King of Devotion

by J A Armitage

  King of Devotion

  Kingdom of Fairytales Rapunzel book 1

  Emma Savant

  J. A. Armitage

  Contents

  1. 25th March

  2. 26th March

  3. 27th March

  4. 28th March

  5. 29th March

  6. 30th March

  7. 31st March

  After the Happily Ever After…

  A NEW FAIRYTALE ANTHOLOGY

  Join us

  A note from the author

  The Kingdom of Fairytales Team

  About Emma Savant

  About J.A. Armitage

  The Kingdom of Fairytales Team

  Copyright © 2019 by J A Armitage

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited By Rose Lipscomb

  Cover by Enchanted Quill Press

  Created with Vellum

  Kingdom of Fairytales

  You all know the fairytales, the stories that always have the happy ending. But what happens after all those storybook characters get what they wanted? Is it really a happily ever after?

  In this prequel, you will find out what happens next, be transported back to those lands you fell in love with and be prepared to meet some new characters along the way.

  Kingdom of Fairytales is a new way of reading with one chapter a day and one book a week throughout the year beginning January 1st

  Lighting-fast reads you won’t be able to put down

  Read in real time as each chapter follows a day in the life of a character throughout the entire year, with each bite-sized episode representing a week in the life of our hero.

  Each character’s story wrapped up at the end of every season with a brand new character and story featured in each season.

  Fantasy has never been so epic!

  25th March

  The sun made its final leap above the horizon and flooded the garden with thick golden light. A sunbeam dove between the leaves of an apricot tree and touched Lilian’s hair with fire, blessing her blonde waves with a sheen that put the stars to shame.

  Not that she noticed. The princess of Floris, clad in a dressing gown over her pajamas, was too busy making encouraging noises at one of her pups to worry about her hair. She tossed a felted ball across the grass, and the dog bounded after it for the fifth time, and, for the fifth time, it utterly failed to grasp the concept of bringing the thing back.

  Lilian called to the puppy, whose curly white fur had already gotten stained from a romp through one of my flowerbeds, and the dog happily pranced back to her, leaving the ball lying in the dew-soaked grass.

  “You’re dumb,” she said in a baby voice to the puppy. “You’re so dumb, and I love you. Yes, I do. Who’s the best puppy?”

  I suppressed a snort, but not well enough. She glanced up and caught my eye from across the lawn. She burst into laughter that echoed across the grass, the sound as musical as the birdsong that filled the gardens at this hour.

  “You’re judging me,” she called. “I can tell.”

  “I’m judging your dog,” I called back from where I knelt in a bed of violets. “What is this, the third morning in a row?”

  “Fourth,” she said.

  Serving as the palace’s head gardener might have made me the luckiest man in the world, but it was watching Lilian on mornings like this that made me the happiest. She retrieved the ball for the dog and threw it again, then ran headlong after it to show the creature what it was supposed to do. The attempt was an unmitigated failure, but the way her dressing gown billowed out behind her as the pup galloped at her heels was a thing of beauty.

  Eventually, as she had every morning, she gave up. She clipped the dog’s lead back onto its embroidered collar and stopped on her way back to the palace to frown down at me with her hands on her hips. The sky behind her had lightened to a dazzling blue, and I had to squint to make out her face.

  “You haven’t wished me happy birthday yet.”

  I smirked up at her. “It’s barely past dawn.”

  “Which means you’re late. I was born first thing in the morning.”

  I offered her my hand. It was grimy with soil, and hers, when she gave it to me, was covered in grass stains. I kissed the back of her hand. The touch was nothing, and yet it made my heart race.

  “Happy birthday, princess,” I said.

  Her answering smile lit up the garden better than the sun had.

  “Thanks for my present.”

  “You knew it was from me?”

  “A mountain of strawberries and strawberry blossoms delivered to my chamber before sunrise?” She laughed. “Who else could have sent that? They were delicious.”

  “I know. I grew them myself.”

  Her eyes were so blue they outdid the sky behind them. I was about to lose myself in them when her dog launched itself at me and started licking my face with tactless enthusiasm. I scratched the creature’s ear and let it have its way with my cheeks, then handed it up to the princess.

  “This is a pretty awful dog.”

  “The absolute worst,” she said. She nuzzled the top of the puppy’s head. “Can I come see you after luncheon? I want you to braid flowers into my hair.”

  I’d done this for her a thousand times since we were children, but today, knowing why she wanted to look her best, the thought of plaiting her beautiful golden waves made my throat close up. I swallowed and smiled up at her.

  “Of course.”

  She offered me another of her heart-wrenching smiles and took off across the lawn, the puppy in her arms wriggling to be let down.

  I had just finished transplanting a crate of violets into the flowerbed when a conversation wafted across the rose garden behind me. They weren’t bothering to keep their voices down. No one did these days.

