The Prince's Captive (Saving a Prince Book 1)

Chapter 1- Arie

Being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be.

For instance, as a child I would be trapped in my room learning proper mannerisms while other kids got to play in the mud. I never experienced a boy pulling my pigtails in order to hint that he liked me because I had a giant bodyguard watching over me whenever I left the palace. If a little boy wanted to pull my pigtails, he would be thrown in the dungeons.

Ok well that was an over exaggeration, but no little boy was going to chance having that happen to them.

In essence, I felt like a social pariah more often that not growing up. I long since gave up trying to make friends with the other kids, mostly due to the fact that they would all jump down from the monkey bars in order to bow to me when I would run up to them. Before long, I found myself walking the halls with only my stubborn bodyguard, John, to give me company where asking him questions usually got me no more than a few grunts here and there. However, sometimes John would allow me to practice makeup on his face when he was in a good mood. The man was pretty scarred up from being in the castle's service for so long, but no matter, it just allowed me to get really good at covering up impurities on the human skin. By puberty I was a natural at making acne scars disappear, which was a good thing for a princess to know since I was photographed nearly everywhere I went.

Shopping? Boom, photographed. Headline: who is the princess buying lingerie for? Charity events? Well obviously I would be photographed there but it still wasn't fun when the headline would read: learn about the princess's baby daddy, after I merely bumped into an older gentlemen on the dance floor.

Hey, I couldn't help that I was clumsy.  In fact, my parents would often joke that I had two left feet growing up.

While back then I would stomp my feet and run off into hiding when my parents laughed and laughed at my clumsiness, I couldn't help but wish more than anything these days that I could experience a time like that once more.

And before you go off thinking that my mother died, as do most in typical princess stories, knock that thought out of your head this instant.

My mother, the queen, merely had an affair with one of the castle's guards. This left my father distraught and my mother divorcing him to go off and live in a modest cottage far from the kingdom to avoid the publicity.

Unfortunately, the publicity was difficult to escape from when you had to live in the castle still. My father was shamed for his ruined marriage, the media using all sorts of vial words to describe it. With me, the media went a different way by questioning whether or not I was a legitimate princess or a bastard daughter from the queen and her lover. Never mind that I looked like a perfect female version of my father, besides the short height and thick red hair that I inherited from my mother.

Sadly for me, this all occurred at the young and vulnerable age of thirteen. So while other preteen girls were reading the latest gossip magazines, crushing after princes from other far off lands and worrying about the latest trends, I was skirting the palace halls with John silently walking beside me, avoiding people as if they were carrying the plague.

John, who did have a daughter who lived with her mom out of the kingdom's realm, soon married a woman with two daughters slightly older than me. While I never really clicked with them, as the girls were concerned much more with their own appearances and a prince to someday wed, soon John's biological daughter was sent to live with him. Ella and I ended up clicking right away.

Well not really. I had learned all the proper etiquettes a princess was supposed to know but not much of the teenage girl customs. I never even owned a gossip magazine, mostly due to the fact my name was dragged through the dirt throughout them. Meanwhile, Ella was very punk rock. Her hair color was changing more often than not, bleached, rainbowfied, darkened- you name it and her ears were covered in various forms of piercings. At the time, Ella promised me by the time she was 18, she would have a tattoo spanning from her collarbone to her thigh and a couple more piercings to go with it.