The Prince and Her Dreamer

by Kayla Bashe

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Book Details

  The Prince and Her Dreamer

  About the Author

  Clara feels stifled by the life that's been planned out for her, and clings to her only hope that something more might be possible: a mysterious book given to her by her Uncle Drosselmeyer, that recounts the tales of the magnificent warrior woman known as the Red Prince.

  Decades ago, Drosselmeyer trapped the Red Prince in the form of a doll to save her from the Rats. When the magic of Clara's selfless admiration restores her to human form, she and Clara must find a way to stand against the Rats once and for all if they hope to enjoy the life they've always longed for...

  The Prince and Her Dreamer

  By Kayla Bashe

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by Nicole Field

  Cover designed by Jasmine Ang

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition December 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Kayla Bashe

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684313747

  Watching his best friend bleed, Ross had one thought: She was so young. Even with her laugh as wild and roaring as the Yuletide bonfires, even with her splendid holly-red jacket with gold buttons like stars, sixteen was too young to lead an army.

  Of course, I'm only twenty, Ross thought. To any other fae, I'd still be little more than a child, with two score years or more to go on my apprenticeship.

  But the Rat King's invasion had made adults of them all.

  He sped up to jog beside the litter, avoiding the worst patches of mud and gore.

  "How are you faring, Prince Mathilde?" asked one of the soldiers. Ross didn't remember their names and knew Mathilde—who always forgot faces—wouldn't either.

  Mathilde lay prone, her dark curls tangled around her pale face. She raised her head as much as she could. "I'll be all right in a moment—you've no need to trouble yourselves. If you could just lay me down—please—"

  With every step, they couldn’t help but jostle her, and breath hissed through her teeth. As the soldiers carrying their leader passed through the encampment, she made a visible effort to rally herself, sitting up and smiling, covering her wound with her coat.

  "We're almost there," Ross said quietly, squeezing her hand in support.

  "Thank you," she said when they laid her in her tent. "Ross will look after me—it's all right, the rest of you can go—"

  The moment they were gone, she let out a cry of pain and sagged back. Tears trickled down her cheeks.

  "The wound?" Ross began stripping everything that would interfere with his magic, tossing aside his gloves, leaving his sword belt where it fell.

  "He missed my lungs, I think. And my heart…still beating, after all."

  Blood darkened her bold, splendid red coat—at least, before the mud of the trenches, it had been bold and splendid. When the old king still lived.

  Ross knelt beside her. "Come on, Mathilde. Let's get that coat off so I can see how badly you're hurt."

  She raised her arms so he could pry the coat from her; she was as uncomplaining, obedient, patient, and tractable as a doll. That scared him most. Not wanting to subject her to more pain, he cut off the bottom of her shirt.

  Around the deep stab wound, her skin was the pale grey of December clouds. As he watched, the poison patch darkened and spread. The air tasted of metal.

  "My prince," he said cautiously.

  Mathilde opened her mouth to speak, stifled a gasp as pain hit her. "Is it bad?" she managed.

  The two of them had been children together. He yearned to look away. But the vows I made to her and to her father— "I'll see what I can do."

  Laying a hand flat on her stomach, he tried to pour power into her. Even though the tent reeked of her blood, Ross kept his breathing measured, imagining the tick of a universal clock. If he could just bolster her natural resilience, give her time to connect with the land's magic—

  All at once, he found himself standing on the edge of a canyon, the dark fog of poison surrounding him. He couldn't see the bottom.

  I could feed every ounce of strength I have into her and never close this damn wound. With a dizzying jolt, he fell back into his body.

  "I'm dying, aren't I?" Mathilde said. Her voice sounded flat, and her gaze seemed distant. "It's that anti-magic poison the Rats have. I've seen them use it."

  Summoning more healing energy, Ross struggled to smile at her. "It doesn't always kill. Why, just the other day—a young snow soldier from the Crystal Kingdom—"

  "Don't lie to your prince," Mathilde commanded, suddenly imperious. And, soft as desperation, "Please. Don't lie to your friend, either. This isn't time for one of your games or tests."

  Ross sat back on his heels and rubbed his temples, staving off exhaustion. "You're dying. The only question is how much time you have left."

  Mathilde nodded as if she'd been expecting his answer. "How much time can you give me?"

  "…Not enough." He'd never felt so fucking helpless. All he could do was staunch the bleeding, but he couldn't stop the poison's spread. The moment he stopped sustaining her life, she'd falter and fade. She was too connected to the land's magic to survive being cut off from it.

  "Then send me back into battle. I have no heirs. I'm the last of my line—either I kill the Rat King or he lives forever." She tried to pull herself to her feet but struggled even to sit up.

  "No. I'm not putting you on a horse. Absolutely not." As the court sorcerer, it was Ross’s duty to witness her passing. He didn't want anyone else to have to see their only hope falter and fade.

  She watched him, dark eyes suspicious. "So what's the plan? I mean…you have a plan, don't you?"

  From Mathilde's viewpoint, Ross always had a plan. He knew she thought of him as endlessly tricky, clever, ageless. But no mage or fairy in the realm could heal this injury. Unless…I took her out of the realm…

  "There's a spell. I can turn you into a doll. You won't age, you won't feel pain—at least, I don't think you will. But you certainly won't feel hunger or thirst."

