“The queen reached for the potion, desperate for the potential children it might bring, but the old woman held it just out of her royal grasp.
“‘My dear,’ the old woman told the queen. ‘Nothing, not even children, are given for free.’ I, I mean, the old woman pulled out a contract ready for the queen’s signature. ‘With this potion you will have more children then you have ever dreamed, and in return, all I require is the company of the last born.’
“The queen was desperate, yet she hesitated. To consign her unborn young to such a vague pact filled her with concern. She negotiated with the old woman until a clause was added to the pact. Should someone in a selfless act offer to take the child’s place, the child would be spared.”
“She planned to offer herself, didn’t she?” the soldier asked, wondering what had gone wrong.
“Probably.” Lucifer shrugged and dropped his pose. “She never had the chance.”
“And who’s fault is that?” Louisa shouted out. She looked as surprised as anyone to discover she could speak again.
“Not mine,” Lucifer said, looking bored. “I kept up my end of the bargain. She had a whole passel full of brats. I can’t help that it finally did her in. Childbirth is always risky.”
The soldier glanced back at Elise, still standing behind him. The little girl didn’t cower, but stood her ground, holding her small dagger in the same defiant manner as her older sisters held their swords.
“And none of you offered to take her place?” The soldier stared at the princesses expecting to meet faces filled with shame and regret. Instead, each girl gazed at him with the same steady stare they had used before.
“None of us are cowardly enough for such an act,” said Mary in a quiet voice.
The soldier stared at her for a moment. Like the folks back home, he would have considered the act one of bravery not cowardice.
“Cowardly?” asked the Devil.
Louisa snorted. “He doesn’t understand. What a surprise.” She turned to answer Lucifer, but from the way Mary stared at the soldier, he suspected Louisa really spoke to him.
“Yes, cowardly. For how would we choose who to sacrifice? Who would we not miss if someone were to go in Elise’s place? Each of my sisters is as dear to me as the next, and I would suffer equally no matter who was consigned to your vile realm. I need them, and they need me.”
“And our country needs its heir,” said Mary in a low voice.
Louisa reached over and squeezed Mary’s hand, but otherwise didn’t answer her. Instead, she continued to stare at the Devil. “That is why that night, the night of our mother’s death, when you and your henchman snuck into our rooms to steal away my six year old sister, I followed and fought.” She pointed at the duke on his demon horse, and the knight nodded in acknowledgement of that night. “And that is why I begged and struck my own foolish deal with the Devil. Each night my sisters and I would risk injury and even death fighting for my youngest sister and her soul. We would fight alone and outnumbered with no hope of aid lest we forfeit our own souls. In return, for each night we stayed standing, we earned another day where Elise could not be taken.”
“Foolish child,” said the Devil. He shrugged. “I have always thought so. You are young and strong now, but what happens when you weaken with age, when your hands become too gnarled to hold a sword? One day you will fall, and the youngest will be mine. It’s only a matter of time, and I have all eternity.”
“Perhaps,” said Louisa. She didn’t sag or in any way show that his words had wounded her. If anything, she sounded even more determined than she had before. “But my sisters and I will give her as many days as we can.”
The princesses cheered, and behind the soldier, Elise shouted a battle cry.
The soldier stared at the women arrayed around him and realized that here he saw more courage before him than he had ever witnessed on the Southern Front. These women fought for their cause and what they believed was right every night. Perhaps that was true courage—doing what was right even when others doubted you. Perhaps it was braver to fight every night for a sister instead of sacrificing yourself in her place. Perhaps it was braver to walk away from a war than to continue fighting for something you never thought was right in the first place.
For the first time since the day the war had begun, the soldier felt lighter as if the weight of cowardice had lifted from his shoulders. Enlisting and fighting in a war he hadn’t believed in, that had been the work of a coward. It had been months since he had walked away. He hadn’t been a coward, not really, in a very long time.
The soldier gave a small chuckle and stood straighter than he ever had while standing at attention before his superior officers. The old woman had been right. The princesses had saved him from himself, and in return, he would save them from the Devil.
“I sacrifice myself in their place,” he said. The soldier had meant to sound grand like a hero in a myth, but his pronouncement fell flat. No one seemed to notice he had spoken. He had thought himself a coward for years, and that kind of thinking isn’t overcome in a matter of moments no matter how powerful the epiphany that prompts the change in view.
He cleared his throat and tried again. “I sacrifice myself in their place.”
“What?” asked Lucifer. Mary gasped. They had heard him this time.
“You heard.” The soldier pushed past the line of women and walked until he was within a few feet of the Devil before stopping. “I offer myself in Elise’s place.”
“No,” cried Mary.
The soldier smiled but didn’t turn back.
“Oh, don’t get your petticoats in a twist,” Lucifer said to Mary even though she still wore breeches and there wasn’t a petticoat in sight. “He can’t interfere or I get all of your souls. He agreed to that earlier.”
“I agreed to not raise my knife in their defense. I have certainly not done so. Their souls are still their own.”
“You …” Lucifer’s mouth snapped shut. “Well, damn. I hate it when it comes down to wording.” He tapped a single finger against his lips in a slow, constant manner the soldier found almost hypnotic. “Your souls are still safe,” he said to the princesses, dropping his hand back to his side. “Apparently, this is just not my night.”
The soldier didn’t turn around, but a gentle breeze caressed the back of his neck as if twelve women had exhaled in relief all at once.
“But is this a truly selfless act?” asked Lucifer. He circled the soldier caressing him with a gaze as sharp as nails. Lucifer trailed a finger across the soldier’s back from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and the soldier shivered, not entirely from fear. “It’s true I don’t see how you benefit,” the Devil continued, “but is any act truly selfless?”
The soldier didn’t reply.
