AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart is racing—from thrill, not fear.
A grin spreads across his face, the first show of joy to grace him since before his near-wedding. “You already figured out a plan, haven’t you? Tell me how, Violet. Spin me gold.”
It’ll involve some risky theater; he’d never agree. The playing field has changed. His father is out of the picture. His popularity is unstable. His dukes are practically in revolt. But given the choice to run or to trick them all—to sit myself on a throne that everyone else has coveted—
“It has to be convincing,” I say, offering him my hand. “Nothing short of a miracle.”
Cyrus lowers his lips to my bandaged palm. “Then we will give them one.”
Once, a girl saved a prince who was meant to die.
You will hear many versions of this story and none will be exactly true, but this is the one inked in history: They grew up together. Their paths diverged. It was in their nature to loathe each other, for a palace-raised prince and a girl plucked from the streets are two very different creatures.
But on a night when the prince was fated to meet his true love, they saw each other anew, masked in a moonlit maze.
They found that they were not so different after all.
That same night, a wicked witch sought the prince for herself. She changed her appearance and called herself a lady of a neighboring land. With her enchantments, she lured the prince to fall in love with her instead. She made the prince spurn the girl and betray her.
Brokenhearted, the girl wept and raged.
The witch spread her dark influence from the safe vantage of the capital. Across the land, beasts emerged from briars with curling horns and bodies of moss. As herwedding with the prince neared, she grew bored with him; she had so many other playthings now.
So she slipped the spurned girl a dagger. She whispered in her ear, “Kill him for his capriciousness.”
But the girl could not, for she loved him.
She plunged the dagger into the witch instead.
In her shocked, dying breath, the witch unleashed the rest of her dark magic, seeping it into the land to curse the kingdom for decades to come. She cursed the prince as well: he would suffer the fate of a beast.
The prince, now a king, transformed slowly. He hid his condition until he could no more, until one morning when a maid found a beast rooted grotesquely to the king’s bed, limbs like branches and head covered in roses.
The palace flew into a frenzy. The girl, disgraced and forgotten, fought her way through the horrified onlookers. She threw herself over the beast and kissed him until her lips bled.
When she finally withdrew, the king was human in her arms, and he remembered he loved her.
There was a prophecy that the king’s heart would be damnation and salvation. That the land would fall dark before it found dawn. The girl was the axis on which these words spun—for the king’s heart was hers. It had been, since he was a prince.
Thrice she saved him. She would save them all again. There were greater forces at work here, but we are merely the Fates’ playing pieces; they aren’t for us to fathom.
This was all that mattered: the land was blooming with blood and roses, and war was coming.
He asked her to be his queen and she said yes.
