He smiled reluctantly back. “Of course I do.” He looked at my elaborate hairstyle and grinned. “You look pretty, Pen.”
I stepped into the hall to give him an impulsive hug. “Thanks for sending me that letter. And for coming now.”
He shook his head. “As if I had any choice. A royal wedding, you know, so of course Lukas and Clio were invited.” But he winked at me before he walked away, and I went back into the room smiling.
When I appeared, all of my sisters descended on me, announcing it was time. Simon had arrived from somewhere, elegant for once in his pageboy finery, and declared the carriages ready and waiting. He was especially proud of his new position since the Concordians had made peace with the earl, and Simon had been allowed to invite several of his old friends to attend the wedding. It hadn’t even been a long journey for them since the earl had resettled them north of Marblehill closer to Torina. They had rejuvenated a dying fishing village, and apparently many of them had found they much preferred fishing and living along the Sarrens to mining.
Simon had been pleased at the news but showed no interest in joining them. Apparently being pageboy for a princess was far superior to fishing. His whole focus for some time had been on how amazed his friends would be to see his new appearance.
A storm of women swirled around me following Simon’s announcement, and the next few minutes felt like a dream as they whisked me into a carriage and off to the palace.
But everything fell back into place when I looked down the long aisle, past the assorted guests—a mixture of royalty, nobility, and commoners—and into Arthur’s eyes. He wore bridal white over black and gold, and his charming smile seemed just for me. Finally, I was to be married to the one person who had seen me for me, right from the beginning when I had fallen—quite literally—into his arms.
Leaning on my father, with my sisters around me, I walked down to meet him, as if I were floating on a cloud. It had taken six years, but this was it. A happily ever after for all of us.
Did you miss out on any of the adventures in the Entwined Tales? The stories of Rynn, Eva, Sophie, Ellie, and Martin are all available now.
Vol 1 - A Goose Girl: A Retelling of The Goose Girl by KM Shea
Vol 2 - An Unnatural Beanstalk: A Retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk by Brittany Fichter
Vol 3 - A Bear’s Bride: A Retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Shari L. Tapscott
Vol 4 - A Beautiful Curse: A Retelling of The Frog Bride by Kenley Davidson
Vol 5 - A Little Mermaid: A Retelling of The Little Mermaid by Aya Ling
Vol 6 - An Inconvenient Princess: A Retelling of Rapunzel by Melanie Cellier
Note from the Author
Thank you for reading An Inconvenient Princess. If you enjoyed it, consider checking out my other fairy tale retellings all set in the world of the Four Kingdoms and Beyond. These interconnected stand-alones feature romance, intrigue, and adventure.
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The Queen
It had only been a squirrel or a deer moving through the forest. Or so she told herself when she heard the noise through the trees. She tried to calm her breathing.
She focused her mind on the image of his face. After all, she was doing this for him. She would do anything for her beloved son.
He would not suffer like… but her mind skittered away from that thought. That wouldn’t help her breathing.
Finally, she calmed herself enough to recite the words she still remembered so clearly. The words that would summon help.
She hadn’t expected an immediate response so was startled into an undignified yelp that she quickly stifled. Her frightened eyes sought the castle, but there were no sounds in response to her cry.
She turned back to look at the creature before her. Relief! The face was still filled with the kindly wisdom she remembered. She felt for a moment the lightness that came from not being alone, from not having to be the one with the answers.
“You came!”
“My dear child, of course I came.”
The queen laughed, a low chuckle. “Hardly a child anymore. In fact, I have three children of my own.”
She received a smile in response. “You still seem like a child to me. It seems only yesterday when I was –”
But the queen cut her off. “I don’t want to reminisce. I need your help.”
It came out more sharply than she intended, so she tried again. “I’ve called for you because of my son. I’m concerned for him. He needs your help.”
Her companion looked around as if she expected to see the prince lurking behind a tree.
The queen shook her head. “He’s not here. Doesn’t know anything about it. But I’m desperate that he not make the same mistake as his father.”
This earned her a sudden, sharp look.
“And we’ve heard rumors, the king and I. We have to be sure that the ones who come are true. That the one who’s chosen is…” she paused… “the right one. Please, can you help me?”
“True, you say. Hmmmm.” Her companion murmured something under her breath and then was silent for a space.
The queen began to look anxious again.
Then, with a swift movement, something small was pressed into her hand. “She would have to be true indeed, to feel this. Put it under the mattress. Only the right one will feel it.”
“Under the mattress? Oh, thank you, thank you.”
The queen looked so relieved, so buoyant, it seemed for a moment she was the one with wings. She clasped the hands before her, “I must go. But I’m so grateful! You are as kind as you always were.” With a final smile, she turned and slipped away into the darkness.
Her companion didn’t move but watched her go, long after she seemed to have disappeared from sight. “The same mistake as his father? What is going on in that girl’s head? A muddle, indeed. Well, I suppose they’ll all learn something from the experience.”
