Cursed

Vengeance

"Prince Dominic. I thought I heard you out here," said a familiar voice. Dominic looked up from his book to find his cousin Samuel standing before him wearing a wry smile. "What are you doing out so late?" he asked curiously.

"Just had a quarrel with father and Kent and needed some air," he said, sitting beside Dominic on the bench. He leaned back and ran his hand over his face.

"Want to talk about it?" Dominic asked. When Samuel did not respond, a better solution entered his mind. "Or better yet, why don't we go to the Devil's Inn?"

"Without Kentwall?" Samuel asked, his eyes clouded with apprehension. "He'll skin us alive." It was true. The Devil's Inn was Kentwall's favorite watering hole.

Dominic laughed and shook his head. "Ten to one he's beaten us to it already." Samuel still looked hesitant, but after a few moments of thinking it over, he looked up and nodded reluctantly. "Then let us be on our way," Dominic added.

***

Warm sunlight from the new day touched Stephanie's cheek through the wide window of the royal quarters as she continued to dream. The dream was pleasant. She was back home and things were perfect, but she was not there with her mother or her sisters. She was alone in the house, content-a chateau of her own. The warmth grew and she fought the wakefulness that threatened to pull her from her sanctuary. Reminders of reality began to invade: the feeling of her hands scrubbing a cold stone floor, her feet aching from standing all day in old ill-fitting shoes, the cold mud caking her ankles and she took a bucket out to the yard to slop the hogs. She turned over on her back. The sound of someone snoring beside her entered her consciousness, and she could no longer fight life. It was Ellinor. Stephanie was in the princess's room on an enormous very comfortable bed that would never be hers.

She awakened fully but kept her eyes shut, the ugliness of the previous night fully restored. She clutched the sheets close to her chest then after a moment over her head, trying to push it all out again. But before even another second had passed, she smelled the familiar scent of a man looming overhead followed by a soft voice, "Stephanie?"

Fear gripped her heart. The man. Surely, he wouldn't be so brazen as to break into the Princess's room; would he?

Then, through the thin veil of her blankets, she saw a trembling hand reaching for her cheek. Terrified, she sat up abruptly, a scream caught in her throat, bunching the sheets to her chest to cover herself. Her eyes focused on the man's face, looking at her with a hurt and somewhat frightened look on his face. "Dominic?" she said, shocked.

"Oh, Dominic; you're home," Ellinor said, sitting up as she rubbed at her eyes from the other side of the bed. "What happened? Did you think she was me?"

The prince stood up at once, his posture taking on a royal tone as usual. "What is she doing in our chamber?"

"She was attacked last night," Ellinor said, still half asleep.

"WHAT?" he asked, his tone stern and sharp.

Before either woman could respond, a maid walked in with a large, silver tray but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Prince Dominic. "I'm sorry, your grace. I didn't expect you for breakfast this morning. I'll bring in another tray." The woman glanced over at Stephanie with a strange look in her eyes but quickly looked away before offering a curtsey to the prince and making for the exit.

Wonderful. The entire kitchen staff would hear about her night in the princess's quarters, but right now, that was the least of Stephanie's worries.

"All right. What happened?" Dominic asked firmly, looking down at her with concern and tempered anger in his eyes.

"She received her own quarters just last night," Ellinor explained, getting out of bed to sit closer to Stephanie. She settled on a spot not close but not too far from her and reached out to touch Stephanie's shoulder. She flinched away from the contact. "Then, a man-whom she couldn't see-entered her room."