Once Upon a Time
… the princess was lonely. And frightened. She did not dare leave the palace for the beautiful gardens, not after what had happened to her last time. But staying inside, with no one to talk to, or play with, or even acknowledge her existence, was boring.
Until he arrived.
Her evil uncle had a son. A son who was pulled out of boarding school. It was no longer safe, she’d overheard one of the servants muttering, for him to be outside of the palace compound, with everything that’s going on out there. Whatever that meant.
The princess didn’t think he would be much safer inside the palace, either, but of course, she was supposed to be invisible, so she had no one to share her opinions with.
Stefan was three years older than her, and he was nothing like his father. Inside the nursery, he talked so frequently that the princess was sure he must know everything there was to know about the world.
And he wasn’t afraid of sneaking around the palace to get up to mischief with her.
The first time they snuck into the indoor pool together, she told him, shyly, that she was afraid of drowning.
Waiting for him to laugh, or mock her, or call her a baby, she winced.
But he did none of those things. He simply stripped down to his underwear and stepped into the shallow end of the pool.
He demonstrated using his hands and feet in a pattern he called a ‘dog paddle’. And then he told her to strip down too, and he would help her to learn so she wouldn’t be afraid of drowning anymore.
Stefan showed her that she could love the water that had almost killed her.