Arrows and Gems (The Roumaterra Chronicles #4)

PROLOGUE

Helena

The voice was back.

You are unloved, it whispered. Unwanted. Your own family abandoned you, left you to grow up at a country castle with no one but servants for company. You have always been alone, and you will always be alone.

Princess Helena scrunched her eyes, trying to block it out. It hadn’t been that long since her brother’s monthly visit, and Michael had even come with him this time. Axel’s presence dimmed the voice, but it vanished completely when his best friend joined him.

That was how she knew the crown prince of Daraigh would be the one to break her curse.

Her thirteenth birthday was coming up, so she had three years at most before it struck.

At least two years asleep before the counter-curse would work.

Then Michael’s kiss of true love would free her from the solitude of her exile and the awful silence of her enchanted sleep, and they would live happily ever after.

Until then, she would have to deal with the voice.

Unwanted. Abandoned—

Wait, that wasn’t right. She’d pricked her finger just after her thirteenth birthday, and her eyes wouldn’t scrunch because her body wouldn’t move. She must have drifted into one of her dreams again.

Why hadn’t anyone come yet? Surely it had been five years by now. And the hammers had been echoing through the castle for what felt like weeks, proof that someone had returned to Reineggburg Castle.

Then she heard them: the slow tread of footsteps on the stairs. Her heart beat faster; she hadn’t heard anyone in her tower since the magic of the curse drove Axel, Mother, Papa, and everyone else away. A distant voice cried frantically, but those footsteps drew Helena’s full focus.

A creak of hinges. Someone was coming in! Then a hand lifted hers, a pair of lips brushed her knuckles, and for the first time in years, her eyes fluttered open.

“I knew it would be you,” she rasped, gazing into her rescuer’s brown eyes. “I knew you would come, Michael.”

She’d known for years that he would break the curse. But she had expected him to appear on her eighteenth birthday, not shortly after her twenty-fifth.

And she hadn’t expected his wife to be with him.

~

Leaning against the bookcase, Helena ran a light finger over the fine dagger lying on a shelf.

The cold that Michael had caught at Reineggburg had followed him back to Daraigh, just as she had.

But where it had kept him from supper, she had spent the last several hours in his sitting room awaiting his return.

She didn’t care about her brother’s lectures. She didn’t care that Papa had forbidden her to cause trouble with their neighbors. Papa had abandoned her to Reineggburg after her cursed christening, and she was tired of being alone.

Besides, servant gossip said Michael’s marriage had been struggling for more than a year.

Since anyone with eyes could see the connection between his wife and her guard, signing the Dissolution of Marriage should have been the easiest decision Michael had ever made.

Especially now that he knew his true love was still alive.

But he was frozen, pen clenched in his hand, hand hovering over the document, and not signing.

Why?

Helena straightened her evening gown, pretending confidence, but the longer he sat, the tighter the band squeezed around her chest.

Unwanted. Abandoned. Alone.

Michael’s hand spasmed around the shaking pen, and his head dropped, his short black hair falling over his forehead. He still hadn’t signed.

Even though his marriage was in shambles. Even though his visits had been one of few bright spots during her childhood exile to Reineggburg. She’d dreamed about him for twelve years of enchanted sleep while the kingdoms thought she was dead!

Now that he’d freed her from that terrible, lonely silence, why wouldn’t he sign so they could finally have their happily ever after?

The pen hit the desktop with a loud crack. “I can’t do it,” Michael ground out. His hand pressed into the desk, tension etched into his hunched shoulders. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“Arabella has barely looked at you in the last week,” Helena protested, crossing her arms over her chest. “But you’re still choosing her?”

“I’d say she was justified.” He turned his head enough for one brown eye to glare back at her. “Wouldn’t you?”

Jerking her face away, Helena flared her nostrils, refusing to bend under his judgment. It had been one kiss, born of twelve years of dreams and loneliness. And he’d seemed quite pleased with her company otherwise.

“She tried to run away with another man!” Her fingernails dug into her arms, but it was nothing to the pain ripping through her chest as Michael’s expression hardened.

