The Hijacked Bride

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

SOMETIMES, WHEN LIFE is so painful, so tiresome, so ornery, something comes along that makes it better, even if it's just by a little bit.

For me, Al was that thing.

The boy with the hair the colour of wheat that was always in desperate need of a cut, the boy with the green, green eyes that seemed to know my thoughts without me voicing them.

I made his acquaintance one morning when I was helping wax the marble floor of the ballroom. Mother and I were working together. She was clad in her servant attire, and I was dressed in one of the only two dresses I owned, a dress the colour of pale yellow daisies. Both of us were on our hands and knees, polishing the floor until we could see our reflections.

I liked helping mother. Sometimes she would sing, and her beautiful voice would fill me, making my skin tingle. Other days she was sad. She said she missed my father. But the one time I asked her more about him, she had just shaken her head and said nothing. I never asked again, because later that night, I heard her weeping into her pillow.

I hated to see her sad.

But Al, Al was never sad. That day I had wax up to my elbows as I worked beside mother, he slipped into the room after she had gone to help Queen Padraigin with getting ready for an upcoming ball. She was always helping the queen get ready for an upcoming ball.

Al snuck up behind me and tapped me on my shoulder, making me jump and mess wax all over my dress. He had laughed, a bright, bold laugh. It felt like sunshine raining down on me. But I was still angry, and before I could set my thoughts straight, before I could remind myself that he was Prince Alastar, heir to the kingdom of Ceol, I picked up the container that held the wax, scooped out a large portion, and threw it at him.

There was a moment of silence as the smelly stuff slid off his face, coating his features generously in its departure, and landing on the floor with a loud plop. He blinked at me, the smeary matter making his sandy eyelashes clump together. And then he laughed again, breaking the spell, allowing me to let out a breath I had not known I was holding.

"The name is Alastar." He held out his hand, a bit proudly for someone smeared with a substance one would normally use for floors, and I didn't dare tell him that I already knew who he was.

Yet I liked him immediately.

"Monika," I had whispered timidly, as I took his hand in mine.

"Call me Al," he said, with a wink.

He'd helped me finish waxing the floor, and later that day, when mother and I were getting ready for bed in the servants' quarters, I found a new dress on my bed. A dress the colour of the sky. I didn't know how, but I knew it was from him.

We spent every bit of time we could with each other from that day on. We were the same age when we first became friends, him and I, both of us nine years old. We thought we knew so much- but I always knew that Al knew more. He was bigger, and he was braver, and he held my hand when I told him that I had once heard mother say to herself that she wanted to die, late at night when she thought I was asleep.

He taught me how to fish, how to catch fireflies, how to play the harp. We went riding once, and when I fell off big old Barley, the horse I had adored since I first laid eyes on him, he'd picked me up, put me back on, and sat behind me on Barley's rump all the way home.

We grew. We hid from his mother's watchful eyes and his father's concerns about Al's future. We learned about each other.

And one day, when we were older but still younger than we knew, he asked me to marry him.

Images flashed before my eyes in that moment. A dress the colour of snow. A child that looked like him. A future. But mostly, I just saw his eyes, his smile beaming at me.

Without wasting a breath, I said yes.