Page 3 of The Prince and His Stolen Groom
The Good Wizard hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Two marriages will buy you at least fifty years of peace, which will give us plenty of time to find another solution.” He tensed, waiting for someone to complain about him dumping the problem onto their grandchildren, but to his surprise, no one argued.
The King of Bane raised a goblet of water and announced, “To our new alliance.”
The glasses clinked.
“To the Desolated Lands!” the King of Woe shouted.
More clinking, joined by a few cheers this time.
“To no more evil mages!”
As they celebrated their new beginnings, none of them suspected that one of their grandchildren would one day royally fuck up all their careful planning.
Chapter One
The castle had entered full-on Wedding Mode preparing for the upcoming nuptials between the Princess of Woe and the Prince of Bane. It was the final wedding needed to seal the Kingdom Defense Spell for another generation, so of course it had to be perfect. Everyone had their job to do and their place to be. Well, almost everyone.
As the younger brother to the bride, I was mostly left to my own devices. After dutifully offering to help and being rebuffed by everyone from my parents to housekeeping, I decided to simply get out of everyone’s way. But first, I had to let my sister know I was leaving the grounds so she wouldn’t worry.
I ducked around two burly men transferring a couch from one sitting room to another and had to flatten myself against a wall when another servant scurried by, carrying a precariously stacked tower of boxes. Despite our alliances with the other four kingdoms, we rarely hosted other royalty, so a frantic energy filled the air as everyone tried to make everything perfect for the prince’s arrival. It probably didn’t help that we’d only received notice a few days ago that he was comingtomorrow, a full week before the wedding.
At least he was coming alone—well, as alone as a prince accompanied by guards and attendants could ever be. If the king and queen were also arriving early, the castle staff would probably all fall over from exhaustion in their panic to prepare everything.
After completing the obstacle course our hallways had turned into, I finally arrived at Franny's office and knocked on the door. “Franny, can I come in?”
“Yes—yes!”
Her reply was more enthusiastic than I expected, but she probably needed a break from the chaos. I opened the door and said, “I’m heading over to—” but stopped and stared in shock at the scene in front of me.
A maid sat on Francesca’s desk, eyes closed, face flushed, head thrown back, legs spread wide to accommodate the figure in pink half covered by her uniform skirts. Her hands clutched the edge of the desk as she panted, “There—right there—yes!”
“Francesca,” I hissed and slammed the door shut behind me, hoping to cut the scene off from any other witnesses. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Franny startled and extracted herself from the skirts while the maid shrieked in exaggerated shock and covered her face with her hands. Still kneeling on the floor, Franny looked over her shoulder at me and exclaimed, “Fred! I had no idea you were home.”
“Rick,” I corrected with a scowl. I’d been telling my family to call me Rick for ages. Crossing my arms, I tapped my foot, doing everything I could to broadcast my irritation. “I repeat, what are you doing?”
“Thank you for not using an expletive this time,” Franny said as she stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt with one hand while discreetly wiping off her mouth with the other. Half of her dark hair had fallen out of its careful styling, probably from the maid’s hands tugging on it, and tumbled around her shoulders to add to her dishevelment. “Marnie really doesn’t like them.”
Since Marnie had just had her legs spread wide and a princess’ head between her thighs, she seemed perfectly willing to throw around an extra fuck or two.
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Well, that’s because I thought it was obvious,” Franny replied as she helped Marnie off the desk. “You should recognize cunnilingus when you see it.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I meant—why are you eating out a maid? First, that’s an abuse of power—we’re her employer.”
“Oh, no, please don’t blame Her Highness!” Marnie exclaimed, clutching her hands to her chest. “Really, this is all my fault, I—”
“Shush now, darling, or you’ll derail him and then I’ll never find out his second point,” Franny replied, smiling sweetly at her paramour.
“Thesecond point,” I said through gritted teeth, “is that you’re supposed to meet your groomtomorrow. For thewedding. Where you are thebride.”
“That is an awful lot of italics, Fred, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Rick!” I reminded heragain. At least she hadn’t reverted toFreddy, yet, or I really would get derailed.
“Rick,” she murmured to appease me, “I know what tomorrow is. This is just my way of saying goodbye to Marnie. I’ll be trapped with a husband for the rest of my life, why can’t I have some fun first?”
