Page 3

CHAPTER 3

M ost of the guests had already arrived by the time I finally left my room. Father had sent multiple manservants up to pound on my door and relay his messages to not delay any longer. My handmaiden, Beatrix, deserved credit, she waved each manservant off with the sharp retort that if my father hadn’t delayed me by lecturing me, I would have been ready on time.

I turned to scrutinize my appearance in the mirror. I’d always been considered pretty enough, but after her administrations, I was no longer simply a thin princess, I was the regal future Queen. The stunningly beautiful woman gazing back at me looked far too innocent and sweet to be suspected of any wrongdoing. Perfect. I leaned closer, examining the way my eyelashes had been darkened to contrast my bright blue eyes and the matching gown.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Beatrix. Thank you.” In the mirror’s reflection, I saw her brown eyes crinkle as she smiled fondly from the praise and patted my long blonde hair. She was the closest thing I had to a mother, as my own had passed away during childbirth.

“Do you hope to find love before being forced to marry someone else?” one of the newer servant girls asked. Beatrix hissed and swatted at the lass, who murmured, “Beg pardon, Your Highness, it was not my place.”

A thin smile crept to my lips. “No need to apologize. My plan is not too far off from that.” If Father wanted me to give attention to men, I would give attention to men, just as he had requested.

Beatrix gave me an all-too-knowing look and shook her head. “There’s not a man alive who can handle the amount of woman you are, princess.”

* * *

Horns blared and the herald announced my entrance as I daintily held my skirts and stepped leisurely down the elegantly sweeping staircase, ensuring every eye was upon me as I descended. I beamed at every man in turn, relishing their gaping mouths and dumbfounded expressions. Father held out his hand to me as I reached the bottom-most steps, and I placed my fingers on top of his, allowing him to guide me down the final stairs.

“Dearest, I would like to introduce you to Prince Ijor, Crown Prince of Coronis. Ijor, this is my daughter, Princess Rapunzel.”

I lowered into a deep curtsy, making sure to tilt forward as I did so. Ijor bowed in return, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he valiantly fought to keep his eyes locked with mine. “Princess, it’s a pleasure.” He spoke with a slight lisp and had a large gap between his two front teeth but was otherwise handsome.

“The pleasure is all mine,” I cooed, extending my hand.

Father faded into the background as Ijor kissed my knuckles. I felt the rough calluses on his hand where he touched me, the unmistakable sign of a skillful warrior. Judging from his tensed shoulders and slightly frantic eyes, he had little experience with women. I smiled expectantly and batted my lashes at him as the orchestra struck up a tune, but he didn’t take the hint.

“Prince Ijor, would you do me the honor of asking me to dance?”

“A princess should never have to request a dance,” a new voice interjected. A strapping man who looked and sounded very similar to Ijor but lacked the lisp, approached. “Forgive my brother, Your Highness. He is somewhat lacking in the social graces. I’m Prince Ivan.”

Ijor frowned. “She asked me—” he began, but his brother cut him off.

“You may have your turn after I claim the first dance.” At first touch, he flinched, as everyone did when they touched my constantly cold hands. To his credit, he politely ignored my icy fingers and led me onto the dance floor, where many couples spun and dipped their way around the enormous circle.

Ivan had skill at dancing but lacked the rough calluses that his brother had earned on the battlefield. He was well versed in the steps and kept a steady flow of conversation the whole time. Or rather, he talked in a continuous stream that proved to be one-sided and boastful.

“Naturally since my brother is heir to the throne and deals with the logistical side of operating a country our size, I have more time to devote to the high society, which is where I fit in better anyway. Ijor is rather introverted, but you can probably tell by now that I attract people… They just gravitate towards me, isn’t that fascinating? I was recently jousting with Sir Wesley of Elmsbee—you’ve heard of him, I’m sure. The one who battled the dragon of the Shadowed Mountains? Anyway, after I beat him in the joust, we were discussing…”

He went on and on. I tuned his words out but continued to bat my eyelashes and smile as flirtatiously as I could at him. Ivan relished the attention and once our dance was over, offered me his arm for a stroll. “I already promised Sir Gallas a dance when he signed up for the dragon hunt this morning, but please find me later.”