And then suddenly she vanished.
The wood was empty again. Except for the silent watcher who was neither a squirrel nor a deer.
The Prince
Every good story I’ve ever heard has involved a prince. And usually a handsome, intelligent one. Now I have nothing against being handsome or intelligent, but I don’t want my life to be a story. I want to be free to make my own choices. Not to be governed by the magical whims of some godmother. Sure, I wouldn’t be here at all if a godmother hadn’t intervened in my parents’ life, but that doesn’t mean I want that for me. I’m willing to do my duty and fall in love with a princess, but I don’t want magic to help me do it. I’m perfectly fine on my own.
“Maaaaaaaaxxx!”
Groan. Or at least I would be perfectly fine if I could ever manage to actually be on my own.
This is the worst part of my father’s bizarre determination to sequester us all in the middle of the forest every winter. Our Winter Castle is a lot smaller than our Summer Palace. The castle is still large by normal standards, but normal standards don’t apply to twin eleven-year-olds. Particularly when those eleven-year-olds are my sisters.
I debated staying put and hoping they didn’t find me or trying to slip past them back to my room. Unfortunately, I spent too long considering my options, and they burst into the library and immediately saw me where I sat with my legs propped up in one of the window seats.
“What are you doing?”
My sister Lily’s angelic appearance is extremely misleading.
“Nothing.”
“Well, what are you thinking about then?”
The fact that Sophie looks exactly like Lily makes them appear twice as angelic. Once again, incredibly misleading.
“Nothing.”
“You can’t be thinking about n
othing! That’s impossible.”
Lily was starting to look annoyed, and I generally try to be far away when she’s annoyed.
“Well, I guess I was thinking about being bored.”
“Oh.” She frowned and sat down on the floor, looking up at me. “We’re bored, too, what should we do?”
I sighed. We’d only been at the castle for a month, and we must have had some variation of this conversation twenty times. I ran through the usual suggestions: study, dance practice, talk to your governess, talk to Mother, talk to Father, talk to Nanny. Each one was greeted with an eye roll from Lily and a sigh from Sophie. The nanny suggestion got two eye rolls and two sighs. I added a new suggestion on the end.
“Why don’t you play dress ups? I bet Mother has some old trunks full of clothes you could use.”
“Really Max, we’re not five.”
I now realized what I had missed at the beginning of the conversation. Lily was in a princess mood. (Don’t ask me what I consider synonyms for princess.) I decided to get out of there quickly.
“Well, you’ll have to work something out for yourself then. I have to go and help Father with some diplomatic communications.” I stood on the window seat before I’d finished speaking and leaped over the twins’ heads to land between them and the door. I then walked from the room as quickly as I could without actually running. After all, I’m nineteen years old. Not even the world’s most obnoxious twin sisters could make me do something as undignified as running through the castle.
Once out of the room I slowed to a stroll and headed in the direction of my father’s office. There weren’t any diplomatic communications, of course. Or at least none that my father would want my advice on. But I wouldn’t put it past the twins to come and check if I really was with Father. They were probably mad enough with me as it was. I didn’t want to spend the next week checking around corners.
When I reached his office, I knocked on the door and pushed it open without waiting for an answer. I only got one stride into the room before I realized something was wrong. My father was almost always in this office during the day, it was his favorite retreat. My mother, on the other hand, was never here. It was a manly room, full of oak wood bookshelves stained to match the dark color of the desk, and free of any decorations or adornments. She looked out of place sitting in one of the leather chairs across from the desk. Out of place and unsettled. My father, on the other hand, looked downright agitated.
I started to back out of the room but was stopped by my mother’s voice.
“Max! Perfect timing. Your father and I would like to talk to you.”
She sounded excited which was so far from what I was expecting that I froze and missed my opportunity to dash from the room. I began to regret abandoning Lily and Sophie. Even entertaining two fiends disguised as small girls would be preferable to a talk with my parents.
To clarify, a talk with one of my parents would be fine. It was my mother who told me, at the age of eight, that my parents agreed I wasn’t a little child anymore. Which meant I could leave Nanny and the nursery and get my own suite of rooms and a man servant to wait on me. But it was my parents together who told me that my mother was pregnant, and I was now going to have to share their attention with two more siblings.
It was my father on his own who told me he had found the perfect thoroughbred to be my first full-sized horse, and he was the one who told me they’d bought me my own hunting lodge. But last year my parents together told me that I couldn’t spend the winter at that lodge with friends. Even at eighteen I was expected to join the family in our forest hideaway.
So, it was with extreme reluctance that I moved forward and sat in the remaining chair. If my mother felt unsettled, she no longer showed it. Only the excitement was on display now. My father, on the other hand, appeared even more agitated and had abandoned his usual stately calm in favor of drumming his fingers on the desk.
“As you know, your father and I have begun to think about your marriage.” Only the memory of Lily and Sophie allowed me to hold back the sigh and eye roll. Maybe I should have just stayed in bed this morning.
