Prologue
The stories are always told the same. The Princess is destined to be sent off with a Prince who shall inherit his fathers kingdom. He would lose the boyish crown for the adult one, transforming from a mere green Prince to a brash and rough King. Some men who held the title were as sweet as red wine, they treated their people fair and loved the Princesses who’d become their Queens and wives. Those women were the lucky ones because they did not have to worry about their kingdoms falling or their men cheating while beating upon them.
My mother had gotten the raw end of the stick. My father had not wooed her in the way a man should. He’d simply paid a price for her hand in marriage, his father approving. The moment my mother stepped into my fathers home, she’d learned that not every man touches women with the feather-like touch that makes toes curl and whispers echo.
My mother was subjected to cruel beatings and endless nights where she wept while he slept with a mistress in the bed promised to her. Her unhappiness was unable to be shed because she could not escape.
The second year of their union, she’d delivered my brother. A young Prince who my father felt thrilled for. He’d wanted a proper male for his throne for when his title as ruler drew to an end. He’d named my brother Roman and raised my brother the same way he had been raised.
The third year, I’d been born and my father showed anything but disinterest in me. He’d beaten my mother for spawning a woman who would only grow to be the same pathetic excuse he claimed her to be.
But he did see a benefit with me. He could send me away to the kingdom in the East. That place was a land full of beasts. Monsters wrapped in human flesh who tried to act civilized as humanity was. My father had run into several conflicts with their people and their King, hence war was always almost at our door.
My father had planned my fate to be the wife of the King of the east’s heir. A young beast who’d lived hundreds of years already. There was rumors that he had been with several maidens already, some of them had either died by his hand, rejected him or vise versa. They claimed he was cruel, harsh and vindictive.
A beast the same as my father.
My mother had begged for my fate not to go into that land, that they could find me a much more pleasant place with a Prince who didn’t dream of eating my flesh. My father dismissed her. She’d even begged the very beast who came to our home to settle the arrangement.
She’d gone missing after that meeting, everyone assumed my father killed her for overstepping her role at his side.
I assumed the beast did it himself.
There were stories of him already having slaughtered a large amount of women. Who wouldn't have thought he had slain her as well as those who laid in his bed?
My father could have anyone he wanted dead with a snap of his fingers. He had loyal men who committed those acts for him so that he did not get blood on his hands. But I do know my father would not stoop so low to kill his own Queen, especially one he paid for.
Her death was devastating to the entire kingdom. My father ruled with a force without mercy, people suffered under his reign which drove my mother to help them in silence. She gave what the people needed while taking care of my brother and I. She was the one keeping the kingdom from poverty.
I remember watching the funeral, how many of the people wept real tears for her while my father and brother remained stoic. They shed nothing nor did they even say goodbye to her.
I did.
And as sad as it was, I felt relief for her because she’d been freed from this misery money gave her.
I didn’t try to fight my father on the arrangement. I knew that if I did, he would most likely beat me. He never had before but that was because he had my mother to lay his hands on. With her gone there was no outlet and I wished not to be the replacement one. So, I did what I had to. I survived, I obeyed, just as I was raised and shown.
I wanted to help my people in their time of need in the secret ways my mother had but I’d been too young, too uncertain in how she managed to sneak things past my father and his all watching eyes.
So I didn’t.
My fate wasn’t here anyway. I’d been traded for peace, I’d been sacrificed like a lamb to the slaughterhouse.
My Prince was not a man of honor and care but a monster who pretended to be human, a beast with sharp claws and jagged teeth. I’m sure he was raised to treat me in the ways of his kind.
No one knows how they are because no one who was human has ever been inside their castle home but I can only imagine they are more primal, they go with a more animal like nature because that is what they really are. I assume I will be made to submit, to give and not raise my head.
But no matter how much I dread each birthday that draws me closer to departing this place that I called home.
I would not submit to this beast willingly. I will not simply bow my head while he talks to me nor will I open my legs for him when he’s feeling greedy. I am more than just a woman who most men believed to be possessions. I will show this beast a thing or two, no matter what he does to me in the end.
I will not meet the same end my mother saw.
