The Princess and the Pea

by K. M. Shea

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “For you, I will,” Lis assured him. She kissed him on the cheek, then strode to the door, shedding her coat, revealing her tight-fitting trousers, boots, and white linen shirt.

  “If you’re not back in half an hour, I’m coming after you,” Channing called out in warning.

  “Hurting for a fight are you?” Vorah asked.

  Channing pressed his lips together and started to pull a dagger from his belt.

  Lis grabbed Vorah by the collar of her shirt and dragged her into the hallway. “We’ll need chain mail?” she asked.

  “Stable boys have it out by our mares.” Vorah slung her arm over Lis’ shoulder. “Come, Your Royalness. We’ve got a pirate to bag!”

  Lis laughed and couldn’t help but recall how unsuitable she had thought she was for Channing. As she and Vorah started to jog, they turned down a hallway where her crown—and Channing’s—were out on display, guarded by a squadron of soldiers.

  At the center of her crown, the Pea of Primeorder still glowed in its place of honor, a testament not just to Torrens, but to Lis herself, that she—an ex-mercenary—was a true princess.

  * * *

  The End

  * * *

  The Princess and the Pea is a prequel to Timeless Fairy Tales, a series of stand-alone stories that can be read in any order, although the events of each book will provide glimpses of the bigger picture. To see a sample of the first book, Beauty and the Beast, keep reading!

  Timeless Fairy Tales: Beauty and the Beast Excerpt

  Once Upon a Time

  * * *

  Prince Severin happened to be pacing in the little hall when the stained-glass skylight shattered, and a young woman fell through the ceiling with the broken glass. She dropped like a twisting cat and landed with an ominous crack.

  The handful of chateau servants that had been hovering around him slapped their hands to their masked faces, their mouths dropping open in screams that couldn’t tear loose from their throats.

  Severin flexed his paw-like hands, drawing his claws as the servants scurried towards the girl.

  A footman and one of the grooms reached her first. She was passably pretty, but plain, wearing the muted colors of a villager. Her breathing was ragged, and her face tight with pain. The groom tried to roll her onto her side.

  “No!” she screamed.

  The footman and groom leapt backwards, and Severin tilted his head. She is conscious? After such a fall?

  The young lady opened her eyes and clutched her cloak close to her body with shaking hands. She shed not a single tear, but clenched her jaw with snarling determination.

  Severin glared up at the broken skylight—where night lurked like a pool of black ink—then at the fallen girl. What was she doing on the roof? Fearing the answer, Severin stalked across the little hall as the groom inched back to her side and extended a cautious hand to her skirt, intending to remove bits of glass from the cloth.

  “Don’t,” the young lady whispered. “My leg—” she broke off, hissing in pain.

  The groom turned helplessly to Severin, who, though he was now in a better position to defend his servants, kept to the shadows. Severin shrugged.

  The footman signaled a chamber maid, probably sending her to fetch Duval, the staff physician.

  Prowling just out of the intruder’s sight, Severin watched the groom scoot around the girl’s body, brushing glass away as her breathing came in pained but steady gasps.

  She resembles a peasant, but even the most foolhardy villagers venture only as far as the gardens. Did she intend to attack my servants…or me? Severin traced her long, lean body, looking for tell-tale bulges. She isn’t carrying any weapons.

  When he realized the footman and groom were staring expectantly at him, Severin said, “Duval may see to her, then send her on her way.”

  The footman hesitated and pointed to the skylight, then a hall door. He lifted his hands in a plea.

  Severin almost snorted. I will never fathom how all my staff came to be such bleeding hearts given all we have lived through. “I do not care if it is late. She shouldn’t have been skulking around the castle.”

  The groom stood and waited until he had Severin’s attention, then gestured at the intruder’s leg.