“And you also know that it is very important to me that you marry a princess. A true princess.” The slight emphasis on the true was new, but the princess theme was familiar.
“Yes, Mother,” I replied, “and you know that I’m perfectly willing to marry a princess.” Which was true. Have you ever seen an ugly princess? No. They can come in the annoying variety sure—just look at my sisters—but they don’t seem to make them in ugly. And I’d always figured a common girl was at least as likely to be annoying as a royal one. At least this way I’d be guaranteed a wife I could enjoy looking at whenever official receptions started to drag.
“Your father is concerned that just because a girl is a princess doesn’t guarantee she’ll make a good queen. Or a good wife for that matter.” I threw my father a grateful look. With any luck, I’d get a wife I could talk to as well as look at.
“Your father feels that we need to consider something more than just their lineage. So, we’ve decided to invite some princesses to come for a visit, and I’ve come up with a test for them.”
At this point, if I hadn’t been so busy being horrified, I would have started to question my mother’s sanity.
My horror must have shown because she hurried to add, “Just the daughters of a few of our neighbors.” My horror didn’t abate, so she added, “Not all at once, of course. One at a time.”
I started to breathe again, just.
Everyone accepts the fact that their parents are out of touch. But mine really seemed to have gone over the edge. A test? The suggestion was as strange as their behavior. My father just kept looking more and more agitated, his fingers moving faster and faster. And my mother, usually the epitome of poise, had now started shooting him tense looks. I would have suspected them of being in the middle of an argument, but my parents never fight.
“A test?” I finally managed to get out. “What sort of test? And how many princess visits are we talking about?”
I was already trying to tally the number of balls, state dinners, and official ceremonies I would have to endure.
“I guess that depends how the first few visits go,” my mother said with a smile.
That made me realize the visits would continue until something worse happened—a wedding. I’d counted on at least another couple of years before that.
“When is the first one coming? Surely we could wait a couple of years before we start the parade…”
I could already tell from my mother’s expression that things were not going to go my way.
“We can’t afford to wait around, dear. What if it takes a couple of years to find the right princess? This is very important to the kingdom. Since you’re our only son, you can’t delay getting married and having sons of your own.”
Children? Children!!! This was getting worse and worse.
“I’m only nineteen, Mother. I don’t exactly have one foot in the grave.”
Now both my parents were giving me the look, and I knew it was all over. Once duty to our kingdom of Arcadia was invoked, I didn’t have a chance.
“Fine. When is the first princess coming?” Please let it be no time soon. Or at the very least after my annual hunting trip.
If my winters–spent without friends, hunting or any other diversions–were the low point of my year, my annual hunting trip was the high point. I hosted all my closest friends at my lodge, and we spent every day in the saddle. With no women around none of us stood on ceremony, and for one week of the year I got to forget I was a prince with royal responsibilities.
“As soon as we get back to the capital. But don’t worry, you can have your hunting trip first.”
I sighed. Small mercies, I suppose.
Chapter 1
If anyone had told me a year ago that I would find true love through a pea, I would have laughed. I mean, when you live in a forest and never see anyone who isn’t related to
you, or at least overly obsessed with wood, it’s kind of hard to see how a vegetable could lead you to love. But, of course, it wasn’t just the pea. You could also say the light led me there, and in this case, that wouldn’t be metaphorical.
Sometimes I have good ideas, sometimes I have bad ideas, and sometimes I have colossally bad ideas. It turns out leaving the merchant camp for an evening stroll was one of the colossally bad ones. At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal—I just wanted to stretch my legs after a week of riding in a wagon. Even when it got dark too quickly, and I discovered I’d lost my way, I didn’t realize just how bad an idea it was. And then it started raining.
The rain didn’t reach me at first because the forest canopy was too dense. I could hear the raindrops hitting the leaves above me, though, and occasionally a fat drop amassed enough weight to push through the foliage and land on the top of my head. But I certainly wasn’t wet—only starting to feel a certain dampness in the air and an utter certainty that I had no idea which direction led to the camp.
“Well, here’s where your stupid pride has led you,” I muttered to myself.
Ariana, the merchant in whose wagon I had secured passage to Arcadie, our kingdom’s capital, had warned me not to go too far, but I’d been supremely confident. After all, if I didn’t know the woods, I didn’t know anything. Turns out I didn’t know anything.
In some ways, this revelation wasn’t much of a surprise. I had been born in my family’s remote house and had slept there every night since, except for the last six in the back of Ariana’s wagon.
“Should have been paying more attention instead of daydreaming about ArcadieeeEEK!”
My recriminations turned into a particularly embarrassing shriek at a sudden clap of thunder. I instinctively looked around to check that no one had heard me. My brothers would be laughing over my fright for days. But then I remembered that my brothers weren’t here—that, in fact, I was completely alone. Three big drops fell off a branch and ran down the back of my neck, and I had to gulp and angle my face upwards to prevent an equally large tear from slipping out of my eye.
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