trying to look casual, like I’m just a normal bride browsing normal bridal things and not at all about to corner a stranger in a fitting room.
The dressing room door is slightly ajar. I slip inside, catch my heel on the threshold, lurch forward, grab a curtain for balance, and end up face to face with the woman who was supposed to marry Devyn Chaleur.
While tangled in a curtain.
Fantastic. Really nailing this whole “competent heroine” thing.
She stares at me.
I stare at her.
Her eyes—blue-gray, the color of an overcast sky—go wide with shock.
“EXCUSE ME?!”
“I know this is creepy,” I say quickly, trying to untangle myself from the curtain without making things worse. I’m making things worse. “I know how this looks—”
“If you don’t leave this instant, I’m going to call for help!”
“Please don’t—I’m so sorry—” The curtain finally releases me and I stumble back, nearly knocking over a decorative stool. “I just need to talk to you—”
“Do you have any idea who I am?” Her voice is shaking, but there’s steel underneath it. “Who I’m engaged to?”
My stomach drops.
Who she’s engaged to.
Devyn.
Right. Of course. In this timeline, they never married. He never carried me through a chapel. Never looked at my mouth and then back up like he couldn’t help himself. Never whispered French vows against my skin while the world dissolved into warmth and wonder and—
Stop it, Bailey. Stop.
“I know this is going to sound unbelievable,” I say, and I’m grateful my voice comes out mostly steady. “But I’m from the other world—”
Abigail stops.
Her mouth, which had been opening to scream for help, closes.
She looks at me. Really looks, for the first time—not at the crazy bride who just invaded her dressing room, but at me.
“I’m not crazy,” I add quickly. “I swear I’m not. I know how this sounds but—”
“So am I.”
I blink.
“I...what?”
“I’m from another world too,” Abigail reveals in a high-pitched rush. “I know you’re not crazy because I’m the same.”
For a long moment, neither of us speaks.
The dressing room suddenly feels very small. Two otherworlders, standing in a bridal boutique, both carrying secrets that would sound insane to anyone else.
“The world I came from,” Abigail says slowly, “my father was a violent drunk. He’d come home angry and stay angry, and my mother and I learned to be very, very small.” She pauses. “Here, he’s just...cold. Distant. A workaholic who buries himself in business so he doesn’t have to feel anything.”
Her voice drops.
“All I ever wanted was a father who actually saw me. Not an asset. Not a tool for alliances. Just... me.” A hollow laugh escapes her. “Stupid prayer, right? Some things can’t change no matter which world you’re in.”
Oh.
I know that story. I lived a version of that story—my father’s voice shaking the walls, my mother’s silence filling all the spaces in between. Learning to read moods like sailors read the sky. Learning to disappear when the storm was coming.
“You’re also, um...” I hesitate, not sure how to say this without my voice cracking. “You mentioned you’re going to marry—”
“One of the kings.” Abigail lets out a small, startled laugh. “Imagine my surprise when I found out I was engaged to a mafia king. I was single in my world. Completely, utterly single. And then I wake up here and apparently I’m about to become royalty.”
“Did you ever write any of this down?” I ask. “The otherworlder stuff?”
Abigail shakes her head quickly. “Never. Too risky. I kept a journal, but...” She shivers. “If someone found it and read that I thought I was from another world? They’d lock me up. Or worse—use it against me.”
Smart. Paranoid, maybe, but smart.
Her smile fades.
“But I have to warn you. There’s this guy from my old world—”
“Amos?”
Her eyes fly wide. “How did you know?”
“I think we’re from the same world.” The realization settles over me like a cold blanket. “I know Marilyn.”
Abigail’s face darkens. “So you know how Amos stole her life savings?”
“I...didn’t, actually.”
“It’s his pattern.” Abigail’s voice has gone hard.
“He’s good at sweeping women off their feet.
Makes them feel special, cherished, like they’re the center of his universe.
And then he convinces them to take out loans—for wedding surprises, romantic gestures, whatever story he’s spinning that week.
Only the surprise is that he disappears with the money and leaves them drowning in debt. ”
My stomach turns. That’s...that’s genuinely horrible. Like finding out the cream filling in a beautiful pastry is actually rancid.
“When I saw him here,” Abigail continues, “I recognized him immediately. Same face. Same charm. Same wrong feeling in my gut.” She takes a breath. “I’ve been trying to figure out what he’s planning. Watching him. But I can’t prove anything yet.”
“Does he know? That you’re watching him?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve been careful.” Abigail’s fingers twist together.
“But there’s something different about him here.
Something... more. The way he looks at me sometimes.
..” She shudders. “I can easily imagine him causing trouble on my wedding day. Showing up where he shouldn’t be.
Watching. And if I’m right about what he is. ..”
She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to.
The wedding day.
On the original wedding day—the day I stumbled into the chapel and saw a woman in white fleeing through a hidden door—I assumed she was running from Devyn. From the marriage. From the terrifying mafia king who’d caught her trying to escape.
But what if I was wrong?
What if Abigail wasn’t running from Devyn?
What if she was running from Amos?
“You never told me your name,” Abigail says, pulling me back to the present.
“It’s Bailey.”
“Bailey.” She tests the name, then nods like it passes inspection. “Well, Bailey...I know this is last minute and horribly shameless of me, but...” She bites her lip. “Do you think you could come to my wedding?”
Her wedding.
To Devyn.
I’m going to watch Devyn marry someone else.
Something in my chest folds in on itself, like origami made of hurt.
“I need someone to keep an eye on Amos,” she continues, oblivious to the small internal crisis I’m having.
“Someone who knows what he is. I don’t want to worry the king—I don’t know how to explain Hewhay, and I don’t want to lie to him either.
But if someone could just...watch. Make sure Amos doesn’t try anything. ”
She looks at me with those rain-colored eyes, and I see it now—the fear she’s been hiding beneath the poise. The loneliness of being an otherworlder with no one to confide in.
I know that loneliness.
“I promise I’ll pay you handsomely once we’re married,” Abigail adds quickly. “Whatever you want. Name your price.”
I don’t want her money.
I want her to live.
I want to rewrite the ending I saw in that dungeon—Abigail’s body cold and still, her honey-blonde hair matted with blood, her rain-colored eyes open and staring at nothing.
I want to give her the future that was stolen.
Even if that future is with him.
Even if watching them together will be like swallowing broken glass and smiling through it.
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “I’ll be there.”
Abigail’s whole face transforms. Relief and gratitude and something that looks almost like hope.
“Thank you.” She reaches out and squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold, trembling slightly. “Thank you, Bailey. You have no idea what this means to me.”
I squeeze back.
And I don’t tell her that I’ve already watched her die once.
I don’t tell her that the man she’s about to marry held me like I was precious, looked at me like I was the only thing in the world worth seeing, and then destroyed me in front of everyone who’d started to believe I might actually belong.
I just smile.
I’m getting really good at smiling when everything hurts.