Free Americana Fairy Tale by Lex Chase

would delay her even more.
    “Do you think he will?” Charles asked while still staring out the window. Phillipa didn’t need to guess which he Charles meant.
    “I hunted him once. I can do it again,” Phillipa repeated, this time with a measure of venom in her voice. Corentin Devereaux was a difficult subject to understand. He and Phillipa were predator and prey, prey and predator, a constantly shifting yin and yang. She admired him in the same way he reviled her. Two sides of the same story from different books. Phillipa cleared her throat. “Your orders, Your Majesty?”
    Charles gave a half chuckle. Phillipa was aware he read her discomfort. “I’m baking a cake.”
    Phillipa faltered. “A cake ?”
    He nodded. “It’s a special cake.” He gestured to the sunflowers outside, wafting in the breeze.
    “His Majesty will have to forgive me, but I’m missing the point of a cake.”
    “Of course you wouldn’t understand,” Charles snapped. He sighed. “I can mold you from the malformed clay into a masterpiece, but I still can’t instill you with intellect.” He turned his hands upward, as if begging the heavens. “I apologize for my failure, Mother Storyteller,” he said in a prayer to their goddess.
    Phillipa gritted her teeth. It was useless to retaliate. Charles had more power than a whole Light Brigade could take on. History held the tales of the last charge of the Light Brigade and their unwavering loyalty to their captain, even when they faced their demise.
    Charles pointed a finger and grinned brightly. “Follow me, dear,” he said. “I’ve placed a spell on Corentin with the impulse to do harm to Taylor at every opportunity. He believes if he kills Taylor, he will be free to go.”
    “But he never will be.”
    “Correct.” He took a moment to check his watch. “My cake will be done soon. You’ll need a piece of the cake,” Charles said. “When you eat a crumb of the cake, it will lead you directly to them. You will make sure Corentin delivers on his promise. But lose that piece of cake….”
    “And I’ll never return,” Phillipa said. “I got it. Same typical legalese.”
    Charles stepped toward the door. He hesitated for a moment. “Phillipa.”
    “Yes?” Something about his tone was curious yet disturbing.
    “You’re a prince,” Charles said. It came out as if he were stating a fact.
    The term sent a flush to Phillipa’s skin. “Many try to forget that.”
    “If you fail, people will burn your lineage from our history.”
    Phillipa’s heart thumped with a beat of regret. “I will find him,” she said with anger rising in her features. She remained silent and let the words hang between them. She meant every syllable of her words to portray the gravity of the statement. Phillipa would hold out for eternity against saying Corentin’s name. To say his name gave him power over her, and she would fight it tooth, claw, and knife.
    Charles’s watch beeped. “Ah!” he said, brightening. “I have a cake.” As he hurried out the door, he called absently behind him, “It would have been such a disaster to have it burn like a book!”
    Phillipa watched Charles take three steps into the hall and then fade out of existence. He was trying to get to her, and it was working. Every jab, every jeer, stirred the beast within her. Charles was trying to call the creature forward to do his bidding and didn’t trust her to do much of anything. Phillipa slammed her fist into the wall, an inch from the doorframe. Cracks flowered in the drywall, and the door casing splintered away from the point of impact. The rage trembled through her.
    Charles laughed about how he molded her from nothing and how he made her a useless beauty.
    She would show him what kind of beast she was.
     
     
    T HE NUMBER of agents Charles had among the wedding party came as an unfortunate surprise to Atticus. Even now, he fought and struggled in vain as two ogre guards hauled him by his upper arms down a corridor of