Legend has it, if you stand in front of a mirror, shuffling an enchanted deck of cards, you can open a doorway between dimensions.
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Prince Teodric of Springport remembers the promise he made his father: to *not* try to reenact the legend of dimen...
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Time stopped—like it had when my glove grazed Teodric's mouth, sending a shockwave of memories through me.
Time stopped—as it had once I first put on the veil. When everything about my existence before that day became a figment in the distance, a blurry piece of me that I wasn't meant to ever remember. When I was transformed, transported, a new person in the same, albeit enhanced, body.
Time stopped—and all the other times once shoved in the back of my brain resurfaced, choking me. Clouds of images, jolts of reminiscences I'd thought long forgotten. Waves crashing up on the shores of my mind, bringing all the baggage from the past. Baggage I'd packed, sealed, hidden far away.
In real time, in the guest bedroom, Teodric and I froze, sort of suspended, paused. But in my head, it all replayed in vivid color. All those moments, all those years. All of them.
It was before. The morning I stood near a crowd of girls all wearing decadent dresses of coral, cerulean, crimson. Emeralds on their ears, sapphire bracelets around their dainty wrists, rubies dangling from their creamy necks. There we were, all green as the spring grass, gaping up at a podium atop which a handsome young man awaited, staring down at us with...down-turned lips? A fake smile? My memory didn't pick up on this too well.
I was a nobody. A lady's maid, a chamber-pot changer. No one of importance, no one anyone should have noticed.
But he did. Through that crowd, through all the fancy, flighty girls gawking at him, he saw me. And his expression changed. A glow, a smirk, a squint, a wink; perhaps a combination of all, but the truth of it all escaped me long ago.
Next I knew, I was atop that platform. He'd plucked me from the throng of girls, chosen me despite my lower status. He'd fought for me, wanted me. Refused anyone but me. So, there I was, beside him. A heavy crown on my head, our hands joined as we proclaimed our love to the world.
His queen.
The next flash of memory showed us on that dais once more, our joined hands in the air, but one of my hands atop my stomach as I beamed. Even in my head, I felt the bumping inside me, the growing of another being. The bundle of joy brewing in my belly.
I was to be a parent.
Later, that bundle of joy lay in my arms, his big brown eyes staring up at me in wonder. I couldn't have been happier, couldn't have asked for more. And I didn't. This was all I'd ever wanted, and then some. All I'd never allowed myself to dream about. A poor girl, sold to a rich family, granted basic comforts—now a beloved queen, holding a precious, baby boy.
Years passed. Good years, healthy years, happy years. The healthy part didn't last, though. Eventually, something plagued me deep within, and without warning. A sickness I couldn't be cured of, they told me; one that slowly rotted me from the inside. One that would, for sure, kill me.
