Page 1 of To Catch a Prince

Prologue

It didn’t make sense.Not even a little bit, actually. Every time they repeated their inane story, Talia’s headhurt.

She’d come with news - great news - but she’d wanted to tell it to her sister first, and she wasn’t there. Her parents told her about demons, dragons, and other such crazy things that didn’t belong inMalek.

After a while, she lifted her hand, and the wordsstopped.

Oops.

She’d forgotten, how much power she now had at herfingertips.

“Sorry. Please be quiet. Aleria, would you tell me what happened?” she asked her oldersister.

The blonde beauty smiledsadly.

“You won’t like it. Darsen the oaf tried to rape Alexandria, then accused her of being possessed by a demon, because she pushed him back with fire. Father and Mother took his side. She was imprisoned, and sentenced, too. They tried to torture her. They couldn’t. Finally, she was rescued by a dragon; we all saw it fly away. No clue how thathappened.”

That was plainly said, and made a little more sense; not a lot,though.

“Dragon?”

Aleriashrugged.

“No clue how that came about, but at least she didn’t get drowned. I don’t think she’s dead. I’ve done location spells and they had worked for a time - now, though, they’re vague, as though some shield is protectingher.”

Talianodded.

“Come on, there was no proofthat…”

She lifted her hand again, this time intending to shut her motherup.

“Truth,” sheordered.

Her parents were class four mages. Some of the most powerful in the land. Few spells worked on them, fewer mages could hope to bestthem.

She wasn’t a mage, though. Notanymore.

“The girl was a disgrace.” Daria clapped her hand over her mouth in an effort to stop her own words for damning her further, but there was no resisting the magics of Talia. Notanymore.

They had what they’d wanted. They’d sent their child to the capital of the Northern Var in hopes that she’d be noticed by theOrder.

She had been. “We wanted rid of her honorably. If she had married Darsen, as planned, she might have salvaged a little pride and undone the damage she’d done to our name, but she was always a wayward child and refused to obey. I curse the day she sprang from my loins and am glad she was snatched away by some dragon. May it not choke on herbones.”

Lars Astria stood behind his wife, thunderstruck. Talia could read him. He wasn’t alarmed by what he heard from his wife, he was worried what was about to come out of his mouth. Talia turned her attention on him, binding him with the same truth magic she had laid upon hermother.

“I didn’t believe she was mine,” saidLars.

Daria clouted her husband over thehead.

Talia smiled. They were their own worst enemies. She didn’t need to do more to punish them for what they’d done to Xandrie. They would keep telling the truth for days and by the time her truth spell wore off, their reputations would be in tatters and their business a shambles. They deserved no less. No self-respecting parent sentenced their daughter to be tortured and murdered. They’d only get what they’d brought uponthemselves.

She left her parents, screaming obscenities at each other, and headed towards the Guard post, stopping at the door, only to turn toAleria.

“You’recoming?”

The woman didn’thesitate.

Darsen was lounging at a small table in the corner of the common area, where the guards loitered when they were on break and playing at cards and dice. His tunic was unbuttoned and his suspenders off his shoulders and around his saggingwaist.

---