You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

37
BRIDGET
RHYS AND I NEVER MADE IT BACK TO THE RECEPTION. BY THE TIME HE
fin­ished with me, there was no way I could’ve fixed myself up
enough to face oth­er peo­ple, so we slipped out a side door and
snuck back to the palace. By some mir­a­cle, no one saw us.
It was hor­ri­ble form for a brides­maid to leave ear­ly with­out a
word, but the par­ty had already been wind­ing down by the time we
excused our­selves, and most peo­ple had been too drunk to notice
my absence, any­way.
I did, how­ev­er, feel awful about leav­ing Stef­fan high and dry. I
called him the next morn­ing and apol­o­gized pro­fuse­ly, claim­ing my
friend’s emer­gency took longer than expect­ed. He was, as expect­ed,
gra­cious about it. He hadn’t been as jumpy dur­ing the recep­tion as
he’d been at the hotel, but he’d been dis­tract­ed, and I sus­pect­ed he
might’ve been relieved by my abrupt depar­ture.
“Where did you go?” Mikaela asked after I wrapped up my call.
We were in my room, brain­storm­ing ways to get Erhall to bring the
repeal motion for the Roy­al Mar­riages Law to the floor. “You dis­ap-
peared halfway through the recep­tion.”
“One of my col­lege friends called with an emer­gency.” I avoid­ed
her gaze as I stud­ied Erhall’s par­lia­men­tary vot­ing record.
“Real­ly?” She sound­ed doubt­ful. “Even though you’re in dif­fer-
ent coun­tries?”
“She need­ed advice on a per­son­al issue.”
Anoth­er lie. They were pil­ing up, one after anoth­er, and soon I
wouldn’t be able to dig myself out.
I turned the page with more force than nec­es­sary.
“Okay.” A hint of doubt remained, but Mikaela didn’t press the
issue. “I only ask because your cousin was look­ing for you.”
I froze. “Andreas? He was look­ing for me at the recep­tion?”
“Yeah, he said he had some­thing impor­tant to tell you.”
My heart rate kicked into over­drive. You’re over­re­act­ing. I’d
thought Andreas had already left. I’d heard him say good­bye to
Niko­lai and Sab­ri­na long before Rhys and I exit­ed. Had I heard
wrong, or had he returned for some rea­son? Did he see me and Rhys
leave? Even if he had, he couldn’t have known what we were do-
ing…unless he fol­lowed us. But if Andreas did know, he would’ve
thrown it in my face the minute he could, and an entire day had al-
ready passed.
My head spun as I ran through every pos­si­ble sce­nario.
“Did you tell him where I was?”
“No,” Mikaela said slow­ly. “I didn’t know where you were.
Remem­ber?”
“Right. Sor­ry.” I pressed my fin­gers to my tem­ple, try­ing to sort
through my thoughts. “My brain is fried right now. Can we pick this
up lat­er?”
“Sure. I have a din­ner reser­va­tion soon any­way.” Wor­ry slid
across her fea­tures as she packed her bag and slung the strap over
her shoul­der. “Are you sure noth­ing else is the mat­ter? You’ve been
act­ing weird for weeks.”
“Yes, I’m just stressed. I need a vaca­tion.” I forced a laugh. “I’ll
talk to you lat­er. Enjoy din­ner.”
After Mikaela left, I set my notes on Erhall aside and answered
that week’s let­ters from cit­i­zens instead. The mail vol­ume, both
phys­i­cal and elec­tron­ic, had grown so much I’d had to bring on as-
sis­tants, but I still liked to reply per­son­al­ly when I could. Besides, it
was a good dis­trac­tion from my wor­ries over Andreas.
I was read­ing too much into one throw­away com­ment from
Mikaela. Andreas could’ve been look­ing for me for any num­ber of
rea­sons, and he had a skewed idea of what was impor­tant. He’d
prob­a­bly want­ed to com­plain about being seat­ed at the wrong table
for the recep­tion or some­thing.
I’d made it halfway through the pile of let­ters when my lap­top
pinged with a new email noti­fi­ca­tion. I almost ignored it, but some-
thing com­pelled me to click into it, and my sus­pi­cion spiked when I
saw the sender’s email message—a ran­dom string of num­bers and