Protagonist Bound Read Free

great, gold-encrusted sign that read:

We Meet Again
    lowery perfume and giggles filled the air, and the combined clicking of a hundred high-heeled shoes against the marble floor resembled a sound that was best described as a fancy stampede.
    Lady Agnue’s foyer swarmed with girls. Like the others, I found myself awkwardly trying to navigate my way through the crowd to get to the sign-in area to no avail. We all just kept bumping into one another like semi-formally dressed croquet balls.
    “Crisa!” someone yelled from the other side of the room.
    I spun around, trying to find the source of the voice.
    “Crisa!”
    There it was again—closer this time, but still muffled in the crowd.
    “Crisa!”
    I whirled around and saw my best friend squeeze past a disoriented Princess Marie Sinclaire to reach me.
    “SJ!” I shouted happily.
    The two of us embraced as if we hadn’t seen each other in ages. It’d only been a few months since we were last together—since Lady Agnue’s had let out for the summer. However, a few months apart from my best friend SJ Kaplan might as well have been an eternity.
    “Come on!” SJ said as she linked her arm with mine and motioned toward the stairs.
    “I still have to check in,” I protested.
    “I signed us both in. Thank me later!” she replied with a wink.
    We made our way over to the grand staircase at the far end of the chaotic room. Thankfully, the sea of girls thinned as we ascended the stairs to the sixth floor.
    First-year students at Lady Agnue’s had their roommates assigned, but after that we were free to pick our own. SJ and I met when we were assigned to Suite 608 during our first year, along with Mauvrey Weatherall, another princess.
    As far as roommates went, I was pretty lucky to get SJ. She was uncommonly kind, always calm and rational, and a rock-solid person to turn to when times were tough. Mauvrey, on the other hand, well . . . there were a lot of words to describe a girl like her. Unfortunately, none of those words were considered very ladylike, so I kept them to myself when in mixed company.
    Mauvrey was the daughter of the world’s most famous coma patient, Sleeping Beauty. The three of us were initially matched as roommates because we were all considered “Legacies.”
    In other words, our parents were both royalty and the main characters of their own stories so we, being their offspring, were expected to live up to their preset standards of greatness.
    In an attempt to help us—and all other Legacies—cope with our celebrity-child woes, (a.k.a. the “our parents were awesome, so now the world expects us to be awesome” woes), we were bunked together our first year at Lady Agnue’s. As a result, some girls like SJ and myself formed strong bonds and became the best of friends. Others, like Mauvrey and me, became the opposite. Needless to say the girl couldn’t change roommates fast enough the following September when we returned for our second term.
    But, you know, that’s enough on Mauvrey for now.
    Especially since there’ll definitely be more on her later.
    It’s inevitable.
    SJ and I arrived at the familiar door of Suite 608. She pulled out an unnecessarily ornate silver key from her purse and slid it into the lock.
    “Home again,” she practically sang as she opened the door.
    The room was exactly as I remembered; after five years of living here I even had the smell memorized. Mandarins and freshly washed sheets were the room’s natural scent. But, a few years ago SJ had added a third element to the aroma when she’d insisted that we keep lavender incense in our suite so as to try and help me with my unusual sleeping problems.
    Don’t worry; I’ll tell you more about that later too. For now, though, back to the room.
    After all, what’s a story without a proper setting?
    Suite 608’s floors were wooden and its walls were the palest mauve. The edges of both the floor and ceiling were encrusted with a thin gold design that mirrored the