Ivan brushed his lips against the back of my hand. “I won’t forget.”

Gallas, the knight who had been first to volunteer for the dragon mission, darted up to accept the next dance. Even after my first dance, my hands hadn’t warmed up, so he, too, flinched at my touch, but he masked it well. Gallas wasn’t as conversational as Ivan had been, so I needed to prompt more from him.

“Tell me of your most recent assignment,” I coaxed.

“I was sent to investigate a possible poaching situation up north.”

An awkward silence stretched as I waited for him to elaborate, but he was too busy watching his feet and making sure he didn’t step on mine. “And was it poaching?” I finally asked.

Gallas jumped slightly and hastened to answer, stumbling over his words slightly in his eagerness to respond. “W…well, yes, sort of. It was the dragon again.”

“I suppose a dragon would need to eat large game.”

“I suppose.”

Silence fell again, and I felt obligated to fill it. “This isn’t the first report of such an instance, you know. Baron Signey filed a complaint recently about the same issue—the dragon took several of his sheep.”

“At least it wasn’t a person,” Gallas said. “I heard about your ancestor.”

Any child who went to school for any period of time in the last hundred years knew the story.

My great-great grandfather, King Tiberion was reportedly one of the only humans ever to sustain, not so much a friendship, but a cordial arrangement with a dragon. The tale went that during his reign, Rookwyn was so overrun with dragons that our people were starving to death. Tiberion, whether motivated by anger or sheer desperation, sought out a young dragon and drafted an agreement in which the dragon would work for the crown and drive away its fellows in return for half of the kingdom’s coffers.

The firedrake, who was reported to be eight times the size of the largest soldier, agreed to the proposal. The eradication of the other dragons took more than two years, but eventually succeeded. When Tiberion gave the dragon his share of the treasure, the beast demanded everything, with the threat that if he was denied the gold he deserved, our land would never be free from dragons.

Tiberion protested, and the dragon had kidnapped my great grandmother and held her for ransom until his demands were met. Terrified that the royal line would die out, Tiberion finally acquiesced and turned over the entire kingdom’s treasury to the insatiable dragon. Ever since then, all my ancestors had been consumed with greed, desperate to recover the riches that had been lost.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to remind you,” Gallas said awkwardly. “I was just thinking about the dragon hunt next week.”

“You already signed up, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

The knowledge that he would be putting his life on the line deepened my anger toward my father, which drove me to flirt even more with each one of my subsequent dance partners. Each time I lavished a new dance partner with attention, Father’s eyebrows contracted from where he watched me.

Delighted that I’d succeeded in arousing his suspicions, I would cheerfully wave at him each time I caught his eye, then lean a little closer to whichever man I was dancing with to whisper into his ear. Any other girl might have envied my position. The men who flocked to my side were all well-built, well-dressed and groomed, and eager to give me attention. But I couldn’t help feeling that their affections were just as false as mine.

Frankly, it astounded me that each of these men would jump at the chance of marrying a princess as flirtatious as I was acting. Did it not concern them that their future monarch was throwing herself at every man in the vicinity? Perhaps they simply didn’t care what I did as long as they had the opportunity to gain power and position.

Father wasn’t as easily fooled. Throughout the evening, his eyes became narrower and narrower until they were barely more than slits on his face. Finally, he cut in between my partner and me in the middle of a dance.

“What are you doing?!” Father hissed out of the corner of his mouth as he claimed the dance. He moved stiffly, as if by doing so his displeasure would go undetected by the surrounding crowd.

My eyes widened to show my innocence. “Have you not been encouraging me to greet each man very personally? What good, obedient daughter would reject her father’s wise counsel?”

“We both know full well that this is a ruse,” Father spat in an undertone. “I want to know why.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. But I certainly have garnered a great deal of interest. After all, marrying me would come with an entire kingdom, even if it is one currently plagued by a dragon’s presence.”

“This is just to get out of the dragon-slaying offer,” snarled Father. “Isn’t it? Are you hoping to become engaged so my offer today is useless?”

