not stone at his back.
He flailed, grabbing onto nothing. “Kira!” he yelled, but no voice answered, and he landed, not on hard floor but a feather bed.
He opened his eyes to illumination. Still no windows, but this room had rows and rows of candles. It was a large bedroom and sitting room, all pink and frills and books in every available open space.
‘Hello.”
The voice was soft, hesitant. Seth brought his attention to the corner closest to him.
Sitting there was a girl a little younger than he. She was so tiny his first thought was she had to be five or six, but something in the way she watched him, the way she reacted, made him rethink that. Probably closer to Kira’s age, with big blue-gray eyes and blond hair and such pale, pale skin that there was no way she had ever gone outside. “Hi,” Seth answered back, unsure what else to do.
“How did you get here?”
Should she be this accepting of a boy falling into her room from wherever? He looked again, but there were no holes in the ceiling or doors in this room. “I was running from my tutors and I got lost in this huge, dark room, and I just fell here. How do people usually get in and out of here?”
She shook her head, but otherwise the placidness of her features remained unchanged. “I don’t know. Only my father comes, and I’ve never asked him.” Her mouth twisted for a moment. “Well, sometimes he brings his advisor. I heard James once say they needed to find another stone, but I never asked what that meant.”
Shock held Seth immobile for several moments. Yes, she was the right age. He only knew one person here who had an advisor named James. “Your father is the king? Are you Princess Rosamund?”
Now her placid mask was gone, replaced by dread. She brought her hands up to cover the sides of her face. “I’m not allowed to tell anyone. He told me no one could ever know.”
Instinct had Seth holding out his hands the same way he would to a trapped and growling animal. “It’s okay. You mean your father? I won’t ever tell him. Besides, it’s okay if I know. I’m Prince Seth. You’re my fiancée.”
Fiancée. He knew the word – he’d grown up with his father’s voice in his ear, talking to him about duty and a far-off future bride whom he would not meet for years, but until this moment the word had never crossed his lips. He didn’t want to think about how a stranger would become the most important person in his world. How with her arrival, he would be forced to leave Kira.
Rosamund studied him long moments before she lowered her hands, moving closer to him and sitting at a desk that was only a few feet away from the bed. “You’re Seth?”
“I promise you, I am.”
She relaxed further at those words, this lost and cursed princess who was his intended. “I wasn’t sure if you were real,” she said, her voice halting on the words. “I sometimes thought Father made you up, to keep me occupied.”
Occupied. If it was him, he didn’t know if he could ever be occupied with anything but thoughts of the curse. He smiled in what he hoped was a teasing way. “Afraid I’m the real thing. I can understand if I don’t quite live up to what you might have hoped for.”
“I didn’t mean it like that!” In her embarrassment her voice had a little more life to it, her face a little more color. “You seem very nice. I am very happy I can finally meet you.”
“Me too.” And he was. He probably didn’t think about her as much as she thought about him, but he was still curious about her.
The situation was weird. He was engaged to the daughter of his father’s friend and closest ally, but when people talked about the engagement, it was more akin to how people spoke about funerals than weddings. It was a situation to be mourned, not celebrated. It was spoken of with pats of understanding on his back and shakes of their heads when they thought he wasn’t looking.
She looked nothing like he imagined. Her family lineage didn’t have a single blonde that he was aware of, though every other shade was represented. She was also tiny and delicate where all the other members of the royal clan were robust. But she’d been given several magical gifts before the