It had been infuriating and had felt like a personal attack to Marian.
The girl beside Dorien, Risa, was two years older than him.
Every part of her was soft and supple.
She had never held anything close to a weapon, of any sort, in her life.
She was fresh, and smooth, and as matronly as they came – just as her mother used to admonish her to be.
While she, a princess, was rough and bullish and definitely not one anybody could imagine holding a pup.
Her heart had broken in more ways than one at that moment.
Not only had she been dumped, she had been dumped for the kind of girl her dead mother had wanted her to be.
A mother she missed. A mother she wished she could apologize to for all the times she had been difficult.
And all of it had happened in public.
The thing she hated t
