Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
He says he does not have words, and yet somehow he manages to find many dozens of them, more than enough to lecture me in the field for a good ten minutes while his unicorn grazes nearby.
Finally, when he runs out of breath and chastisements, he calls his mount to him. The unicorn saunters over with an elegant motion. It is very beautiful, but then again, all equines are. I wonder if I will get my very own unicorn one day.
“I am taking you back to the castle,” he tells me. “And I am going to teach you the lesson you very much need to learn if you are going to survive in this world, or any other for that matter.”
“And what is that?”
He mounts the unicorn and looks down at me from his regal height with an expression of irritated disbelief that tells me he is shocked I am yet to internalize all his lecturing.
“Obey. Me.”
3
Charming offers his hand in a chivalrous sort of way. I put my hand in his gloved palm and he helps me up onto the back of the unicorn. I wrap my arms around his waist as he turns back toward the village and clicks for the beast to head home.
“You are trouble,” he observes over his shoulder. “I am glad for that, and I am sorry that I must punish you for it.”
“Wait. What? Why are you glad for it? And if you’re glad, why must you punish me? And where is everybody?”
It is around two o’clock in the afternoon, I’d say, but there are no people in the streets. All the charming thatched homes and stores are closed, windows shuttered, doors barred. There isn’t so much as a stray dog in the streets. There is an eerie feeling of abandonment everywhere, but more than that, a sense of potential. It is as though everything is waiting for an event yet to come.
“Hiding from the dragon,” he repeats himself. “Nobody will come out until the dragon is slain.”
“Are you going to slay him?”
“I cannot.” Charming glances over his shoulder at me. “But perhaps one day you will.
“Me?”
“I will explain when we return to the castle. After you have been thrashed.”
“Hey, come on…” I try reasoning with him now that he seems to be in a better mood after getting all his royal disapproval out.
“You almost died,” he says. “You almost fell to your death within hours of arriving here. What kind of Happily Ever After is that? And she lay rotting, flat as a fucking pancake ever after?
I snort a little. This king has edge from time to time, a certain rakish modernity that enables me to relate to him. He’s not that much older than I am. Perhaps he is twenty-five or so? It is hard to tell, but he is certainly not old, nor is he very young. He is, as I am, in the first prime of life. I’ve been told this is the best time, but I suspect it is not.
“I’m not used to your way of doing things.”
“You’re not used to obeying me. You will become very accustomed to it, because I intend to give you absolutely no choice in the matter.”
They are stern words on the cusp of dark threats, no less intense for being made while astride a unicorn.
The ride up to the castle is incredibly picturesque and romantic. The colors of this world are bright and hyper-saturated, very intense and very warm. The sky is bright blue, the clouds perfectly wispy. The cobblestones are a range of earthen shades all smoothly cemented in place with bright white mortar. The village at the base of the mountain is very traditional in design. I don’t know what the proper word for the aesthetic besides cottagecore, and I am pretty sure everybody here would have no idea what that means even if I could speak to them.
In short order, I find myself back in the bedchamber where all this trouble started. Charming bolts both doors very thoroughly, and turns to me while rolling up his sleeves in a way that sends tingles through me at the sight of his muscular scaled forearms. He means business, and that means I am in trouble.
“Take off your dress and lay face down on the bed.”
“I do not want to do that.”
“It wouldn’t be punishment if you did, it would be seduction.”
I like the sound of seduction much better than I do the sound of punishment. He did say we were to be married. This, then, should be our marriage bed. This should be the place I lose my virginity. Not the place I lose my self-respect.
“You argue a lot,” he sighs when I fail to obey him yet again. “To save us both the trouble of further conflict, I will undress you myself. Come here. Please, princess, do not make the mistake of defying me agin. You are on your very last chance.”