The Heir
Kiera Cass's Number 1 New York Times bestselling Selection series has enchanted readers from the very first page. In this fourth romantic novel, follow Illéa's royal family into a whole new Selection - and find out what happens after happily ever after.Kiera Cass’s #1 New York Times bestselling Selection series has enchanted readers from the very first page. In this fourth romantic novel, follow Illéa’s royal family into a whole new Selection—and find out what happens after happily ever after.Eighteen years ago, America Singer entered the Selection and won Prince Maxon’s heart. Now the time has come for Princess Eadlyn to hold a Selection of her own. Eadlyn doesn’t expect her Selection to be anything like her parents’ fairy-tale love story…but as the competition begins, she may discover that finding her own happily ever after isn’t as impossible as she’s always thought.A new generation of swoonworthy characters and captivating romance awaits in the fourth book of the Selection series!
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2015
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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London SE1 9GF
The Heir
Copyright © 2015 by Kiera Cass
Covert art © Gustavo Marx / Merge Left Reps, INC, 2015
Kiera Cass asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007580224
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007580231
Version: 2015-12-09
To Jim and Jennie Cass.
For lots of reasons, but mostly for making Callaway.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
Also by Kiera Cass
About the Publisher
I COULD NOT HOLD MY breath for seven minutes. I couldnât even make it to one. I once tried to run a mile in seven minutes after hearing some athletes could do it in four but failed spectacularly when a side stitch crippled me about halfway in.
However, there was one thing I managed to do in seven minutes that most would say is quite impressive: I became queen.
By seven tiny minutes I beat my brother Ahren into the world, so the throne that ought to have been his was mine. Had I been born a generation earlier, it wouldnât have mattered. Ahren was the male, so Ahren would have been the heir.
Alas, Mom and Dad couldnât stand to watch their firstborn be stripped of a title by an unfortunate but rather lovely set of breasts. So they changed the law, and the people rejoiced, and I was trained day by day to become the next ruler of Illéa.
What they didnât understand was that their attempts to make my life fair seemed rather unfair to me.
I tried not to complain. After all, I knew how fortunate I was. But there were days, or sometimes months, when it felt like far too much was piled on me, too much for any one person, really.
I flipped through the newspaper and saw that there had been yet another riot, this time in Zuni. Twenty years ago, Dadâs first act as king was to dissolve the castes, and the old system had been phased out slowly over my lifetime. I still thought it was completely bizarre that once upon a time people lived with these limiting but arbitrary labels on their backs. Mom was a Five; Dad was a One. It made no sense, especially since there was no outward sign of the divisions. How was I supposed to know if I was walking next to a Six or a Three? And why did that even matter?
When Dad had first decreed that the castes were no more, people all over the country had been delighted. Dad had expected the changes he was making in Illéa to be comfortably in place over the course of a generation, meaning any day now everything should click.
That wasnât happeningâand this new riot was just the most recent in a string of unrest.
âCoffee, Your Highness,â Neena said, setting the drink on my table.
âThank you. You can take the plates.â
I scanned the article. This time a restaurant was burned to the ground because its owner refused to promote a waiter to a position as a chef. The waiter claimed that a promotion had been promised but was never delivered, and he was sure it was because of his familyâs past.
Looking at the charred remains of the building, I honestly didnât know whose side I was on. The owner had the right to promote or fire anyone he wanted, and the waiter had the right not to be seen as something that, technically, didnât exist anymore.
I pushed the paper away and picked up my drink. Dad was going to be upset. I was sure he was already running the scenario over and over in his head, trying to figure out how to set it right. The problem was, even if we could fix one issue, we couldnât stop every instance of post-caste discrimination. It was too hard to monitor and happening far too often.