  “It’s no surprise he ended up where he is,” Basil said. His musical voice, with its slight whine, put my teeth on edge. I’d always been friendly with Basil, right up until I’d been named Head Gardener. These days, it seemed he’d just as soon spit as look at me.

  I understood why he was jealous, but understanding didn’t make it feel better.

  “As if any of us really had a shot,” Chervil grumbled.

  He was in his fifties and had been working as a palace gardener for decades, certainly longer than I’d been alive. I understood his resentment, too.

  “Kid was in old Hedley’s pocket from the minute he started toddling around the kitchen gardens,” he added.

  Basil scoffed under his breath. “Forget about Hedley’s favoritism. If you want to know what happened, you need look no further than the royal family.”

  Their voices faded out.

  The old head gardener, the royal family—it didn’t matter who was involved, the one thing everyone agreed on was that I’d gotten my job due to someone playing favorites. After all, I’d been taken in as an infant by King Alder and Queen Rapunzel and raised alongside their daughter, sharing her private tutors and enjoying the privileges that came with the king and queen knowing my name.

  It didn’t matter that I’d started as a kitchen hand and only become an apprentice gardener after I’d shown a gift for horticulture. It didn’t matter that I’d trained that gift day in and day out for thirteen years or that Hedley had worked me harder than anyone else on the staff. No, if the gossips were to be believed, I had this job because I’d wormed my way into the king’s good graces, and that was the end of it.

  I took a deep breath as I packed up my tools. I
had to figure out a way to prove myself and to make sure everyone on my staff felt valued. That was the only way forward. But first, I had to finish this morning’s tasks so I could spend the afternoon with Lilian—one last afternoon before I let her go for good.

  Lilian threw open the door to one of the garden sheds.

  “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  I hung my rake on its hook and glanced past her to the sky outside.

  Lilian raised an eyebrow at me. “You worked through lunch, didn’t you?”

  “It’s the Spring Flower Festival.” I brushed my hair out of my eyes. “I’m moving nonstop, and there’s still too much to do.”

  She held up a small straw pail. The cork of a lemonade bottle peeked out the top. “I had a feeling.”

  The thoughtfulness of the gesture made my stomach clench. I forced a smile.

  “This, right here, is why I’m so supportive of the monarchy,” I said. “Thanks, Lils.”

  “You can eat while I gather flowers,” she said.

  I sat on a boulder in the shade of a myrtle tree and devoured my sandwich and hard-boiled eggs while I watched her walk thoughtfully along paving-stone paths, picking blooms with care as she went.

  The palace of Floris was home to over forty acres of gardens, most of them dedicated to flowers of some kind or another. This particular garden, though, was special. Five years ago, Hedley had given me free rein to design and tend my own quarter-acre patch of land. He’d suggested I try raising some of the kingdom’s prized tulip varieties or plant a kitchen garden full of herbs and vegetables.

  But I had known immediately what I wanted to do with the rich earth.

  I’d filled it with lavender and daisies and baby’s breath, half a dozen different kinds of roses and just as many lilies, three different strains of the Queen’s Tulips, and a scattering of other flowers that were both colorful and sturdy enough to survive handling and hours away from their roots. Every bloom that stretched toward the sun of my garden did it in hopes of someday gracing Princess Lilian’s beautiful hair.

  A kerchief full of blossoms landed on the ground next to me with a soft thump like glimmers of glass.

  “Is this enough?” Lilian said.

  She knew she’d picked too many; her little smirk made that clear. I shook my head at her and washed down the last bite of my sandwich with a long swig of cold lemonade. It was the cook’s special recipe, flavored with mint leaves and orange blossoms. I offered Lilian the bottle and watched as she sipped and closed her eyes in enjoyment.

  I loved the way Lilian savored lemonade. If there was beauty or pleasure to be had in a moment, she was the first to find it.

  “Sit,” I said. “Did you bring your comb?”

  She pulled it from a pocket of her gown and settled on a smaller stone in front of me. I ran the golden comb through her hair. The way the strands parted and fell together again reminded me of the way water tumbled from the garden’s many fountains. I ran my nail along Lilian’s scalp, separating the hair into segments, and she gave a soft sigh of contentment.

  My skin tingled at the noise, and I made sure to drag my nails softly across her head for a few moments before I started braiding in earnest.

  “How are you feeling?” I said as I tucked a pale pink rose into the plait.

  She didn’t have to ask what I meant. She fidgeted a little. “I’m all right,” she lied.

  “Are you nervous?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Another lie. I leaned forward to pick up a spray of lavender. My lips brushed against her hair, and it was everything I could do to stop myself from kissing her.

  I’d kissed Lilian before, on the cheek or the hand or the top of the head. They were chaste pecks, the kind of thing that could happen between friends.

  They weren’t enough, and knowing I could never have what I wanted made it hard to breathe.

  “You’re not nervous at all?” I said. I let my voice be teasing, let my fingers be light as they twisted the next strand of her hair into place. “Not even a little bit? You’re meeting your future husband today.”

