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Chapter One
PRINCE OLIVER
“I’m going to sabotage my wedding,” I said to my friend Dante, who also happened to be my personal assistant.
His eyes went wide and both of his brows shot up toward his hairline in typical Dante fashion.
Admittedly, it probably sounded absurd for the royal prince of Verdana to want to sabotage his own wedding. On the other hand, someone had the audacity of naming a sans-serif font after my country, so who was really the crazy one here?
“Are you sure you have thought this through completely?” Dante asked.
“Believe me—it’s the perfect plan,” I said, glancing out the window of the palace billiard room. “Veronica knows about it.”
“And she approves?” he said.
I grimaced. “She’s on the fence. Veronica doesn’t want to get married, but she also wonders if we can really get out of it.”
As for the proposed wedding, any man would count his lucky stars to have the opportunity to marry someone as delightful as Princess Veronica of Kastonia, but I would not be one of them. She was more like a close cousin to me than a future spouse. We knew each other well, yet neither of us had ever harbored a single ounce of romantic feelings for the other.
This arranged marriage felt more like a cruel joke.
I glanced over at the gaudy painting on the wall next to the dartboard that depicted a dashing knight professing his undying love for a swooning maiden. If only real life worked out so idyllically. Perhaps I could pull off such a dramatic declaration of love if the occasion called for it. But I would not settle for a pre-chosen woman to be my wife, not even for my beloved country.
I ran my fingers along the emerald-green felt of the full-sized pool table as the Tiffany glass chandelier cast a warm glow across the top of my hand. “Pool or darts?”
“Darts,” Dante said without hesitation. “Ready for a thrashing?”
I took a pull from the beer in my frosty mug, set it down on the mahogany bar, then reached for the three darts. “I’m ready for you to eat those words.”
Stepping up to the line, I plucked one of the three darts from my palm. I held it thirty centimeters from my nose, closed one eye to focus, then twirled the dart dramatically between my fingers.
Without fail, this always irritated Dante.
“Please,” he said, right on cue. “Any time this century would be lovely, Your Highness.”
With my mind obsessed with thoughts of a wedding I did not want, I stared at the red bull’s-eye far longer than necessary before letting the dart fly. Unfortunately, the results were less than pleasing. The dart missed the board entirely, instead hitting the aforementioned painting and, like a dagger, stabbing the dashing knight right in his gallant heart.
“Aha, a metaphor!” I said.
“My goodness—the prince is in rare form this evening,” Veronica said with a delicate laugh as she entered the billiard room. “It’s a good thing we don’t need to rely on your dart-throwing skills to get us out of this predicament.” She shook her head in amusement.
“Clearly I’m not fit to be anyone’s husband yet,” I said.
I frustratedly took a deep breath and set the other two darts down on the cocktail table. Hurling sharp, pointy objects when one was not concentrating fully was not the wisest course of action.
“Perhaps, instead of sabotaging the wedding, you could simply develop a sudden allergy to people,” Dante said. “That would surely be a valid reason to postpone the wedding.”
“I’m afraid I am going to have to disagree with you,” Veronica said. “Queen Annabelle would then force us to get married in a plastic bubble. Nothing stops her when she wants something.”
“We need a realistic, full-proof plan to extract ourselves from this extremely inconvenient and ill-advised situation we’ve found ourselves in,” I said. “Let’s revisit my idea.”
“Queen Annabelle would have our heads if she found out we sabotaged the wedding,” Veronica said.
“Then she can’t find out,” I said. “But we both know she would never allow us to go through with the wedding if there were signs of problems.”
Mother was possibly the most superstitious person in all of Europe. Any inauspicious events during the wedding planning would be considered a sign to her that the impending marriage would be doomed, and she would put a halt to it. With a little strategic planning, we could end this farce without yours truly having to run away from home like a petulant child.
“With all due respect, that does not solve the food-supply problem, which was the primary reason for your union,” Dante said. “Queen Annabelle may be strict, but she only wants what’s best for the kingdom.”