“She didn’t. My choices drove Ella away, but she has been more forgiving than I deserve.” He jabbed a finger at the bookshelf next to her. “The dagger that you noticed? She gave that to me. The bow that you admired a few moments ago? It showed up after she saw us together.”

“A bribe to smooth away her own misconduct,” Helena scoffed, shoving off the bookshelf and striding toward him. He couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t let him be serious. “You’re smart enough to know that the only thing you’ll find with her is heartache and loneliness.”

“Smart?” he laughed bitterly. “If I was smart, I wouldn’t have let my own pain drive me to revenge against my wife.

If I was smart, I would have made time for her around my duties, and there would never have been a reason for my jealousy.

If I was smart,” he barreled on, his hand tightening into a fist, “I would have listened to my wife, and our trip to Reineggburg wouldn’t have been necessary. ”

Helena stared at him, mouth falling open as he paused to breathe heavily. “You wish you’d never gone to Reineggburg?” she echoed faintly. He wished… “You wish that I was still lost to my curse?” she choked out.

Unwanted.

“I—” For a moment, she thought he would confirm it.

But then he shoved out of his chair and stormed off to the other side of the room.

Running a hand through his dark hair, he sighed, “Of course I don’t, Helena.

I’m glad that you’re back, and I wouldn’t want your family to still believe that you’re dead. ”

He didn’t say it, but she could hear it hanging in the air. But I wish you weren’t here.

Not even Michael wanted her now.

Tears were building at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back, reaching for her anger instead. “Michael—”

“It would be best for our continued friendship if you return to Ralnor as soon as Axel can arrange it,” Michael cut in, watching the midnight world outside his window.

After a violent sneeze, he folded his hands behind his back and continued, “As it is highly inappropriate for you to be in my sitting room at two in the morning, you should leave now. I may have dozed for a few hours on a window-seat, but I am tired and would like a proper rest.”

If that wasn’t a dismissal, she didn’t know what was.

Holding her head high, Helena gathered her skirt in one hand and swept toward the door with her best imitation of her mother’s exits. He was feeling sentimental tonight, but in the morning—

“One more thing, Helena,” he called after her, his voice stiff and formal and his back still toward her. “I will not tolerate additional attempts to ruin my marriage. If you try, I will ban you from Daraigh.”

Her hair whipped around her as she spun back toward him. “You wouldn’t.”

His shoulders sagged, but then they straightened again. And with his face still turned toward the dark window, he said firmly, “I would.”

Abandoned.

She’d pushed him to choose, and he’d chosen his marriage. His duty. And Crown Prince Michael of Daraigh was nothing if not driven to fulfill his duties.

The heartache warred with her anger, so she gave the anger a little push.

If that was how he felt, he didn’t need to see her brokenness.

“Fine,” she fumed, balling her hands into fists at her sides.

“I’ll leave you alone. But don’t come crying to me when Arabella decides she’d rather have her guard. ”

“That’s my problem to solve, Helena, not yours,” Michael quietly replied, still not looking at her. “I have much work to rebuild what I have broken, and your assistance will not be required.” He glanced over his shoulder, but at his desk, not at her. “Even if she rejects me in the end.”

He wouldn’t want Helena even if his marriage couldn’t be salvaged?

Alone.

She spun away before he could see the moisture in her eyes. Storming out to the hallway, she gathered her ire around her like a shield. True love? What a joke.

Throwing open the door to an unused room, she stomped across to the unlocked window and pulled her shoes off.

She stuffed them into the satchel on the floor, then shoved her feet into a pair of sturdy boots.

Slinging the satchel over her shoulder, she clambered out onto the ledge and started climbing down.

She was done with princes. Noblemen too, since they were no better. Maybe she could find a commoner who wouldn’t mind an ex-cursed, archery-loving princess.

Helena dropped the last few feet to the ground and headed for the unlocked window of her own suite. Or maybe she would die an old maid. She’d always been alone, and true love was a dream.

Maybe alone was what she was always meant to be.