Chapter 1—Snatched Before the Bell

Those who knew him begged him not to set out on this pointless and dangerous endeavor. They insisted the princess did not love him and only gave him this quest to get rid of him, as it would most likely end in his death. But he already knew the princess did not love him. He knew she looked down and saw, not a lover, but some so-and-so whom she played with as a child and only sometimes greeted as an adult.

This was why he had to dare the endless desert. Unless he did something big, big enough to lift him up to her level, something little was all she would see, and it was hard for anyone to fall in love with an ant.

***

Once upon a time there had been a princess who tore her knickers climbing trees, stabbed her mattress with daggers till the room turned white with feathers, purposely got herself lost in the woods, and practiced grilling rats in the royal kitchen’s ovens when no one was looking.

And yet here she stood on her wedding day, alone in the small atrium at the front of the great hall, trembling and tame as a newborn faun. She had been left alone per tradition for the solemn contemplation of a bride’s oaths, and all she could contemplate was how off kilter she felt.

The knights outside the door should have let no one in.

“You’re beautiful.”

Jeremy's handsome face said his words too well. He still had that sore on the side of his mouth from when he licked his knife after peeling her apple a week back. She said he'd get cut. But he insisted, even while his hands trembled beneath the watchful eye of Kyanna’s guard. These new guards would not be tricked into looking away as easily as Bartra and stood ready to shoo the squire away the moment he finished cutting the apple the princess handed him. It had taken a ridiculous amount of planning to have even that short time together.

Since her lover had been secret, naturally the whole castle learned of him, and nobody thought well of the squire. His daring to woo the princess could only be seen as the height of arrogance, even nefarious, if not foolhardy.

Still, seeing him now, on her wedding day, and knowing whatever he had done to bribe the guards had to be phenomenal, made her chin bunch up. The heavy, numb resignation within her wobbled.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him just above a whisper, all while thinking that she shouldn't be here either. Not today, dressed in white, and clutching too hard to a bouquet of bluebells and white roses.

“I—I had to see you one last time,” he said. Even so, his dark eyes looked down, hidden by darker lashes. His curls looked wet, as though he had dunked his head before coming here, despite his formal attire of blue and black livery.

“If anyone sees you, Sir Rowan won’t have anything to do with you anymore.”

“I know that,” he said quietly. “I know that more than anyone, Kyanna.”

She opened her mouth to reproach him for using her name without ‘Princess’ or ‘Your Majesty’, since this was the official end of their relationship, but nothing came out. What she wanted to do was to say, 'I love you,' and to hear him say it back.

“I just want you to know,” he said, licking pale lips. “That I’ll still be here, if you want me.”

The numbness in her breast edged with ice. “Jeremy, are you—what are you saying?”

He looked up past strong eyebrows, forming a cautious and heart-broken look.

“You’re the only child and princess of the greatest kingdom on the continent,” he said. “If you had really wanted me, you’d had me—no one could have denied you. But I get it, don’t worry. I had nothing to offer you or anyone else because of my birth. So I won’t…I won’t hold it against you that you have a husband. If, when you come back, you still want me…” he held out a hand. Something brightened in his eye.

Before Kyanna could think of a response, a tap came at the door and Jeremy dropped and rolled beneath the linen of the lone table, which held up calming incense, flowers, and the gods' scripture for last minute reading.

Her father, the King, stepped in, a barrel-chested man in shades of brown. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown freckles and skin still lightly blushed by sunlight, despite his days as a warrior long gone.

"It's almost time," said the King. He took her cold hand across his arm, his smile gentle. “You’re doing so well, my dear one. Not even your mother would have done something so hard with so much grace.”

Kyanna’s face tried to twist into something ugly, but she withheld it.

“It’s hardly grace, your majesty.” She inwardly smirked as the king flinched. She only said ‘your majesty’ when her displeasure with him was particularly high. “You barely gave me time to think about it let alone to act out.”

Though bear-like in his size, the King hunched his shoulders in an attempt to shrink as he gave her the puppy dog eyes he kept trying to appease her with, despite it having never worked.

“This man won the war all for you, my dear. How can you not be moved even now?”

“Because I’m a war prize.”

“You couldn’t be farther from it. There isn’t a man in this entire kingdom more worthy of you, I made sure of that. He’s already been christened as a saint by the gods, and besides that, there isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t want him. By the gods, I almost want him.”

She wanted to slap a hand over her face, ashamed that her father could say those last words with a straight face.

“Yes, yes, as you told me.” Still, she couldn’t believe her father came back from the campaign early just to set up this marriage without her knowing. What was the likelihood that he’d have finished up just as Hope dragged her in to get scolded for kissing in the hay with a squire? Would it have killed him to let her know ahead of time?

No. Kyanna wasn’t stupid. She knew the break-neck speed of the wedding preparations was her father’s response to Jeremy. Oh no, she’s gotten involved with someone, better marry her off quick! He’d even made the end date of the honeymoon purposely ambiguous and in an estate far from the reach of anyone in the palace.

I’m not an idiot.

And yet she still couldn’t settle her heart right over the way Hope and her father had persuaded, pressured, and threatened her into this, though Kyanna hadn’t stood as firm as she would have hoped she would. Hope’s words about love blinding one and logic and kingship and her father’s desperate, and pitiful, pleadings to believe in him and his love for her, had broken her down. She hadn’t anything to defend her feelings with, and that’s all they were, feelings. Her father even conveniently had a report on hand from various supervisors of Jeremy attesting him to be a lazy, anti-social lad with a victim complex and only so-so talent with the sword.

Yet she hadn’t been given any time or means to see if that report was true. All anyone would say around her when she had asked about Jeremy were the many virtues and kingly qualifiers of the man she was to marry.

