Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 0 - Prologue

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

`Prologue.`

The princess, long held in slumber, was at last freed from her curse by the prince’s kiss. A clear chime of bells rang out through the castle that had lain under shadow.

“And so they lived happily ever after.”

Her mother’s voice, soft as velvet, wrapped around Fiona’s ears as her eyes grew heavy. It was late, and Anaïs carefully closed the book, hoping her drowsy young daughter would simply drift off to sleep.

But alas, a child’s sleep rarely bends to the convenience of adults.

“Is it over?” The faint sound of the closing book made Fiona’s half-lidded eyes flutter open. Anaïs offered a wry smile.

“I want to hear another story…” the child pleaded, her voice thick with sleep. “The one about the dragon and the wizard. The one you told me before…”

Anaïs hesitated, weighing the hour. Telling a story was simple enough, but putting her daughter to bed swiftly seemed the wiser course.

“That one we shall read tomorrow. Tonight, it is time to sleep.”

Fortunately, Fiona was not a child given to lengthy tantrums. Soon persuaded by her mother’s reasoning, she promised to wait and closed her pretty eyes. “You must read it tomorrow, promise? And you have to teach me the letters, too… alright?”

“Yes, yes,” Anaïs murmured, soothing her daughter with a voice half warm, half surrendered to exhaustion, as she too let her tired eyes close.

The child, whose excitement over the day’s wedding had refused to settle, finally grew still. As Anaïs had anticipated, before Fiona drifted into the land of dreams, she was replaying the scenes from the wedding in her small mind.

It had been the day a young man and woman of the village were wed. Well-wishers with joyful faces and girls dancing in flower crowns filled the central clearing. Petals of every colour and grains of barley scattered through the air, while on one side of the green, women busied themselves preparing the feast.

The spectacle, a small festival in itself, was more than enough to enchant a little girl’s heart. As the bride and groom were commoners, there were no lavish gowns, no jewels, no costly silks. Yet for the two of them, radiant with affection for one another and with hope for the days ahead, such cumbersome ornaments seemed unnecessary.

The most respected elder in the village pronounced his blessing and declared the birth of a new union, and everyone applauded with smiling faces. Even the fair sky seemed to shine blue in celebration of the pair. Beside the pyre where a whole pig was roasting, Fiona, her clothes smudged with ash, absorbed every moment of that brilliant scene.

At six years old, she was not yet of an age to read the shadowed expression on her mother’s face, standing beside her. Her own small head was filled with nothing but happy imaginings. So marriage is truly a joyful and auspicious thing, she thought. When I am grown, I will be a bride who smiles just like that. And I will live happily ever after, just like the princess and the prince in the fairy tale.

In her bed, her cheeks still flushed, the child dreamed innocently. And cradling that happy memory, she fell asleep. It was a naive and distant memory, from a time before she knew the ways of the world, before she even truly understood her own place within it.