Page 1 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
1
Papa always promised he would let me marry for love. He said it over and over throughout my growing-up years. “Even if I can do nothing else for you, Amarylla, I will do this. I will allow you to choose your husband.”
I don’t know why I believed him. He had broken a million promises to me before—little ones, like not coming to the tea parties I set out for him, or skipping my bedtime kiss, or attending a meeting instead of my birthday celebration. He was the king, after all. A busy man who could not be expected to have time for one tiny daughter.
With all those broken promises lying fragmented in my heart, the final and most terrible betrayal should not have come as a surprise. But it did, because he had promised that one thing to me for so many years—that my marriage would be my choice. I had intended to test him on it. I’d tried very hard to fall in love with the muscled stable boy who groomed my horse, so I could find out if my father truly meant it when he said I could have my heart’s choice. But the stable boy was so very dull. When I tried to talk to him, he only stared, with a vacant sort of smile, and made one-word answers; so I’d given up on that test of my father’s promise.
But I still believed in it.
My father ate dinner with me that fateful evening. Eating a meal with him was a rare and wonderful occurrence, and I was too delighted to question it. I sipped the fancy foreign tea he’d handed me, and smiled at him across our plates of roast pork, tomatoes, mushrooms, and greens. We talked of little things, of the new horses and the refurbishments to the east wing, until I was halfway through my cup of tea and feeling oddly sleepy and detached. Perhaps I was more tired than I’d thought. Perhaps I should go to bed early. I blinked at my father, and my hand seemed to move in slow motion as I set down the cup.
His voice seemed to come from a great distance. “Tonight, you will marry the Prince of Terelaus.”
“The Prince—of Terelaus,” I said distantly, with difficulty. “The one they call a devil? A fiend?” And I tried to laugh, because I thought he was joking. The laugh dribbled between my lips, and I pressed my hand to my eyes as the room swam before me.
“It has all been settled. Your things are being packed, and your maids are here to prepare you.” He lifted his hand, signaling to someone behind me.
The meaning of his words sifted through the haze in my mind. I struggled to think clearly, to process what was happening. My gaze dropped to the half-empty cup of tea. “You—you drugged—me…”
“I had no choice.” My father wore a pained expression. “We’ve been at war with two kingdoms for too long, with Terelaus in the north and Ista to the west. The Terelonian forces have grown too vast and terrible to resist alone. People are dying, Amarylla—our soldiers, and the citizens of our border villages. I tried to make a treaty with Ista, to gain them as our allies against Terelaus, but they said no. To save lives I had no choice but to give in to Terelaus, to surrender. They will allow me to continue ruling, under supervision, if I make a grand gesture of loyalty. This is the only way, Amarylla, don’t you see? You will be saving thousands of lives by this sacrifice.”
He sounded as if he might be on the verge of tears, though with my brain dulled by the drug, I could not be sure. Honestly, I could barely understand what he said. I only knew that firm hands were gripping my arms, pulling me to my feet, dragging my leaden body along the palace corridors to my room. My head lolled and my eyelids drooped as I was sponged and coiffed, dressed in a beaded gown of white satin. My tongue and lips felt thick and swollen, and though I tried to speak the words came out as unintelligible mumblings.
Someone pushed open the door to my room. “The Terelonian sorcerer is here to take her.”
I was propped on my feet and hustled from my chambers to my father’s throne room. My father stood rigid, dressed in a crisp uniform draped in medals and chains. Under the freckles I’d inherited from him, he looked a shade paler than usual.
With him stood several members of our Court, and four strangers—two Terelonian guards, the Terelonian ambassador, and a masked figure in flowing dark robes that pooled across the tiled floor. I blinked, trying to clear my head. The tea seemed to be wearing off.
“No.” I shaped the word carefully, forced it out. My body lurched against the hands holding me, but the resistance was weak and ineffective.
“They have said that I can come visit you.” My father’s voice was a plea for forgiveness.
I turned, met his eyes, and pushed out another word, full of hate and betrayal. “Don’t.”
My father stepped forward and embraced me anyway, and as he did he whispered in my ear, “Try to uncover the source of their magic.”
I glared at him as he pulled away, as he made a great show of wiping his streaming eyes.
Try to uncover the source of their magic.The words thrummed in my dizzy head as my guards handed me over to the Terelonian soldiers, and my trunks and satchels were piled around us. The masked sorcerer walked in a circle around our little group, green light zipping from his hands, forming a domelike web of shining emerald lines. Then the sorcerer stepped into the dome with us, and lifted both arms.
A screaming, rushing wind raced around me, through me, dismantling my bones and skin, and I wanted to shriek but I had no air. With a jerk that I felt in the pit of my being, I snapped back together, whole again, but my skin still crackled with the aftereffects of the traveling magic.
We had spun through the air, from place to place, transported in less than a minute. The web of green lines receded, melting into the glossy black lake of tiles on which I now stood.
And by accident or the sorcerer’s malicious intent, none of my trunks or satchels had been brought along with us. I’d been exiled with nothing but the clothes I wore.
Black pillars arched upward, so tall I could barely make out the ceiling overhead. Those black pillars were studded with glowing amber crystals, the only light in the Cursed Palace of Terelaus.
This cavernous place was to be my new home. And in a few moments, I would be married to the Fiend Prince.
2
The drug my father had given me was wearing off. I only swayed a little as I walked through the vast dark halls of the Cursed Palace. I could probably run if I tried. But where would I go? Whole forests and mountain ranges lay between me and my home now. Terelonian sorcerers traveled by magic rarely, in times of great need or importance. It was unlikely I could find one willing to take me back home, even if I could give the slip to the grim-faced guards flanking me on either side, or the sorcerer stalking ahead of me.
We passed beneath an archway of braided bones and entered the throne room. Between long double rows of black columns, against a twisted mass of metal and stone and dark glimmering crystals, stood the Seat of Ghast, a throne cut and compiled from the skeleton of some monstrous ancient creature, unearthed in the wastelands of Terelaus. It looked every bit as forbidding as the two figures standing before it on the raised dais. One bore a heavy crown of onyx, with long gray hair flanking a smooth black mask. That must be the king of Terelaus, the Dreadlord himself. The other figure, slightly taller, wore a hood, and his mask bore a demonic leer. The Fiend Prince, no doubt.
A third figure approached, wearing no mask. I smiled, relieved to see another face, and a woman at that—but her dark features were sober, and she looked me over without sympathy. Her headdress, twice as tall as the king’s crown, was studded with pale gems.
