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Prologue. 18 months ago.
VERONICA.
My parents refused to let me leave the castle... again! I’d asked them to be reasonable. I’d begged them to understand. I’d even pleaded with them. Then, I’d started yelling.
There was no convincing them to allow me to go anywhere without them. They were leaving me with no other option than to break free of my gilded cage, whether they liked it or not. I was eighteen now, and with two older brothers to look after my parents’ kingdom, what use was I?
People were speaking loudly in the dining room as I passed, and I stopped in the hallway outside the room, listening hard to try and figure out what was happening. It was breakfast time and there was an unfamiliar male voice I wasn’t expecting to hear. Who could that be?
I altered my previous trajectory toward the library and, instead, pushed open the door to the dining room. My gaze fell on one of the men I’d grown up with. Not the one I always feared seeing, but a dragon prince nonetheless.
“Hi Veronica.”
Despite the anger of my previous argument with my parents still boiling in my veins, seeing him made me smile. “Anthony! I didn’t know you were here.”
I rushed forward for a hug. The secret plans inside my head to leave the castle and the protection of my family were already making me homesick and saying goodbye to Anthony would make the farewell even worse. I clung to the man who’d been like an older brother to me when I was growing up.
The barely dressed prince pulled out of our hug and gave me an awkward smile. “It wasn’t planned; I just started flying and found myself here.”
That didn’t sound like Anthony, but then, he had always been cagey about his emotions.
I reached for his hands and gripped his fingers, wanting him to know that he had a friend. “You know it’s always good to see you.”
But as soon as I said the words, blindness overtook me. The world around me dropped away to darkness, but inside my mind a vision coalesced and became strong.
I was standing by the window in our palace, upstairs in my favorite reading room. I was wearing a gown of royal purple. A dress I didn’t own.
My eyes burned with hot tears as I stared at that version of myself. I was heavily pregnant and smiling in a content way. That simply couldn’t be. Contentment was a feeling I’d never known. Ever.
Why would I be happy to be having a baby? This vision made no sense. How far into the future was this?
My hand rested on my huge belly, and then I turned toward the sound of footsteps echoing in the room as my heart leapt with happiness.
I didn’t want to see the next part and squeezed my eyes shut. But I couldn’t stop the images being projected into my mind by the prince still gripping my hands.
The father of my child stepped out of the shadows, a smile on his face that I’d never witnessed before. Iain.
Iain? No! That was impossible. He hated me. He always had.
Before I could see any more lies, I ripped my hands out of Anthony’s hold and the vision stopped.
My normal eyesight immediately returned and with it I saw Anthony, looking pale and drawn and staring at me with a wary look in his eyes. Asshole!
“What the hell was that?” I yelled at him, shaking with the need to shift. My dragon was furious and confused. So many other emotions too. I couldn’t even sort one hot flash of anger from other deeper feelings and it just made me—and my dragon—even more upset. I needed to shift and fly... fly far away.
Anthony ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. That’s never happened before.”
Bullshit! You know exactly what just happened! You’re a sorcerer! Just like your mom.
“What happened?” Dad demanded, rushing to our side.
“Oh, it was nothing,” Anthony said quickly, then looked over to me with a look of unmistakable fear.
I turned to tell my father exactly what I’d seen. “When he grabbed my hand, I saw... I saw...”
I stopped, partly out of empathy for Anthony’s obvious distress over the situation, but also for my own selfish reasons. Iain was the youngest son of King Stavrok, my mother’s cousin. I couldn’t believe Fate would tie me into a marriage with my own cousin, surely?
But Mom and Dad would. They completely believed in fated mates. After all, their marriage was the product of Fate’s choice. But I wouldn’t be. No matter what they said, or demanded of me, I would not marry Iain because Anthony had ‘seen’ it and communicated that to me in a vision.
