The Beggar Princess

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “Leave us alone for a short while, would you?” Brennus asked the healers.

  The woman nodded. All of them headed for the door, offering me well wishes.

  “This is not the lesson I planned, to be sure,” he said.

  “My writing hand,” I said, almost pleading with him. My head felt fuzzy from the drink, but the terrible fact of my injury cut through the haze.

  “I know,” he said gently. “If you want to dictate, I can hire someone for the job. They’ll be sworn to secrecy if you wish it.”

  “I don’t want to dictate,” I said, annoyed. “My stories are mine and mine alone. And I don’t want your input on them too early, either. It’s far too easy to be a critic.”

  He laughed. “Ah, I worried that the wolves might have tamed your tongue. I’m glad that’s not the case. I want you to always be my little wild cat.”

  “I wasn’t much of a wild cat when I was kidnapped, I must admit. I was very scared. Suddenly I was happy to cook and clean. I just wanted to stay alive.”

  “You would’ve been foolish not to think so,” he said. “They killed one of my men and they would have killed you…” He trailed off, looking into the shadows between the candles that lit my bedside.

  “I hope it hasn’t tamed you either,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel sorry that I was kidnapped by wolves. Well, actually, I do want you to feel sorry. But just because I’m wounded…doesn’t mean I don’t want to be kidnapped by Lord Stormwild once in a while.”

  He lifted my good hand and kissed it. “Give me any trouble, lass, and I will put you right in your place.”

  “Good,” I said, and then I succumbed to sleep, with his hand wrapped comfortingly around my fingers.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Princess Bethany

  The next day, I was discharged from the healer’s ward, with a slew of potions meant for easing my pain. They made my head a little fuzzy, and perhaps helped add to the dreamlike quality of walking through my new home for the first time.

  The castle of Arindora surrounded an open courtyard. It was autumn now, and there were no flowers, and yet it was still beautiful. Trees with feathery red leaves and golden round leaves twisted delicately over bridges, evergreen shrubs with bluish-green needles lined stone-paved paths. There were bushes with red berries, swarmed with birds, reflected in the pools and streams that ran through the courtyard. Elven ladies with long hair and simple, elegant dresses were taking their afternoon stroll. Whatever King Brennus said about seeing the legs of elven ladies, in the court they were all finely dressed, and I was dressed like them: my sleeves were long enough to tuck my hands in for warmth, and draped low. A thin edge of fur trimmed the edges. One of the elven ladies below us had a small child in tow, and I could see the woman pointing out the birds to her daughter and naming them.

  This courtyard was surrounded by open balconies on all sides, but there were wooden shutters that rolled down to enclose the space on cold days. It was very different from my own home, and I was fascinated how much styles in architecture and art could change, just one country away.

  Inside, the palace walls were always covered in wooden panels, which were painted with patterns and scenes of hunts, elves gathering fruits in forest groves, and cultivated gardens, so even on a long winter night, the denizens could set one’s mind to dreaming of spring and summer days. The elven love of nature was plain to see everywhere. Fabrics were woven with patterns of vines and flowers; wall art depicted animals and trees almost like portraits, where in my father’s castle we only had portraits of human faces and paintings of old battles.

  “Aye,” Brennus said, when I mentioned this to him. “We forget the power of the forest at our peril, as you can see. It is a dangerous place, if not respected. And I have urgent business with it still. Now I have a third wolf brother to find and kill.” He told me the promise he had given the forest.

  “A third brother? You won’t go back into the forest to find him, will you?”

  “I will have to send men,” he said. “I have the business of ruling to do, myself. We’ll track down the nearest wolf clan and see if they know anything of these brothers. If we have some idea of what we’re looking for, I could put up wanted posters.”

  “He’s white,” I said, remembering the other wolves’ reaction to my first story. “And the other two wolves didn’t get along with him. Black called him a traitor.”

  “That’s a start, then. I must spare no expense, now. If I can’t cut down trees, people might lack for firewood. But never mind, we’ve got days ahead to worry over such things. Come and take a look at your new chambers. Your highness will find them up to her standards, I hope.” A pair of guards opened two tall doors for us, which led off the balcony, and I stepped into a large but very simple room with shelves of books, solid wooden furniture, and a writing desk with copies of my own books and a selection of quills ready for use. My injured hand itched to write beneath the poultices, splints and bandages that smothered it beneath my long, loose sleeve. I glanced at him nervously and tried picking up a quill with my left hand.

  It felt awkward. There was no denying that. My right hand throbbed as if chiding me for hubris. I put the instrument down again. “Later,” I said, with a sheepish shrug.

  “And here is our bedroom,” he said, opening a door to show me on to the next room. It was a humble room as well, for the royal bedchambers. The bed was draped with dark, heavy curtains. Each side of the bed had a simple side table and wardrobe, with a painted linen chest at the foot. The windows looked out on orchards.

  “Does it please you, lass?” he said.