  "Is there a catch?"

  He didn't answer. He didn't want to.

  He’d paused too long. "So there is a catch."

  Ross sighed. "I won't be able to break it. It'll use the energy of the human realms, so it'll need a human to break the spell. An act of pure unselfishness, or something like that. But I don't know how long it'll take to find someone who can do that." Or even if I'll be able to find them.

  Mathilde nodded slowly, considering. "And if the right person doesn't break the spell?"

  "Then you'll be stuck in the body of a doll forever, slowly losing your mind, and it'll be completely horrible."

  Mathilde's breath quickened, and she seemed more alert. "But I might be able to heal from this wound? I might be able to defeat the Rat King, even if it's a hundred years from now?"

  "The smallest chance."

  "Work your magic, then."

  He hesitated. He hadn’t expected her to say yes.

  "Quickly," she urged, a hand pressed over her wound as if she could keep herself from bleeding through willpower alone. "Before I lose my nerve. Before the pain becomes too great."

  He heard what she refused to voice: Before I beg to die.

  Closing his eyes to her agony, Ross began the spell. Af
terwards, he'd methodically destroy his old existence. He'd tell his lover the Sugarplum Fairy that he was leaving forever. He'd tell the kingdom that its prince was dead. But the unraveling of Ross's life—which had been predictable, despite its many dangers—began when he heard his prince scream for mercy, and when he kept chanting the invocation anyway.

  The night before Christmas Eve in the human realms, young Herr Drosselmeyer trudged down a snow-filled street and knocked at the door of family so distant, he didn't even know their first names. He used just enough magic to make them think they remembered him, to make them eager to welcome him as a guest.

  Divination had told him that one of his relatives in the human world would be able to break the spell. But it was none of his aunts and uncles, or his cousins, or even his foster-siblings.

  Years passed, then decades. The cousins who were his age married and had children, and teased him about not doing the same, guiding him gently to the margins of their lives. He stayed in the human world; the paths back home had been blockaded long ago. He aged, because it was easier than people asking him questions about why he was getting no older.

  And he set his prince on a fine cherry-wood stand in his office with an army of toy soldiers beside her and read to her while he worked.

  *~*~*

  Seventeen-year-old Clara slipped on her pearl earrings as her mother watched approvingly. Of course, she'd rather be up in her room, warm under a mountain of blankets as she dove into Ivanhoe yet again.

  But, "Please, Clara, I'll be so bored without you," her ten-year-old brother Fritz had pleaded earlier, and so she'd said yes.

  Except now her mother kept talking about how perhaps she'd meet some nice boy at the party. She stroked Clara's hair, which was just as long and blonde as her own. "I can't understand this not wanting to marry. Won't you be lonely, sweetheart?"

  She means well, Clara reminded herself. She just wants me to be happy. "I want to be a district visitor. I'll go around asking if the poor people need anything, and then raise funds so they can have proper food and medicine, and write to different tradesmen to help them find work. Or I'll make sure all the women in the Royal Society for the Protection of Ladies' houses have warm petticoats while they're in training—or organize amusements at the children's hospitals, so they have something cheery to motivate them to take their medicine. Or I'd love to be a baby superintendent at the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children." She beamed at her own reflection, cornflower blue eyes meeting their match.

  "Didn't you just say you never wanted to marry?" her mother teased.

  "I like children," Clara said, trying not to sound defensive.

  "I'm sure you'll like them even more when they're yours, sweetheart. Why, before I laid eyes on your perfect little face, I never imagined how much affection a woman could have for the child of her womb. And you've grown up to be sweeter and lovelier than I ever imagined." With a rustle of taffeta, she wrapped Clara in her perfumed arms and kissed her on the forehead.

  It was a sweet gesture, but Clara still felt a pang of discomfort.

  "You'll be down in a moment, won't you?"

  "Yes, I just want to put on a necklace," Clara said, although she sat unmoving as she heard the door close. At least it would probably be a short party, and then she could go to bed early—or, better yet, pretend to go to bed early and then curl up with a book, the ultimate height of pleasure.

  She was about to choose a necklace to wear, but then something else caught her attention unexpectedly.

  A gold corner stuck out from the pile of books by her bedside, catching the light.

  I remember a book with gilded edges, a Christmas Eve much like this one…Carefully she lifted the books above it until she could remove it and smiled at what she encountered.

  "Tales of the Red Prince, by Herr Drosselmeyer."

  She opened the well-worn binding to her favorite illustration, the Red Prince heading in to battle. In the beautifully detailed watercolor, the Prince's raven curls flew in the wind as her crystal unicorn charged forward, and she held a saber aloft. Sunlight haloed her strong face.

  Clara traced a finger over the young woman's regal, aquiline features and read the sentence below the illustration aloud, smiling.

  "And so the Red Prince spurred her steed back into the fray, determined to rescue as many of the prisoners as possible."

  She remembered dinner on Christmas Day, many years ago.

  "And how are you liking my gift? You haven't lifted your head from that book except to eat!" Uncle Drosselmeyer teased.

