My Cursed Alpha Prince

CHAPTER 10

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Diana never thought she would grow sick and tired of the palace until she was faced with the daunting reality of being stuck in there for two whole days. After the first few hours, she was practically begging to be allowed to return home.

"But you cannot leave," the maid told her with a puzzled expression on her face when Diana insisted that she wished to go back home.

"So you're saying I'm trapped here?" she asked with a desperate look in her eyes.

"You're not trapped, my lady," the girl said, her voice laced with bewilderment. "His majesty has generously agreed to let you stay here until your husband arrived. That should be a reason to rejoice. Are you not happy for the chance to stay here?"

She stared at Diana like it was blasphemy for her to even suggest that she wasn't happy staying at the palace. Anyone else would sell their right arm and left ear to get a chance to spend even one day in the palace. How on earth could Diana not like it?

But it wasn't that she found the palace irritating. Rather, it was the simple fact that she was bored out of her mind. After the queen mother left, she was escorted by the maids to her room, a detached chamber at the eastern end of the palace, so detached from the rest of the palace that if a fire broke out on one end, it would take at least half an hour before she realised what had happened.

"I'm not saying I'm not happy to stay here," she said. "I'm just curious if there is anything interesting I can do instead of sitting here and staring at the ceiling. I've been sitting here for so many hours now that I'm tired."

"The queen mother instructed us to make sure that you are comfortable," the maid said in a quiet voice. "She asked that the room should be made as clean and comfortable as we can possibly make it. She did not mention anything other than that."

Clearly the girl didn't understand what she was saying. Either that, or she was deliberately refusing to understand what she was saying. The latter seemed more likely, because Diana was certain that no human would be incapable of realising what interesting meant.

"Okay, let me put it this way," she said. "Are there any interesting books I can read, perhaps?"

"I will speak with the queen mother and see if she will allow it," the maid said. "Will that be all, my lady?"

Diana was going to tell her that it wasn't necessary to inform queen Alicent, but she decided against it. There was no point in arguing with the girl, because she clearly wasn't going to understand what Diana was trying to say. So she let her leave, and as soon as the door shut, Diana threw herself onto it with a groan.

"Why did I allow myself to be roped into this?" she sighed. The boredom was eating at her soul, and she felt like she was definitely going to lose her mind if she didn't do something about it. She had to find a way to kill the time, and it wasn't going to happen with her stuck in this room and staring at the walls.

When she stuck her head outside, she wasn't surprised to find two guards stationed outside her room, standing on either side of the door like two sentinels. They turned to face her as soon as she emerged, and they stared at her confusedly.

"Hey boys," Diana smiled, trying to act casual. "Don't mind me. I'm just going to stretch my legs a little bit."

As soon as she stepped outside and began to walk down the hall, the men began to follow her silently on either side.

"No!" she said, almost yelling as she turned and faced them. "There's no need for you to follow me. I'm not sneaking out of the palace or anything like that. I'm just going for a little work."

"We were instructed to escort you wherever you may desire to go," the one on the right said.

Shit!

"Forgive me for asking, but who exactly gave this order?" she asked.

"His majesty, of course," the other guard replied. "We're to keep you safe in case someone tries to pull a stunt in the palace."

"Boys, I seriously doubt whether anyone is going to sneak into the palace and put a knife to my throat," Diana said. "I really just want to be left alone, if you don't mind. The king doesn't even have to know."

"I'm sorry, but we cannot disobey his orders," the first one said. "We can escort you to anywhere you want, but we won't have to go in with you."

As if that would make any different. She was beginning to feel infuriated by all of this. Why was everyone placing so many restrictions on her? Couldn't they just let her live her life the way she wanted to? She wasn't a little girl, after all. Surely she deserved even a little bit of respect.

"Fine," she said. "Could you direct me to the study?"

The guards escorted her to the study on the second floor, and they waited at the door while Diana walked inside. She was relieved when she saw that the place was filled with all sorts of books, most of them fictional. At least this would be enough to take her mind off the incessant boredom which was eating at her soul.

She grabbed the first book she saw on the shelf and pulled it towards her. It was a large novel, and the title was written on the spine of the book: The Cursed Rogue Prince. Diana sat down on the single couch in the middle of the room and began to read:

"It is said that the age of men began long ago, when King Aaron Bloodstone sailed across the Red sea with thirteen thousand men and seven thousand women behind him, to explore the lands which lied to the West. Where he came from, no one knows; and what he left behind was not of any interest to the sons and daughters who came after him.

"The old nursemaids sing songs of King Aaron's glory ten thousand years after his passing. It is said that he came to Mevell with his wife Queen Claudia who, - at the time - was pregnant with his son, and a younger brother whom he later slew at the threshold of the Black Fortress. The pages of history have done away with his name since then, and he was only spoken of as a mere whisper in the wind, until slowly the whisper vanished as the wind swept past.

