Page 1 of Arrows and Gems
PROLOGUE
Helena
The voice was back.
You are unloved,it whispered. Unwanted. Your own family abandoned you, left you to grow up at a country castle with no one but servants for company. You have always been alone, and you will alwaysbealone.
Princess Helena scrunched her eyes, trying to block it out. It hadn’t been that long since her brother’s monthly visit, and Michael had even come with him this time. Axel’s presence dimmed the voice, but it vanished completely when his best friend joined him.
That was how she knew the crown prince of Daraigh would be the one to break her curse. Her thirteenth birthday was coming up, so she had three years at most before it struck. At least two years asleep before the counter-curse would work. Then Michael’s kiss of true love would free her from the solitude of her exile and the awful silence of her enchanted sleep, and they would live happily ever after.
Until then, she would have to deal with the voice.
Unwanted. Abandoned—
Wait, that wasn’t right. She’d pricked her finger just after her thirteenth birthday, and her eyes wouldn’t scrunch because her body wouldn’t move. She must have drifted into one of her dreams again.
Why hadn’t anyone come yet? Surely it had been five yearsby now. And the hammers had been echoing through the castle for what felt like weeks, proof thatsomeone had returned to Reineggburg Castle.
Then she heard them: the slow tread of footsteps on the stairs. Her heart beat faster; she hadn’t heard anyone in her tower since the magic of the curse drove Axel, Mother, Papa, and everyone else away. A distant voice cried frantically, but those footsteps drew Helena’s full focus.
A creak of hinges. Someone was coming in! Then a hand lifted hers, a pair of lips brushed her knuckles, and for the first time in years, her eyes fluttered open.
“I knew it would be you,” she rasped, gazing into her rescuer’s brown eyes. “I knew you would come, Michael.”
She’d known for years that he would break the curse. But she had expected him to appear on her eighteenth birthday, not shortly after her twenty-fifth.
And she hadn’t expected hiswifeto be with him.
~
Leaning against the bookcase, Helena ran a light finger over the fine dagger lying on a shelf. The cold that Michael had caught at Reineggburg had followed him back to Daraigh, just as she had. But where it had kept him from supper, she had spent the last several hours in his sitting room awaiting his return.
She didn’t care about her brother’s lectures. She didn’t care that Papa had forbidden her to cause trouble with their neighbors. Papa had abandoned her to Reineggburg after her cursed christening, and she was tired of being alone.
Besides, servant gossip said Michael’s marriage had been struggling for more than a year. Since anyone with eyes could see the connection between his wife and her guard, signing the Dissolution of Marriage should have been the easiest decisionMichael had ever made. Especially now that he knew his true love was still alive.
But he was frozen, pen clenched in his hand, hand hovering over the document, andnot signing.
Why?
Helena straightened her evening gown, pretending confidence, but the longer he sat, the tighter the band squeezed around her chest.
Unwanted. Abandoned. Alone.
Michael’s hand spasmed around the shaking pen, and his head dropped, his short black hair falling over his forehead. He still hadn’t signed.
Even though his marriage was in shambles. Even though his visits had been one of few bright spots during her childhood exile to Reineggburg. She’d dreamed about him for twelve years of enchanted sleep while the kingdoms thought she was dead!
Now that he’d freed her from that terrible, lonely silence, why wouldn’t he sign so they could finally have their happily ever after?
The pen hit the desktop with a loud crack. “I can’t do it,” Michael ground out. His hand pressed into the desk, tension etched into his hunched shoulders. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“Arabella has barely looked at you in the last week,” Helena protested, crossing her arms over her chest. “But you’re still choosing her?”
“I’d say she was justified.” He turned his head enough for one brown eye to glare back at her. “Wouldn’t you?”
Jerking her face away, Helena flared her nostrils, refusing to bend under his judgment. It had been one kiss, born of twelve years of dreams and loneliness. And he’d seemed quite pleased with her company otherwise.
