His Princess (A Royal Romance) by Abigail Graham Page A

floors are covered in layers of thick rugs woven in intricate patterns, and the walls are plastered and covered over with tapestries.
    Real tapestries, not some crap you’d buy at a mall. This random hallway is adorned with one fifty feet long, covered in scenes of battle. As a rough guess, I’d put the age at anywhere between three and four hundred years old, maybe even actually medieval. Hangings like this tell a story, and I try to puzzle it out as I hobble by.
    It’s about a guy in black armor. I have that much down.
    The corridor slopes up until it opens onto another one through an arched doorway. It quickly becomes difficult to keep track of all the turns. Without asking, my escorts support me by the arms as I hobble up a sweeping staircase that winds around a curved wall to a higher floor.
    The one on my right opens a heavy oak door, banded with iron.
    “You will sleep here,” he says in clipped, accented English.
    “Uh, thanks,” I mutter, and lean on the crutch to work my way inside.
    I look around for something to light my way and my escort helpfully reaches into the room and throws a plain old light switch.
    “Holy shit,” I whisper.
    This room is bigger than my house at home. The ceiling soars twenty feet overhead, with electric chandeliers hanging on big chains that run from one end to the other. Situated between two thick columns holding up the ceiling, an enormous four-poster bed, much bigger than a king size, sits piled up with pillows and blankets as high as my neck, with a little staircase to climb up.
    Another heavy door stands open, leading into a bathroom. I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe a bucket and a chamber pot, but primitive this is not. The shower cabinet could hold ten people behind its smoky glass doors, and there would be a showerhead for each of them, plus a detachable one on a jointed metal hose. I half expect the toilet seat to be made of solid gold.
    No. I’m pretty sure it’s oak, though.
    Hobbling back out of the bathroom, I try the doorknob on the main door. It turns freely, but the door won’t budge. It’s barred from the outside.
    Great.
    I stand there for a good ten minutes trying to figure out what to do. I search for a phone but don’t fine one, though there is a huge antique writing desk that’s probably older than the United States. Stone stairs lead up to a balcony. I make my way up and out into the open air, and jump back with a yelp.
    The stone railing is high enough, but on the other side is a sheer drop. I’m bad at guessing distances but it’s somewhere between five hundred and a thousand feet of nearly vertical rock to the lights below, and just a glimpse gives me vertigo that grips my stomach like a fist.
    There’s a knock at the door and it swings open.
    It’s the blonde guardswoman.
    “His grace the prince regrets that he must rescind his dinner invitation to attend to matters of state. He instead commands that you join him for breakfast at dawn.”
    “Commands?”
    “The prince commands.” She nods and starts to close the door.
    She stops abruptly. “There are clothes for you in the wardrobe. See that you are properly dressed.”
    The door slams and I hear a heavy bar slide into place, from the outside. I’m locked in here.
    Near the wardrobe I find a refrigerator that’s disguised as an antique side table, and some bottled water. I drink it fast, spilling water on my borrowed shirt. Then I open the wardrobe.
    No shorts, no pants, no t-shirts, no hoodies.
    Dresses .
    For a moment I feel like I’m staring at a cosplayer’s costume collection. The dresses have dagged sleeves, the kind with the huge cuffs that hang way down, like a stereotypical Disney princess. They’re arranged by color from lightest to darkest, cream at one end and black at the other.
    They’re not costumes, though. The material is silk and shimmering samite, and the darker ones are a little sheer despite their princess-y looks. I can’t wear this stupid