  It was very different from my rooms back home. I didn’t have the music boxes and gilded clocks and overly flattering portraits of myself, the beautiful furniture, or views of the menagerie, nor the dressmaking skills of Millier. I opened the tall wardrobe sitting in the corner and found it already stocked with several gowns of the same sort I was wearing: simple woolen dresses, all of one piece with long, straight skirts, lacing at the back and requiring no elaborate assortments of supporting garments or arrangements of flounces, ribbons, and accessories.

  This place was mine. It was not the old castle that my father loved, nor was it the new palace where my brother would someday rule. This was the land where I was home. None of the trappings had ever mattered.

  I shut the door of the wardrobe, turned at his slightly expectant gaze and realized he was actually a little nervous.

  “Well,” I said. “I suppose it’s all right for a barbarian queen…”

  “You still think I’m a barbarian after seeing this fine castle I’m offering you?”

  “It is a fine castle, I will say that, but you are still quite rough around the edges, for a king. Should I be impressed that you know how to shovel horse shit? You really are the high elves’ country cousins.”

  His eyes flashed. “Is that how it is, then?” He grabbed me, lifted up my skirt, and smacked my ass. I was naked under my shift. He slipped his hands to my waist and walked me toward the bed.

  “My hand,” I said, worried over it despite my burgeoning lust.

  He turned me around so I was facing him, so I would no longer be tempted to brace myself with my hands when he pushed me down onto the bed. He hitched my dress up above my waist before shooting me a glance of concern. I nodded, encouraging him.

  “Not too soon, then?” He laughed. “I’m glad indeed that you’re no different, now that I have you at home, you wicked girl.”

  “You ought to know, I am never different. I am precisely the same amount of entitled pain in the ass.”

  “Keep your poor little hands safe, now,” he said, reaching up to them and putting my good hand over my bad one. Then he arranged the fur sleeves over my hands, and—I realized—found little buttons and loops tucked under the fur and fastened the two sleeves together. I hadn’t noticed them.

  “On cold days,” he said, “your ladies would button them for you to keep your hands snug. But right no
w, I’ll keep you very snug indeed.”

  He took the two draping ends of my sleeves and twisted them around his wrist, lifting them above my head. He was gentle in his movements now, however—careful not to hurt me. I liked this feeling too, to be swathed in soft wool and fur, mostly covered from head to toe, surrounded by the rustling of the bedcovers, only my pussy exposed.

  “When I saw you, lass, captured by those rogue wolves who had already killed Orisel, I wanted to damn well tear their guts out. How close I came to losing you! If my men hadn’t shown up, I would have fucked you in their camp once they were dead, just to show the gods that you’re mine.”

  “My goodness.”

  “Don’t pretend to be shocked. You’re wet just thinking of it. I’ve been thinking about you for a long time. Wondering if I’d find you and what kind of girl you’d be, and once I did, I knew I would do anything to keep you.”

  “I don’t know nearly as much about you as you know about me,” I said. “It’s not very fair. All I know is that you seem to know exactly what I like.”

  “Which is no small thing, is it?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “But, in fact, you know quite a bit, don’t ye? You’ve danced with me, thoroughly insulted me, traveled by my side, tasted my food, seen me fight for your honor. What’s left in life except to sit beside me and rule my people? And you’ll do that soon enough. You’ll be good at it, too.”

  “I hope so,” I said, betraying anxiety in this regard. I had never wanted to think of being a queen. “I truly do. I have no wish to be a peasant, but sometimes I wish I was not a princess, but merely the daughter of a merchant or some minor lord… to be left alone with my fancies.”

  “We all wish at times for what we don’t have,” he said. “But fate has made you a queen. You are fortunate indeed that it’s given you such a good king as well.”

  “Is that so?”

  He entered me with a thrust and I gasped, rocking my hips into him, to take him as deep as I could. His cock filled me, wringing pleasure out of me, and yet I could already see a gleam in his eye. We were going to take our time breaking in the marriage bed, and I could only imagine what he might have planned.

  “Aye,” he said. “And isn’t it better to have company for your fancies now and then?”

  Epilogue

  Princess Bethany

  Autumn turned to winter well before the official turning of the year’s shortest day, as it does in the north, snow blanketing the courtyard garden by the beginning of November. My hand healed slowly and caused me pain more than I liked to admit. It did not open fully anymore; my scarred palm curled inward. Whereas back home, I was once pestered and pressured to embroider and stitch and knit like other court ladies did on cold winter days, now no one expected such things of me.

  It seemed the height of irony. Brennus tried to teach me to learn humble work, and thanks to our encounter with the wolves, I could no longer do much humble work even if I wished to. But I think I had learned my lesson, all the same. Of course, sometimes I snapped at my maids; I was not an angel overnight. But when I did, they reported straight to Brennus and he reminded me what he expected of his queen!

  Yes, indeed, sometimes I did provoke them on purpose.

  Despite that I couldn’t sew, the elven ladies still invited me to their circles.

  It was stories they wanted from me now, stories from Lady Whittenstone.

  I had decided not to keep a secret anymore. I was tired of pretending to be two different people. The elven ladies loved stories, perhaps even more than my own people. They loved it when I told them tales of ghosts that were rumored to haunt my family castle. They pestered me to read the old lays and sagas, poetic tales of the great elven hunting parties, of faery dances and goblin tricks, of the wild things that dwelt in the north. And they loved my own stories—or so I liked to flatter myself—most of all.