  She laced her fingers together. “Not in the slightest. What is there to be nervous about?”

  There were a hundred things, and I wasn’t going to be the person to bring them up.

  “I’m glad to hear it.” I wove a delicate pink poppy into her hair. “If anyone’s going to get butterflies today, it’ll be the duke. He’s not going to know what to do with himself when he sees for himself how pretty you are.”

  She laughed, and her shoulders tensed. I ran my fingernail along her scalp again as I reached the nape of her neck, and she relaxed.

  “You’re going to be fine, Lils,” I said. “Your parents wouldn’t have chosen the duke if they didn’t think he was a good man.”

  “I know.” She twisted her hands in her lap.

  We’d spent our lives knowing this day would come, and for the last few years, I’d been dreading it. Now that her future husband was on his way to the palace, I had run out of time for wishing things could be different. I arranged a white daisy into her braid, followed by a vivid orange chrysanthemum.

  “Oh!” I said as if I’d just remembered something important. “I keep forgetting to tell you. That bird came back—you remember the robin that kept making mischief in the kitchen gardens? He decided the raspberry patch is his personal fortress, and he’s being a real jerk about it. Hollis finally had to come get me yesterday so she could prune the bushes without him dive-bombing her.”

  I spent the rest of the braid recounting the adventures of the bird who had taken the existence of palace gardeners as a personal affront. Slowly, Lilian’s anxiety seemed to leak away, and by the time I was finished with her hair, she seemed almost back to her normal cheerful self.

  Still, there was a tightness to her face when she turned around to have me check the front of her hair. I tucked a rose behind her ear. Before I could talk myself out of it, I kissed her gently on the forehead.

  “I have a gift for you,” I said. “Wait here.”

  When I got back, she was sitting patiently on a stone bench surrounded by roses. She was every bit a lady, her early deportment training visible in her graceful posture and the fold of her hands in her lap. Still, the slight jiggle of her foot revealed her nerves.

  I approached, the gift held behind my back.

  “Want to guess what it is?”

  She gave me a calculating look. “A lizard.”

  “I already brought you a lizard this week.” The creature had been tiny and nimble, covered in dark scales dotted with vivid green spots. She had let it run up and down her arms until she’d finally set it free in the succulent bed where I’d found it.

  She pursed her lips. “Some kind of fruit, then. Perhaps one of the peaches you’ve been talking nonstop about this year.”

  “Floris has a pleasant climate, but it’s not so warm that we’d get peaches this early. Besides, those trees won’t produce for another two years.”

  “Then, I give up.”

  “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

  She obeyed, then cracked one eye open to watch me.

  “You’re cheating.”

  “I don’t know what you’re going to give me.”

  “Do you trust me or not?”

  She sighed and closed her eyes again. Carefully, I placed the stem of the passiflora bloom between her fingers, and a slight smile crossed her face as she recognized that I’d given her some sort of plant. I arranged the flower so she would get the full effect, and told her to open her eyes.

  She did open them, normally at first and then so wide I laughed. She blinked, stared at the flower, and then looked up at me with her mouth slightly open.

  “Deon!” she finally exclaimed.

  I sat on the bench next to her. “Do you like it?”

  “What on earth is it? It’s stunning.”

  She twirled the stem between her fingers, and the enormous face of th
e flower smiled up at her.

  The flower’s ten pointed petals ringed a central explosion of curling purple filaments that twisted and spiraled in wiggly coils. The petals beneath were the creamy white of coconut flesh, and yellow stamens glittered with pollen in the flower’s center. Lilian raised the flower to sniff it, and her eyes widened at the fragrance—a sweet blending of jasmine blossoms and fresh pineapple.

  “It’s called a passiflora,” I said.

  “It’s unreal.” She looked up at me, blue eyes still huge. “You grew this?”

  I shifted on the bench. Despite the strain of the day, excitement bubbled in the pit of my stomach. “It’s not a difficult seed to obtain. We grow them elsewhere in the garden, but not like this. Not this big.”

  “Nor this beautiful. It’s bigger than my palm.” She held up one of her delicate hands to compare, and the flower covered it almost all the way up her fingers.

  “I’ve always been all right with flowers,” I said. In truth, I was more than all right. Hedley had said once that he’d never seen someone with such a green thumb. I didn’t want to mention that to Lilian, though. The rest of the gardeners already thought I’d gotten too big for my britches. I didn’t need Lilian to share their opinions. “These past few months, though…”

  I trailed off. It was difficult to explain how things had changed—not just in the size and beauty of the blooms I had produced, but in the way the plants seemed connected to me somehow as if I’d woken up one day and learned to speak their silent language.

  “You are the head gardener.”

  I shook my head. “It’s more than that. I feel like I understand them somehow.” I furrowed my brow, trying to find the right words to explain it, but I’d always been better with plants than with words. “I got a private garden as part of my promotion, remember?”