A coy smile toyed around my mouth that was at odds with the innocence of my eyes. “But Father dearest, what do you mean? You arranged this ball, not I.”

“ Before I made the offer about the dragon!”

“And who am I to refuse the fortunate timing? Would you rather I rebuff all the advances of the gentlemen here? Perhaps some will be more willing to consider such a dangerous quest now that they know I’m so interested in them.”

Father glared as he spun me under his arm and raised his eyes to glance around. Several of the men I had flirted with were casting sideways expressions my way, waiting to swoop in and claim the next dance. “I don’t know what your game is,” he hissed into my ear when we cut through the dance floor again, speaking so low that only I heard, “but if you botch this proposition for me, I swear I will marry you off to a peasant. I want you to…to sit out of the dancing for a few minutes.”

I laughed aloud, which only incensed Father further. “Are you treating me like a misbehaving child?”

“Why not? You’re acting like one,” he retorted, then raised his voice so it carried to everyone nearby. “Of course you can get off your feet, Rapunzel dear. I’m sure you’re exhausted. Come along.”

He steered me to a chair next to a chess table. “Here. You like chess. Sit. Play with…with him.” Father snatched at the arm of a passing man, who turned out to be Prince Ijor, the prince with the lisp. Ijor sat down heavily in the chair, looking somewhat confused as to how his attempt at getting to the refreshment table had landed him across the chess board from me.

“Princess, ah…it’s nice to see you again,” he said, somewhat startled.

“And you as well. It seems we’ve been told to play chess.”

“I’ve heard you are very talented,” Ijor told me politely, hastily setting up the pieces.

I raised one shoulder. “Oh, I play a little.”

Ijor offered me the white pieces, but I shook my head. “I favor black, if you don’t mind.” I caught Father’s eye as he watched us. “I like a challenge.”

As expected, Ijor moved his e pawn up two squares for the traditional opening, and I countered by advancing my own pawn the same number of squares on the same file. His f pawn soon followed, and I brought out my d pawn. I flicked my eyes up to meet his, but his gaze was fixed on the board.

A curious knot of onlookers trickled in as Ijor and I played, growing with each move we made. Oftentimes, when one of us would execute a particularly brilliant move, people would gasp or groan, depending on who they were rooting for.

Ijor played well. It was obvious his military knowledge was not limited to how to swing a sword. Chess was a compulsory unit of study for all knights as it provided the foundation upon which all military tactics were derived. But for as well as he played, my tactics were superior, and he knew it too. I could see the anxiety in his face as the end drew near, and I remained several points up while I forced trades for the remainder of his pieces.

Finally, he shook his head and moved his king a few final times with a resigned air before I delivered checkmate. I reached across the board and shook his hand. “Good game.”

He grinned back at me good-naturedly. “It was a good game! You’re a very skillful player.”

After Ijor rose from his seat, Ivan took it, determined to prove that whatever his brother could do, he could do better.

He was worse.

It only took eight moves for me to checkmate him with a variation on a simple scholar’s mate, a humbling experience for the brawny man. After Ivan’s quick defeat, many of the men I had danced with formed a line, each eager to match their wit against mine.

They all went down in rapid succession. My chess prowess was a skill I prided myself on, having studied for hours each time Father confined me to my room for some trick I played on him or his friends. There were a great deal of men laughing at each other as they all failed to best me. As my cockiness grew, Ijor brought a young man close to my same age over, a squire by the looks of him, and shoved him to sit opposite of me. “Here. Griffin is an excellent player. He’s my squire.”

I gestured for him to set up his pieces and analyzed him, still feeling much too arrogant for my own good. I had soundly defeated many princes and knights already; a lowly squire would be no problem at all. Griffin had a soft-spoken voice and an average build but exuded an air of quiet confidence. As he touched each of his chess pieces prior to beginning, I knew he would present a good challenge for me. Competent players habitually centered all the pieces on their respective squares at the onset of each game, as if familiarizing themselves with old friends.