  Severin’s instinct was to growl in impatience, but he refrained, disliking how feral it sounded. “Fine. Put her in a bedroom for tonight. She leaves at dawn.” He would have to order a footman or two to keep an eye on the unwanted visitor. Though he doubted she would be climbing roofs again anytime soon, she still posed a threat. Not to him. Heavens knew he could defend himself too easily in this form, but his servants were perfect targets, and he would not risk their safety.

  The groom bowed and happily returned to brushing glass away from the intruder/guest. He tried to extract a shard of red glass from under her cloak and accidentally nudged her leg.

  The girl screamed. It was a howl of pain squeezed from her heart. “My leg.” She clenched her eyes shut and threw her arms wide.

  The shriek made his ears ring, and Severin stifled a wince. “Shut her up and move her. Immediately.”

  The groom almost fell as he scrambled up to Severin like a frightened colt. He frantically slapped his arm and pointed to the girl.

  Severin sniffed the air, but he need not have bothered. Even in the dim torchlight, he could see the blood spilling from lacerations on the girl’s arms. He growled and stalked to the injured intruder, entering the ring of torchlight.

  The girl opened her eyes as he drew closer. She saw him, and her mouth opened, but nothing came out. Her terror filled the air with a sharp scent, and her whole body trembled.

  Severin knew he was frightening to behold. He was, after all, a beast with the head of a black cat.

  Teeth that were too big for his mouth poked out of his lips, and his fingernails were more like claws. He had always been broad shouldered, but it was to an extreme now—like a massive dog—and his legs were like the hind legs of a cat. Instead of bending forward on knees, his legs curved back and gave him a swaying gait. He was covered in black fur, making him even more fiendish looking.

  Severin ignored the girl’s unusual silence—most folk screamed when they first saw him—and picked her up with ease.

  Sound finally ripped through the girl’s terror. She howled as he carried her—jostling her leg. For a split second her eyes—as green as spring—met his. His eyes, he knew, were the worst part of his transformation. They were amber, his pupils slitted like those of a mindless beast.

  He noted with disinterest that her gaze didn’t fester with fear, but boiled with hatred—another emotion he was used to seeing. The moment passed. Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted.

  He stifled another growl. This was exactly why Severin had exiled himself to Chanceux Chateau. The reactions people gave when first seeing him were like daggers to the back, although he had experienced those with significantly less pain.

  He glanced up at the hole punched through his ceiling. “It’s a surprise she’s alive.” He left the little hall, his nails clicking on the floor as his servants scurried around him like fleas.

  Once upon a time, a handsome prince was cursed by an evil witch.

  No.

  Once upon a time, an illegitimate prince—the son of the king—was sentenced to insanity by a wicked witch and was rescued from the curse by a beautiful enchantress.

  The fairy tale was a stark reality for those connected to the crown of Loire. To everyone else it was a fable, a tale told to teach children morals. Elle had fallen straight into the fairy tale.

  The pain woke her like a starved animal.

  Keeping her eyes closed, Elle organized her scattered thoughts. She remembered chasing after the villagers who poked around the castle and stomped through the gardens. She’d followed them out of the rose garden and leapt from one piece of the castle’s sloping roof to the next. But it was black, and Elle miscalculated her landing. Instead of hi
tting shingles, she hit glass and plummeted straight through. She didn’t recall much after that besides pain and beastly amber-colored eyes.

  Someone touched her leg, and Elle didn’t stifle the groan in time.

  When she peeled her eyes open, she observed three masked people gathered in the room: a woman who stood by a fireplace; a second woman posted at the door; and a man, who nodded at her bare leg.

  The bedroom was posh, better than any room Elle had ever stayed in. It smelled woodsy, probably from the pile of herb roots the man grated into a wooden bowl and stirred.

  Her eyes flickered to the bandages wrapped around her arms, and she raised her eyebrows. She had half expected to wake up in a dungeon. Everyone on the continent knew Prince Severin was a brutal, suspicious man, even before he had been cursed. She curled her fingers into fists.

