Chapter One
Everyone in the Folkshore knew that as they were born, they would one day die.
Even in Faerie, where they lived long enough as to seem immortal, life’s end was still inevitable. The only uncertainty was when exactly Death would make his claim.
That was where I was different from everyone else.
I knew precisely when I was going to die.
The second the sun set on my eighteenth birthday.
That was three weeks from now.
That sentence had been decreed by the curse inflicted on me by a malevolent fairy, to punish my mother’s arrogance and my father’s broken promises.
That frightful fact had ruled my life and hung over my neck like an executioner’s blade since I was old enough to understand what death meant. The one reason I hadn’t despaired all these years was because this curse came with the means to break it included. Up until a few months ago, I’d thought such means had been arranged.
I’d been wrong.
All that false sense of security had done was cost me vital time.
So here I was, subjecting myself to more humiliation in my efforts to ensure I didn’t end up paying for that cruel fairy’s whims and my parents’ transgressions with my very life.
“You are indeed a wondrous beauty, Princess Fairuza,” my companion slurred.
I almost winced at the nasal whine of Prince Jean-Jaques. Besides being the third in line to the throne of the insignificant island kingdom of Ys, he was a pot-bellied drunkard who was older than my father. His dull expression further elongated his grey-bearded face as he leered at me, his bulging eyes slightly crossing, with the rank inebriation I could smell from across the table.
“I didn’t believe the tales of your beauty until I saw it for myself.” He lurched forward, bridging the distance I’d pointedly placed between us, almost shoving his face into mine. “I can’t wait for your unique features to be immortalized in our wedding portrait.”
Just entertaining the possibility of such a portrait with that old fool of a minor royal churned my stomach. Especially after I’d lived my life thinking I was destined to marry the young and handsome heir of a major kingdom.
How far I’d fallen.
To think I’d crossed the Folkshore only months ago, believing I’d marry Crown Prince Cyaxares of Cahraman. My mother and my uncle, his father, had betrothed us soon after the curse had been cast. I’d always had anxieties about something preventing our union, but I’d learned how to suppress them, leaving me mostly secure in my future.
Even after Cyaxares had announced he wouldn’t make me his bride outright, and had held that outrageous Bride Search competition, I’d been assured of winning it, and breaking the curse well before its literal deadline.
But nothing had gone as I’d expected.
Cyaxares had done everything in his power to end our betrothal, and had fought to choose another. A low-born girl who’d turned out to be a thief and a spy no less, and who’d almost destroyed his kingdom.
So she’d risked her life to restore it, and after our harrowing experiences together, I could no longer hate her. Still, the fact remained. Between the so-called Lady Ada and Cyaxares—now the King of Cahraman after Uncle Darius’s abdication—they’d cost me my one assured chance of survival.
I’d had to return home, rejected and defeated, my only hope of preventing the curse from claiming my life resting on the precarious hope of finding another man on par with him.
But now any hope that remained was dashed. This drunken old goat was among the last in the long list of inferior suitors I’d gone through since my return to Arbore three months ago. After him, there were only his half-brothers, who were also widowed, less noble, and with even more children.
Just the idea of having to marry one of them was enough to make me think death was the much better fate.
Raising my teacup to hide my grimace, I gulped down a scalding mouthful to push down the toast rising back in my throat, before putting on my best gracious smile, producing my most lighthearted voice, and thanking him profusely.
Jean-Jacques abruptly reached out and grasped my wrist, and I lurched with a gasp, miraculously not spilling a drop of my hibiscus tea.
“You would look lovely in green, positively radiant.” His slurring was accompanied by spittle this time as he pulled my hand towards him.
Smothering a distressed squeal, my mind’s eye traitorously flashed back to the last time I’d been manhandled. Though it hadn’t been a man I was forced to