Alice had been right, and we were the only ones in the kitchens from the competition. It was still early, and I was sure someone would turn up at some point. They had to. Surely they were as serious about the competition as I was. Although so far it had seemed that Dylan was right, they all seemed more interested in bagging themselves a prince than in doing their best work. I still wanted him to be wrong. It made me a little too depressed to think that womankind was truly like that.
Instead, I got to work. Alice hadn’t stuck to her word and was dealing with the sponges for me while I prepped the filling and the icing. I had spent so much time while I had been at the palace on other things that I had gotten behind. I should have been disappointed in myself, but I wasn’t. My whole life had