  So I began to write with my left hand. This was no easy thing and sometimes Brennus found me pacing my chamber angrily with a quill dashed and stomped on the floor. But I didn’t want to disappoint my audience, and somehow, I filled a stack of papers before the yule season had even begun. I finished the first draft of my story of the lady-turned-maid Anabella and Lord Valimont. And then, one frosty December day, a representative of the wolvenfolk came to our court.

  He bowed to Brennus. “Your majesty, thank you for seeing me. I have come representing the clan of Stone Hollow, near where the River Ayl meets the sea.”

  “A long way,” Brennus said.

  “Yes. I wanted to offer my sympathies about the attack on you and your queen from one of our own. It was our pack the brothers broke off from. Ergar Longtooth was always a strange one. Even as a boy he didn’t follow our rules. He wanted human learning—” The wolf, a lean elderly man with gray hair and steely eyes, could barely hold back his disdain. “—as I believe you are aware. That is not the knowledge that wolves need, and it ended about as expected when he killed those boys at the House of Scholars.”

  “Ergar?” I asked.

  “The black wolf, my lady.”

  “I never knew his name,” I murmured.

  “As far as I’m concerned, his name should be consigned to dust. But—now you have put out wanted notices for the other brother, a white wolf. One of my kin was killed last month because he has a white pelt. But he is not one of the Longtooth clan. He was innocent…”

  “The forest is the one who demands his head,” Brennus said. “I made an oath to the trees in order to save my queen, but I have no personal feud with your kin. However, the forest must be repaid. The Longtooth brothers have done something to anger the forest. I want the white wolf alive; I am sorry that your kinsman ran afoul of an overzealous hunter. But if you want this to stop, you must join me in seeking him out.”

  “It isn’t our way to turn on our own!”

  “We punish our own when they harm others,” Brennus said. “I can’t uphold justice on your behalf, shall ye not uphold justice yourselves.”

  “All this, because a wolf wanted to read.” The man glowered.

  “What’s done is done,” Brennus said. “Ergar is dead. But it’s up to you, as to what to do with the third man, aye? I must find a balance between my own people, the spirits of the forest, and those of you who dwell within it.”

  The man hardly seemed to hear these words. “And who let him into the scholar’s house? Your people did, when it is not our way.” He stood up straighter, as if something had given him sudden confidence. A plan gleamed in his cold eyes. “I will bring you the white Longtooth brother, if you will swear to me that wolfkin will never again be allowed in the House of Scholars, the schools and libraries, or permitted to buy books.”

  I stiffened. “We can’t do that! You would ban your own people from learning anything?”

  “My people must learn our ways, not yours. We are half-animal and proud to be so. We aren’t meant for that type of learning. It torments and weakens the proud lupine instinct, and you should realize the unpleasant result if anyone does, my lady.”

  Brennus put a hand on my knee, and I quieted.

  “You have my word that I will agree to this,” he said, “if you send a paper from the next gathering of the wolf clans, with the seal of ten clan leaders on it. I can’t set a law based on one clan leader’s request.”

  The man nodded and then offered a begrudging bow. “That is fair. It will be done.”

  When he was gone, I looked to Brennus, a sinking feeling inside me. “You are really going to ban the wolves from an education?”

  “If their leaders agree to it,” Brennus said. “I don’t know if they will. But the fact remains—Ergar did kill those boys and others besides. Maybe the man’s right.”

  “But surely, some wolves are different from their clans? Just like people?” I frowned. “I want my next novel to be about this. About a wolf who wanted to read. I want to understand…if it could have gone a different way.”

  He stood up and walke
d over to me, where I sat on a simple throne that still didn’t quite seem to fit. “I think you will have to be careful, very careful,” he said. “You are a queen now, and your writing is no longer a secret. Your stories might be interpreted as policy. And yet…this is why I love you. You used your stories of Lady Gloria and Lady Celeste to work through your own role in life, aye? You have a great power to help people understand one another. Perhaps we should try to understand the wolvenfolk more than we do. I would not be too hasty to spin it into fiction…but how might you use your talents for the good? It’s worth considering.”

  “I understand…,” I said reluctantly. “When we find the white wolf, I want to speak to him.”

  “Of course, my queen,” he said. “So the matter is settled.”

  But, it must be admitted…I sat down and started writing the novel about the wolf who could read that very night. There were always certain matters in which no one, not even my beloved Brennus, could tell me what to do.

  Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this book, I would be much obliged if you consider leaving a review. To make sure you don’t miss a release, follow me on Amazon and on Facebook, where I also post snippets of the next book from time to time! Is there a fairy tale you’d like to see? Drop me a line on Facebook or at lidiyafoxglove@lidiyafoxglove.com! Next up is Cinderella…with a goblin twist! And maybe a cameo from some old friends…

  Fairy Tale Heat Series

  Every book is standalone and can be read in any order, although some characters might pop up in later books!

  Book One: Beauty and the Goblin King

  Book Two: These Wicked Revels (A retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses)

  Book Three: Rapunzel and the Dark Prince