  She'd beamed up at him. "It's my most favorite. I've already finished it twice. I'll read it before bed every day until the day of my death!"

  He'd nodded, taking her seriously. "What's your favorite part? Your mother was most fond of the Sugarplum Fairy's gowns, I recall, and your father liked reenacting the battles with his toy soldiers."

  "I like the Red Prince," Clara replied at once.

  With a groan of effort, he sat back in his plush armchair, folding his arms across his considerable stomach. "You'd like to be a princess yourself, then?"

  "No. I'd like to meet her and be her friend."

  Interest sparkled in his deep blue eyes. Clara's favorite activity was talking about books; she could recite facts for hours. Most adults told Clara to go play with her cousins or to stop being so precocious. But Uncle Drosselmeyer had always cared about everything she had to say. "Really? Tell me more."

  Clara hugged herself. "She can't be that much older than me, and she must be terribly lonely. No father, no mother, the Rat King after her. Sitting in a tent in the rain on Christmas Eve…I'd like to bring her inside and knit her a warm sweater. I knitted an entire pair of socks for Fritz for Christmas," she added proudly.

  With a nod, he beckoned her closer. "Would you like to know a secret?"

  Clara nodded back. "I love secrets."

  "It's all real. The Rat King, the Crystal Palace, the Sugarplum Fairy—all of it. Would I ever tell you something that wasn't entirely true?"

  Her mother, passing by, heard their conversation and chuckled. "I remember when you gave us copies of that Red Prince book. It's not the version with the painting of the Rat King, is it?"

  "She's old enough," Drosselmeyer replied with a shrug bordering on the defensive.

  "I hardly think so," said one of her aunts. "Your mother and I had nightmares for weeks. Don't worry; there's no such thing as a Rat King," she told Clara.

  But Clara had believed her uncle. She’d peered outside in every flurry, searching for snow maidens, and expected that one of the rats the cat brought in would someday carry a miniature sword.

  And then there was the enchanting Red Prince.

  Throughout her life, Clara had been fascinated by many girls. Elizabeth from school, with her eyes green as a cat's, who raised her hand even when she didn't know the answer. Her dancing mistress, who had the long red hair and freckle-dappled cheeks of an Irish milkmaid and the unearthly bearing of a queen.

  The actress who'd played Desdemona at the Adelphi, with her voice as pure as church bells, so small and gentle, full of tenderness and compassion, that Clara had wept inconsolably at her death and laughed in a helpless, giddy fashion at every death in the rest of the play.

  But the beautiful, bold girl in the picture (and she and Clara were finally the same age now) outshone them all.

  During her childhood, she'd fantasized nightly about meeting the Red Prince.

  The Red Prince and I rescue the Sugarplum Fairy from Rat soldiers, and as a thank-you she builds a palace for us both to live in.

  Or,

  I am terribly wounded protecting the Red Prince, and she weeps over me and her tears bring me back to life.

  The Red Prince and I attend a ball with the mermaids, and she brushes my hair.

  All of the other girls always wanted to play house or wedding; Clara had only wanted to read and dream. Maybe, even then, she had been somehow different.

  "Clara!" her
mother called from downstairs. "The guests are here! Don't you want to say hello?"

  "One moment!" Clara called back. But, even so, it was nearly ten minutes before she was able to make herself put down Tales of the Red Prince.

  *~*~*

  "Oh, thank goodness!" Fritz ran to her side the moment she came down the stairs. "All the aunts want to pinch my cheeks and tell me how adorable I am. Hide me, please."

  Clara, catching onto his scheme, stood perfectly still. This allowed him to duck behind her as a procession of relatives bustled past them both.

  He peeked out from behind her skirts. "They're gone?"

  "You've dodged them on this pass of the drawing room, at least." She looked around for her own sake. Thomas, a young man whom she particularly disliked, was nowhere to be found. Maybe she and her brother would both survive this party.

  He nodded. "I'll be able to sneak out and play in the snow, then. And Clara?"

  "Yes?"

  "After dinner, will you meet me in the hallway, please? I have something important you need to hear in private." Curiosity pricked at Clara, but his attention was clearly on the boys laughing and shouting outside, and she didn't want to keep him if he was so distracted.

  "Sure," she said cautiously. "Fritz—"

  But he'd already scampered off.

  "Clara! Look who's here!" her mother called from across the drawing room.

  In a splendid black cloak lined with red silk, in a flurry of snowflakes, Herr Drosselmeyer had swept into the room.

  Clara ran to his side. Already the urge to talk about books bubbled inside her. "You know, I've been reading your novel again, the one you gave me when I was younger. How clever you must have been to think everything up."

  Visibly intrigued, he ushered her towards his favorite chair, where she perched at his feet. "Do tell."

  "Yes. You see, the Red Prince is like Joan of Arc, if God had been sensible and made her English. But she's also like Britomart from the Faerie Queen, except with a motivation other than courtly love. And she's a metaphor for how Jesus fought Satan during the Harrowing of Hell, because in the Middle Ages the unicorn represents Jesus," Clara said eagerly, twisting her hands in excitement as she spoke.