"Ser Randall Wolfsbane, the oldest man in the kingdom then, told the story of how King Aaron found his brother in the bedchamber of his wife in the dead of night while she slept, his belt undone and his trousers at his ankles. She was still heavy with child at the time, and yet his brother could not contain his l**t for her. So terrible was Claudia's beauty, that it was said to drive King Aaron to madness. For only a mad man would spill the blood of his own brother. But this story was only whispered in the king's absence, for no one dared to utter the words while he was close by.

"The Lady Claudia put to bed a handsome young Prince for her king, and King Aaron named him Stirling, after a distant uncle whom he had loved dearly. These were the lasts of the Bloodstones, for all who could remember. The bastard children of King Aaron could not hold his name, and so they faded into oblivion as time moved on.

"Mevell was a barren wasteland when King Aaron arrived on its shores, and yet he saw what others could not; a kingdom ripe for his taking. Ancient records trace the sight of his landing somewhere around the Vale of Valkyrie, where he camped for thirty days and thirty nights as he sent out his scouts to explore the new land they had stumbled upon. To the North, he sent Ser Braymar Lancel and fifteen men of noble descent; to the West he sent Ser Jaime Athelstan and thirteen men whose names can only be found in the oldest of records; and to the South he sent Lord Cragmount and thirty men whom he handpicked himself. He did not send any of his men to the mountains which lied Northeast from the vale, for the sight of them terrified them all. Only in later years did King Aaron himself dare to venture towards the rocky desolation.

"On the twenty-ninth day, Ser Jaime and his men returned with their tired horses and sore feet. But the news they brought was good; The lands to the west were fertile and uninhabited, and they had sighted neither man nor beast for hundreds of miles. Lord Cragmount returned the same day with similar news; the land was vast and uninhabited, but unlike the West, the South was barren and rocky, dominated mostly by jagged cliffs and perilous drops. It was here that King Aaron chose to build his castle, the infamous Black Fortress.

"Ser Braymar returned on the thirtieth day, with only a handful of the men he had left with. The news he brought was grave. The North was inhabited by savages, the likes of which he had never seen before. They rode on monstrous wolves twice the size of any dog he had ever laid eyes upon, and they fought with long spears and scythes. When they cut down his men, he reported, they jumped down from their mounts and feasted on their raw flesh like barbarians."

“My lady?”

“Hmm?”

Diana looked up to find the maid standing in front of her, staring at Diana with her eyes wide open as if the latter had committed a terrible offence.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Y-you’re h-h-here,” the girl stuttered. “T-the queen mother didn’t instruct us to let you come here.”

“Is the study off limits, perhaps?” Diana asked.

“N-no,” she replied.

“Is this an important document which I’m not supposed to be looking at?”

“N-no.”

“Then what exactly is the issue here?” she asked. “I’m not doing anything sinister. “I’m just sitting here and trying to do away with the boredom which I have found myself stuck in because you wouldn’t let me do anything.”

The girl opened her mouth as though she was about to speak, but then she fell silent and took a step back, perhaps realising that Diana was truly upset. She slammed the book shut and walked away from her, heading over to the balcony behind her. She needed some air, and she didn’t want to wait and learn that she wasn’t allowed to breathe without the queen mother’s permission.

The evening air was cool as she leaned against the balcony and stared down at the palace. Already, several windows were lighting up for the night, and the silence was broken only by the soft chirping of birds somewhere below. Diana sighed as she shifted her gaze to the rest of Avarel. From here, she could just make out the market, although it was nothing more than a tiny speck in the distance. Soon, the lights would flick on and the entire city would glow in the darkness.

And then, quite suddenly, Diana heard voices drifting towards her from the open window which was right next to the study. At first, she chose not to pay any attention. But then she heard her name being mentioned, and it immediately drew her attention.

“Diana will figure it out,” someone was saying. It sounded like a woman, and a familiar one at that.

“She won’t,” a man replied. “There will be no time for that when she’s already wrapped up in all the chaos of the wedding. She won’t notice anything suspicious going on around her.”

“The girl is smarter than you think,” the woman said. “She’ll figure out that something isn’t right sooner than you think. I just hope you realise that everything will go sideways if this doesn’t work.”

“It has to work,” the man said. “It’s our only chance. And if we have to make drastic calls like this, then it’s the only way. Hopefully everything will go according to plan, and we’ll get away with all this without a single scratch.”

“I doubt that,” the woman said. “Lives will be lost. But it’s a matter of necessity. And what’s one life compared to millions?”

Diana suddenly felt weak. She couldn’t breathe, and she stumbled away from the balcony with her eyes unfocused and her mind racing in a million different directions. It couldn’t be. Surely she must have misheard something. Because how on earth was she going to go ahead with this marriage when she had literally heard two people plotting her own death right in the next room.

“My lady?” the maid said, stepping forward towards her as soon as she saw the look on her face.

“Water,” Diana managed to say. “I need water.”

The girl ran off, and Diana sank into the couch with a dazed expression on her face. She couldn’t believe what she had just heard, and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out who those two people were.

But one thing was for certain.

This wedding was not going to take place no matter what.

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