Within six moves, my heart was pumping much harder than with any of my former opponents. Griffin barely even glanced at the board through the entire opening and set up an impenetrable barrier around his king. My aggressive strategies were useless against such a strong defense. I began taking more and more time to deliberate over each move. Griffin proved to be just as talented a player as I and had either studied longer or else was a shade more intelligent and able to see more moves ahead than I could. I therefore began poring over the board for such long periods of time that the girls who were more interested in attracting a suitor than in chess wandered off. The rest of the defeated chess players still clustered close to us, breathing down our necks as I tried to weasel my way out of each fork, pin, and skewer Griffin set up for me.

Then suddenly, I saw it. There was the gleam of triumph in the squire’s eyes that could only mean one thing—an impending checkmate. I scoured the board, but the attack I had planned out seemed fool-proof. Two moves later, I saw what Griffin had anticipated all along. His knight was going to triple fork my king, queen, and rook. I would lose my queen and consequently the game… and it was unstoppable. How could I have overlooked it? I sagged back in my chair, horrified that I had missed such a pivotal point in the game. It seemed that none of the onlookers could map out moves as far ahead as Griffin or I, so they hadn’t realized that the game was essentially over.

I locked eyes with Griffin over the chess board. He had me and he knew it. My stomach soured as the anticipation of my impending humiliation loomed large. There was nothing I could do to prevent his victory. I glumly moved my queen diagonally three squares and waited for my ultimate demise.

It never came.

Rather than using his knight to capture my queen, which would lead to a checkmate, he instead moved his only remaining rook to threaten my black-squared bishop, a major blunder. I stared at the board, uncomprehending, then up at Griffin, who gave a tiny smile and nodded down at the game.

I captured his rook and took the remainder of his pieces, then delivered checkmate soon after. He shook my hand, thanked me for the opportunity to play, and rose.

“What happened to three steps ahead , Griffin?” a knight called aggressively. “Isn’t that your motto?”

“Yeah, I thought you were a competent player!” Other voices joined in, all heckling the quiet squire as he silently wound his way through the jeering crowd.

My gown felt nailed to my seat as I watched him walk away as calmly and sedately as if he were strolling on a beach. He had thrown the match… but why? A mere squire who could best one of the most competitive chess players in all of Rookwyn would gain immense popularity. Women would fawn over his intelligence, men would admire his achievement, and he could have publicly punctured my own ego, which I knew was grossly over-inflated… so why hadn’t he?

Hands rained down to pat my back and words of congratulations swirled around me, but I didn’t hear any of them. I shoved aside my stool and stalked after Griffin as he left the ballroom, catching him as he stepped out of the castle into the rose garden.

“What’s your game, squire?”

He pulled a face of mock concentration, not in an unkind way, but in light teasing. “We were just playing chess, were we not?”

I glared. “You saw the checkmate and lost on purpose. Why didn’t you take it?”

Griffin looked taken aback. “I would never embarrass a lady in front of her guests at her own party. The knowledge that I could have won was good enough for me. After all, life is nothing more than a giant game of chess. One must know when to make a sacrifice, and I would gladly sacrifice for you.”

I was torn between annoyance and pleasant surprise. It was rare to meet a man who didn’t boast, and even rarer to find one who had skills worthy of boasting and still refrained from doing so. Griffin was so different from all the other men who had danced or played chess with me, each bragging to win my favor. I stood, dumbfounded, and scrambled for something to say, but all words fled.

“That’s all a gambit is, anyway,” he went on softly. “It’s a worthy sacrifice, even if it’s a risk.” He bowed his head. “Begging your pardon, Your Highness, but I’m expected in the stables. It was an honor to meet you and a privilege to play such a gifted opponent. Please know that I’m always at your disposal.”

“It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” I curtsied. As I watched him fade into the surrounding darkness, I realized that of all the men I had met that evening, he was the only one I could honestly say intrigued me.

What madness was I thinking? A squire, even one as handsome and intelligent as Griffin, had no place in the thoughts of the Crown Princess of Rookwyn. I shook my head and put him from my mind. I had no intention of being sidetracked from that evening’s goal by a mere squire. I had a mission to accomplish. I pivoted and reentered the ballroom.