  The gesture drew the masked-man’s attention, and he straightened up and smiled at her, giving her the chance to see his face—or what little of it wasn’t hidden. A black mask edged in blue covered his forehead, swooped down over his nose and cut off just above his lips, running across his cheeks. It was too dark to see what color his eyes were, but he smelled like the herbs in his concoction.

  The man hefted a slate in the air, holding it steady for inspection.

  You broke your left leg when you fell. I already set it with some aid. I am preparing a pack of comfrey herb.

  Elle stared at the words for a moment, keeping her expression impassive even though she wanted to scream. A broken leg. Now? I’m doomed. If they find out who I am… Thinking of the safest identity she could adopt in this kind of situation, that of an ignorant villager, she looked him in the eyes and lied. “I cannot read.”

  Her words caused the woman by the fire to tumble across the room. She threw herself in a wooden chair placed at the bedside, across from the man—who was presumably some sort of barber-surgeon. The woman behaved more like a hunting hound, eagerly wriggling in her chair, than the lady’s maid she was very likely to be based on the fine cloth and elegant cut of her dress. Both she and the maid at the door wore masks identical to the man’s, although theirs were edged in the maroon shades of fine red wines.

  The barber-surgeon let his mouth hang open in dismay as he looked back and forth from Elle to the slate. He wiped away the words and wrote something new on it with chalk, then showed the slate to the lady’s maid and the woman by the door.

  One of the women covered her mouth in a gesture of horror. The other whipped out a small slate of her own and began writing on it.

  Elle briefly closed her eyes; the pain was incredible. Her leg throbbed with a fierceness she thought only torture could deliver. The cuts on her arms stung and prickled. She tried to clear her mind and think through the haze.

  Elle hadn’t seen the chateau staff before—she always took the night watch, when everything was quiet, and no one stirred.

  The gossiping servants of Noyers—the capital of Loire and home of the royal family—said the illegitimate prince’s servants had been cursed along with him. The stable boys claimed they were turned into animals, and the kitchen staff insisted the servants were invisible, but Elle put the most stock in her superior’s guess. Farand said they had lost their voices and faces. Apparently, he was right.

  The shush of skirts grazing the floor prodded Elle from her musings. She opened her eyes just in time to see the maid leave the room, the door closing behind her.

  The remaining female servant—the one who resembled a lady’s maid—perched at Elle’s side with an eager smile.

  Elle flicked her gaze back and forth between the lady’s maid and the barber-surgeon. Why are they acting so nice? Using the guise of a villager, Elle thought she would attract less attention, but the servants were treating her like a pampered pet. Why?

  The barber-surgeon began wrapping her leg in bandages that dripped with the odd-smelling sludge, making Elle gasp in pain. It was hot on her bare skin, and it oozed, but his deft hands were steady as he wrapped the bandages with practiced skill.

  Elle clenched the blankets on the bed, but the barber-surgeon was gentle. He smiled sympathetically as he smoothed more bandages and sludge over her leg.

  The lady’s maid reached out and patted her hand, then retrieved a comb and teased Elle’s black hair out of her face. The two servants worked silently. Elle’s unsteady breathing and the crackling fire were the loudest sounds in the room. Though the haze of pain made her complacent, Elle waited, suspecting the real danger would begin when the maid came back.

  Her suspicions were proven right when the silence was broken a few minutes later by a thunderous voice that stalked towards the room. “—makes sense she can’t read. She’s an unschooled peasant. That means she is an idiot.”

  The barber-surgeon plunged his hands in a bucket of water, hastily wiped them clean, then started scribbling on his slate. The lady’s maid did the same, and both of them leapt to their feet and held their slates out when the door was nearly thrown off its hinges.

  “I will not waste my time by acting as a translator. Although I will suffer this girl’s presence in my chateau, I will not join you in cosseting her,” a voice growled, and the beast entered the room.

  He was a horrifying combination of cat and canine, all death and wildness—although he spoke crisply with careful enunciation. He was no less terrifying to behold now than he had been in the few woozy moments Elle was conscious after falling through the ceiling. If anything, he was more alarming, more wrong with his hulking body looming in the cheerful light of the fire.