Einar Burkinly. The only son and heir of a baron family who'd ruled over their small, but fertile lands for longer than the kingdom had existed. The Burkinlys were also famous for producing unmatched swordsmen. Einar himself was reported to be handsome, intelligent, well-mannered, well-educated, and virtuous.

He also happened to be the man who had won the decade long war against the desert clans nearly single-handedly. One man against an entire army, led by a tyrant rumored to have access to sorcery.

Einar Burkinly wasn’t just a war hero. He was fast becoming a legend.

And legends married princesses.

But the final words that had broken her, even shattered her beyond recovery, were said beneath the doleful, sad eyes of her gentle father.

“I suppose my advisors have been right. I’ve spoiled you too much, my dearest. Forgive me.”

Unorthodox she may be, she’d even accept wild, but spoiled had been the one thing she actively fought against. Spoiled was what the rich and privileged were, what princesses were, and everyone else despised. What people like Hope and her sons despised.

Kyanna glanced to the narrow table where Jeremy hid.

This was right. She was doing the right thing. For herself. For her father. For everyone.

Then why did she still hate herself so much for doing it?

“If you don’t like him,” said the King, giving one of her hands an earnest squeeze. “Or if he does anything to hurt you, anything at all, I’ll get rid of him myself. I promise.”

Kyanna bit her lip, feeling her heart soften, even as she wanted to claw it out and scream at it for betraying her.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Yeah. Alright.”

The beauty and grandeur of the castle's great hall was lost on her. The watching audience blurred to the edges of her watering eyes. Right when she thought she had accepted her fate—but she couldn't cry. She couldn't let her people see that. She didn’t need to give the world more reason to shame her and Jeremy for just loving each other. She didn’t need to give them reason to think her a spoiled princess not getting what she wanted.

Just as the thought crossed her mind, she looked up from the red rug to the man who waited at the front beside the altar, back lighted by the floor to ceiling glass-paned windows.

She had believed there to be at least some exaggeration to the stories about his looks, but he didn’t disappoint. Dark gold, almost brown hair with clear, sun kissed skin, and broad shoulders contrasting with narrow hips.

He would have been nearly god-like except his face held a boyishness in his round eyes and narrow jaw that didn't match the rugged strength of his body or the lines beaten into the skin around his brows from too many days squinting into the sun. Most men she knew who had such traits never shaved in order to not appear like teenagers. So perhaps the exaggeration was there.

As her father handed her up the steps, the war hero opened his mouth to speak to her but was interrupted by the high priest launching into his prologue on love. Kyanna fazed in and out of hearing. Her groom only ever moved his gaze to glance at the speaker now and then, but otherwise kept it on her.

“I swear it,” said Einar.

The priest turned to her. She wasn’t even entirely sure what Einar had just sworn to do.

“Princess Kyanna of Karpathia, do you swear to support Einar Burkinly as his wife in times of sorrow, in times of joy, in times of plenty, and in times of famine? Do you swear to love him and cling to him and only him for all time as the gods have made it?”

She couldn’t help but think of Jeremy.

Her palms went clammy with sweat. A few petals floated from her bouquet onto her shaking hands. She could almost hear the congregation’s breath catching as the silence grew longer.

Einar knitted his wet-wheat eyebrows, and for a moment she thought he felt sorry for her.

She glanced back at her father. He nodded, smiling.

Spoiled.

“I swear it.”

The words had a harsh ring of finality.

“Then I pronounce you husband and wife, sealed from this time forth under the vision and witness of those here and the gods above. You may exchange pendants and,” the old man bowed to Einar with a gifting grin, “you may kiss your bride.”

With trembling fingers she lifted the fine silver chain with the crystal pendant she had chosen, the one like an arrow's head, over her head as Einar lifted his own, which turned out to be as opposite of her crystal pendant as he was to Jeremy. It was not a delicate thing, but had a thick, antique gold chain and a bulky locket that could have held river stones. At first, they just looked at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move. Kyanna was surprised to find herself taking the initiative to slip it over his hair, which brushed like the threads of soft rabbit fur against her knuckles. Einar smiled and slipped the pendent around her neck, his fingertips lingering for just a breath against her throat. Then, equally gentle, as though afraid to startle a jittery colt, he rested his hands on her hips and brought her to him.

Her heart thudded hard beats against her breast. Would it be wet? Nasty? Would it feel like Jeremy? She had never kissed another man besides him.

But the hero’s lips touched hers so softly it was barely a kiss at all.

As the room erupted into cheers, a rebellious tear rolled down her cheek. She wished then that she had asked for a veil to hide behind; it was unseemly for a princess to cry in public, let alone on her wedding day. Her new husband lifted a finger to her cheek, and she was furiously pleased to see his face twitch with pain.

“Princess, I—“

“Wonderful!” roared her father, butting in-between to give them both a bear hug that lifted their feet off the ground. “I cannot tell you how proud I am of both of you! I could sing! And no one wants to hear that. Now to the festivities!” He dropped them abruptly to face the old priest. “Roan, if you’re not drunker than me tonight, for shame! Drinks all around! Where’s that accursed band? Tell them to get playing! And I was sure I got acrobats, so where, by the Five, are they?”

“Pr-Princess?” Einar wrapped a hand behind his neck, his face still twisted as he reached for her uncertainly.

She gave him her hand and kept her eyes to the floor, her last attempt to hide. White rose petals bled underneath their feet and fluttered up by the drafts of her passing skirts. Men cheered. Children threw flowers into the air. Chimes tinkled along the windows. And, in the distance, the Temple of the Gods’ bells began to ring neither a happy nor mournful tune.