Кира Касс – The Crown (страница 1)
First published in the USA by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. in 2016
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books,
a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
The Crown
Copyright © 2016 by Kiera Cass
Jacket art © by Gustav Marx/Merge Left reps, INC 2016; Jacket Design by Erin Fitzsimmons
Kiera Cass asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the 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: 9780007580248
Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007580255
Version: 2016-04-07
For Guyden and Zuzu,
the best little characters I ever made up.
Contents
“I’M SORRY,” I SAID, BRACING myself for the inevitable backlash. When my Selection started, I’d pictured it ending this way—with dozens of my suitors leaving at a time, many of them unprepared for their moment in the spotlight to be over. But after the last few weeks, after learning how kind, how smart, how generous so many of them were, I found the mass elimination almost heartbreaking.
They’d been fair with me, and now I had to be very unfair to them. The live announcement would make the elimination official, and they all had to wait until then.