Enchanted by Alethea Kontis Read Free Book Online Page B

she loved him enough to trust him, to still love him when all was said and done. He hoped she still loved him when she knew him for what he was.
    The woman stood before him now, her laundry rescued from the wind. He held the book out to her, and she tossed it in the basket. “Absent-minded fool of a daughter. Come inside,” she offered.
    It took an inordinate amount of strength to shake his head. He took the woman’s free hand and raised it to his ruined lips.
    “You’re a charming one,” she said, her words soft and true and powerful. “You could have your pick of any girl in the land.” And then that face of control returned. “When you’re cleaned up, of course. You’re not fit to be a troll’s poppet in that state.”
    He smiled and pressed her fingers around the empty cup. “Thaaank y-you,” he said carefully. This time it sounded more like what he meant to say.
    “You’re welcome.”
    He made a small bow and walked back through the gate in the stone wall. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he turned to look back at the towerhouse. His true love’s mother stood at the gate, basket in hand and skirts swirling around her as she watched over him.
    He had not yet reached the edge of the city before it started to rain. Big fat droplets kicked up the dust on the road and churned it into mud between his toes. Step by step, his pain returned and magnified. Mercifully, the gods sent a yelloweyed man in a mildewing haycart to offer him a ride into town.
    The castle was a dark beast on the horizon; its tallest tower plunged deep into the heart of the storm. It was dizzying to watch so many people bustle about the rain-drenched streets. He thanked the man once the cart came to a stop, urging him in as few words as possible to make himself known to the king. He had practiced his words on the soggy journey so that he would not stumble over them.
    Walking was excruciating. The pads of his feet were blisters. His muscles shook from strain. The hope that had energized him at the towerhouse waned under crippling exhaustion.
Not far now,
he repeated to himself.
Not far now.
    At the guards’ entrance, he was stopped with a spear. “Now, where d’ ya think you’re going?”
    “Aaawik.”
    “Come again?”
    Concentrate.
“Erik.”
    The guard turned his head and bellowed into the entranceway behind him. “Erik! Beggar out here to see you.”
    “A beggar? Good gods, I can’t be bothered with...” A stout man with a mop of red-gold hair appeared in the stone archway. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he’d been summoned mid-meal. “Here, what’s this all about?”
    Erik had been a royal guard since Jack was in service. Of all the king’s men, Erik should have known him, the “him” he used to be. The prince could only imagine his appearance now: grim, gaunt, ghastly. Godspat. Not quite the glamorous return of the prodigal son. His glimmer of hope waned further. He straightened as much as he could and rested a hand on the guard’s shoulder.
    “Erik. P-pleeease. Help me.”
    Erik’s eyes moved through anger and confusion before finally arriving at recognition. “Rum—?”
    He slammed his eyes shut, as if that might stop him from hearing That Name. It had been ages since anyone had said it; he needed to wait a while longer. The once-and-now-again prince put a trembling finger to his lips. “Please.”
    Erik threw a jolly arm around his shoulders and pulled him inside the castle. “It’s been years, man,” he said loudly. “You look like hell! Come in out of this tempest and tell me how your mother, my aunt, is doing? Still as beautiful a nag as ever?” Erik continued the charade through the Guards’ Hall and kept up the monologue until they were well inside the castle walls. “Get Rollins out of his cups,” he told an errant serving boy. “Tell him he’s needed in his master’s chambers.”
    Erik all but carried him up the back stairs and propped him up on the edge of his bed,