  The maid scurried to Prince Severin’s side, but the beast waved her away as he read the slates his other servants held out to him.

  The beast—the cursed, illegitimate Prince Severin—snarled in his throat, then turned to Elle, who sank low in the bed and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from snarling back. She hated him—and his family.

  “Your leg is broken. Don’t move it or else. Duval will do whatever needs to be done. If you disrespect him, I will have you thrown from the castle, broken leg or not.” He turned on his hind legs—a movement too smooth to be human—and started for the door. The lady’s maid at Elle’s bedside knocked a stool over as she darted in front of the prince and again held her slate up.

  “What is your name?” the cursed prince asked without turning around.

  Elle deliberated on her answer for a moment, but hastily spoke when he started to growl. “Elle.”

  “This is Emele. She will see to your needs until your leg has healed sufficiently enough for you to leave the castle.” He was out of the room before anyone else could push a slate in his direction.

  The barber-surgeon—the cursed prince had called him Duval—presented a glass of liquid to Elle.

  Elle sniffed it, blinking when the contents burned her eyes and nose. “Alcohol?”

  Duval nodded and went back to wrapping her exposed leg.

  Elle took a swig and almost coughed. The drink was potent and powerful. The whole glass would get her drunker than a villager during Christmas time. Elle winced; her leg ached. It seemed she was relatively safe, provided the chateau servants continued to champion her and Prince Severin remained as sullen as she had long estimated. She supposed being drunk was better than being conscious of the stabbing pain.

  “Bottoms up.” She toasted the air and tipped the drink back.

  When Elle woke from her alcohol-induced stupor, the bandaged sludge on her leg had hardened to a plaster consistency. The barber-surgeon was gone, and light leaked through the top of the heavy, velvet curtains that covered the windows. It was daylight.

  The lady’s maid, Emele, sat at her bedside, stitching the seam of a blue gown.

  Elle shifted, and Emele looked up to smile at her. The black mask marred Emele’s face like a large inkblot on a white shirt.

  “Morning.” Elle pushed through the pain and again adopted the persona of a meek villager.

  Emele put her work aside and then pulled back the curtains—an
ocean of glorious sunlight drifted across the walls. Next, she straightened the blankets and pillows mounded around Elle.

  Elle mentally rummaged through memorized accents and selected the most appropriate one. “Beggin’ your pardon, uh, miss, but I’ve got questions ’bout my leg. Can I talk to sumone?”

  Emele left the room. A bell rang, and she was back with a moist towel, which she presented to Elle.

  “Oh, thanks.” Elle took the damp towel and wiped off her face and hands, then carefully felt her scalp for slivers of glass. She remembered being blanketed in the jagged stuff when she first fell, but the servants must have swept it all off.

  No matter; I have more important concerns. For instance, how bad is my leg? She glanced down at her plaster-encased leg, and tried moving it a hair. Pain so sharp and treacherous gnawed on her leg that she found it hard to breathe. Well. That’s not good. Her shoulders heaved as she mastered the last shrieks of pain that fought to escape her, then cleared her throat. “Um, ’bout my—ouch.”

  The lady’s maid began attacking Elle’s hair with a comb, then tied it off with a ribbon. A bell rang again, and Emele fluttered to the door.

  Elle rubbed her stinging scalp as the maid returned to the bed carrying a tray. Why does she keep slithering out of my request? “Say, can you—” She cut herself off as Emele placed the tray on a small end table near the bed.

  The tray was laden with slices of cheese, wonderfully spiced meat pasties, turnips, and asparagus that dripped with butter.

  Emele smiled and poured a cup of tea as Elle cut into the breakfast, relishing the excellent food. When she realized Emele watched her with round, curious eyes behind her mask, Elle remembered what she was pretending to be, and switched to devouring her food with gusto and a general lack of table manners. Even though Elle shoved huge chunks of turnips into her mouth, Emele seemed pleased. She brought a second tray.