Page 43 of Fit for a Prince (Fit For A Crown #1)

Chapter forty

“ L et me go!” Tears streamed down my cheeks before I could even sense my eyes watering. I was too weak to break free. The weight of a lifetime’s worth of secrets was too heavy a burden to fight with.

I pressed my ring to my chest, my heart pounding against the jasper as a tear splashed down atop the enchanted band.

I’m sorry, Mother. I’m so sorry.

“Diaspro.” Cedric tried to quiet me, but there was no room for calm in my brain. “Diaspro, please! Be quiet. The guards might find us.”

“Let me go!” I screamed again, desperate to escape. I’d escaped before. I could do it again. I had to. Maybe I could kill them, maybe I could fight them off with Lochlan’s dagger.

“Diaspro!” Atlas pulled me from Cedric’s grasp, wrapping me in his solid arms. His heart pounded against my back, and the weakness I felt saturated every ounce of my blood.

My legs crumbled and I slid down the front of Atlas, curling into a ball at his feet. My screaming stopped as I accepted my fate, but the tears of failure flowed too fast.

I’m sorry...

I stared at my ring, remembering the night it was slipped onto my finger with a shared promise.

I did my best to keep the secret, but I never realized becoming Diaspro would be so hard.

“Diaspro,” Atlas repeated, his voice hollow as he shifted his feet out from under me. He said my name like it was a lie tainting his lips, or a curse that had inflicted him with the worst feelings of betrayal.

I crawled to my knees, gingerly pulling myself up by the wall as I forced myself to stand.

It hurt. The tears that stained my cheeks should never have been seen by another soul, but I was already fully exposed.

I’d been careless around Cedric. I should have known better than to do something he would recognize.

I wiped my cheeks, the pressure rising in my throat threatening to burst another round of tears that I wouldn’t allow.

Forgive me for crying, Damon. I know better.

I swallowed, then finished drying my eyes so I could take in the pure shock that overran the three princes. They looked like they’d seen a ghost, and in many ways, they were looking at one.

“Diaspro...” There it was again. Atlas whispered the name this time, letting it become more of a phantom each time he repeated it. They knew what I was, or at least they thought they did. But no one truly knew me, and the only person who ever did was already dead. “Who are you?”

Queen Vivica knew. It was only ever her.

His voice was so soft. He wasn’t looking at me like a mystery anymore; he was looking at me with fear. They knew everything, but I still had to tell them more.

If they were going to know everything, they might as well know who to blame.

“King Leopold,” I said in a raspy voice, still raw from my screams. “He wanted a son more than anything in the world. So badly that he killed his firstborn daughter, and later killed King Septimus’s queen out of envy from seeing her bear three sons.”

The history of their mother’s death barely made them flinch. They were well aware of the bad blood between our kingdoms, but no one other than me knew how black Leopold’s blood truly ran.

“In the middle of the night, during a summer storm, Queen Vivica gave birth to Leopold’s second-born.

” The secret locked in the very depths of my soul broke free from its chains, peeling away at my heart and splitting open old scars.

It felt like a sin to tell, yet the freedom of the truth kept my lips moving.

“She had given birth to a daughter. She knew the king would be furious, so out of fear for her baby’s life, she did everything in her power to ensure the child survived. ”

It all clicked. The questions the princes had, the distrust, the unsolvable riddles, all of it suddenly made sense with the reveal of one twisted past.

“No...” Lochlan gasped, his dagger falling from his fingers. “You don’t mean...?”

“She thinks like a prince,” Cedric said, his own shock muted after having already recognized the real me in the duel, “because she was raised to be one.”

I had to. In order to survive, I’d had to be fit to be a prince. The queen had ensured that King Leopold never knew that his precious son was a girl in disguise from the first day of her life.

“Diaspro is the name my mother gave me when she gifted me her ring on the day of the siege,” I said, holding up the dull jewel that had been placed on my finger with the strongest bond of love ever made. “I was never engaged to Prince Damon.”

I lowered my hand and raised my head, lifting my eyes to match the three men who I had been bred to be equals with. I may have been born a princess, but I was raised to wield the power of a king.

“I am Prince Damon.”

To be continued...