“You do realize you will be spending an eternity in Hell, the realm of torture and despair, seeing to my every pleasure.” Lucifer smiled, and it was all the soldier could do to keep from screaming in terror. The Devil’s smile promised that his pleasure would result in only torment for the soldier.
“Yes,” the soldier managed to spit out through chattering teeth. He had never felt such fear, and yet he knew this was what he needed to do. The realization that in this manner he was braver than anyone could ever have anticipated brought him an unexpected sense of peace. He might be history’s greatest fool, but he wasn’t a coward.
“I will flay your body into little pieces, reassemble them, and do it again.” The Devil continued along in this vein for quite some time with each torture he described more gruesome than the one before. At one point one of the princesses retched at one of Lucifer’s more visceral descriptions. The list became so long and so ludicrous that the soldier became bored, and then he became curious.
“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.” The soldier interrupted a rather ridiculous torture involving hummingbirds and eight week old kittens. “You’re going to do unspeakable things to me, and I still agree to take Elise’s place. Just why ar
e you trying to talk me out of it?”
“Because I don’t want you,” Lucifer shrieked. He stomped his foot and sulked like a spoiled child denied a favorite toy. “And if I take you, I can’t have one of them, and if I don’t take you, I still can’t have one of them because the contract only stipulates a selfless act. It doesn’t say by whom.”
“Pity,” said Louisa. She came to stand next to the soldier. Mary joined him on the other side and rested one of her hands on his arm. “Then I suppose you have a decision to make,” said Louisa, using the voice of a future queen. “Will you take him or not?”
Lucifer stood until he was within an inch of the soldier’s face. He stared deep into the soldier’s eyes, and the man could feel the Devil reading his very soul.
“Take him away,” Lucifer said to Louisa. “There’s no point in my keeping him here. He realizes he’s no longer a coward, and nothing I can do to him would even come close to the torment he has already inflicted on himself.” He turned to the soldier. “You’re no fun.”
Mary pulled on the soldier’s arm, and they both took a step back.
“The contract has been completed?” asked Louisa, standing her ground. The soldier and Mary took another step backward. “You relinquish your claim on Elise? All of us, including the soldier, still retain our souls?”
“Yes.” Lucifer waved a hand, dismissing them. When Louisa still didn’t move, he added, “You might want to run now before I set my pets on you just for fun.” He waved at the demon horde still gathered on the beach. “I’m not in the best mood, you know.”
All of them turned and scrambled for the cave, the bones of the beach crunching underfoot in their mad dash to get away. The soldier chanced one glance back. Lucifer still sulked on the beach and kicked a demon that dared to come too close. He didn’t order his army to give chase though. He seemed finished with them all, at least for now.
* * *
In the morning, the King had the doors unlocked only to find his daughters well-rested with shoes only slightly scuffed, with intact soles not worn through to the inner linings. The soldier sat chatting with Mary about an article she had read in a natural history magazine. If the king was surprised to find his daughters cheerful for the first time in years, he didn’t show it. He merely demanded an explanation.
Louisa, Mary, and the soldier took him to one side and in low voices explained about the contract, the Devil, and the nightly battles the women had endured. The king was skeptical at first, but the soldier brought out the ruby apple with solid gold leaves he had pulled off the tree in the cave. The younger girls pulled out their sabres to demonstrate their fighting skills, and the twins showed off their archery by shooting at pillows from across the length of the throne room, much to the court’s horror.
By the noontime meal, even the most doubtful of the king’s advisors agreed that the mystery had been solved. When one night, and then two, and then a month of them had passed without a return of Lucifer or his demon hordes, even Louisa was convinced that the soldier had helped them outwit the Devil for good. She was less convinced that she needed to marry a mere boy who had not yet reached his majority.
The soldier and Mary were also not convinced of the soundness of the plan. Between the three of them, they managed to convince the king that such a reward was unwelcome to all the parties involved. The soldier agreed that becoming a duke with a small estate not far from Adventia would be reward enough. He enrolled in the Helvetti University and convinced the king to enroll Princess Mary with him. While the war continued to rage on the rest of continent, he and Mary debated and experimented in the University’s labs.
He considered going to tell the witch of his success, but he suspected she knew. One night, he had returned to his rooms in the palace to find the cloak missing. He assumed the witch had come to reclaim it and perhaps give it to some other traveler in need. After all, he was now a scholarly duke with a betrothal to Princess Mary soon to be announced, not a soul-sick soldier escaping from his past. With his promise to the witch fulfilled and a princess by his side, it was time for the new duke to push away the past and pursue his own happily ever after.
* * *
Madeline Smoot is the publisher of CBAY Books and former Editorial Director for Children’s Books of Blooming Tree Press. In other words, Madeline knows a lot about publishing and the process of bringing a book to market. She holds an MA in Children’s Literature from Hollins University and loves bringing together new stories—especially those that involve fairy tales and their tropes. Madeline lives in Dallas, Texas, with her husband, son, a dog, and more books than should fit in any normal person’s house. You can find her online at www.madelinesmoot.com.
Perilous Princesses
Edited by Madeline Smoot
* * *
Text Copyright © 2018
Castle Background Copyright © shutterstock.com/
Maxi_M
Princess 1 Copyright © shutterstock.com/Ataly
Princess 2 Copyright © shutterstock.com/SusIO
Weapons Copyright © shutterstock.com/Santi0103
* * *
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without express permission of the copyright holder.
For more information, write:
CBAY Books
PO Box 670296
Dallas, TX 75367
* * *
Children’s Brains are Yummy Books
Dallas, Texas
www.cbaybooks.blog
* * *
ISBN: 978-1-944821-36-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-944821-37-1
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-944821-38-8
PDF ISBN: 978-1-944821-39-5
Perilous Princesses Page 15
