Member-only story
“Hello, We Meet Again,” She Said
Fairy tales don’t happen every day.
I knew her before she was Princess Astrid. Back when I was just a stableboy, she was that little girl who snuck in to steal handfuls of sugar cubes while I was distracted by cleaning out the horse stalls. I caught her most of the time, but she would just give me her lopsided grin, showing the gap where she had lost two of her baby teeth. Most days she went away with just a light scolding. Other days I’d actually sit her down and tell her she couldn’t steal just whatever she wanted. The real world had laws, no matter who her parents were or what her bloodline meant.
Magic would spark along her fingertips as I spoke to her, and anyone would have been able to tell she was bored with the thirteen-year-old sitting in front of her as he tried to become a teacher well before his time. But I still lectured her like an older brother might have.
Only when she was gone, off to a finishing school for young ladies, did I miss her schemes and the way she looked at me with those big, blue eyes of hers. Five years may have been a big difference when you were young, but — if things had been different — maybe I would have charmed her in some ballroom when I was a man and she was a woman. But that wasn’t my life. I wasn’t even the son of a nobleman. My means were meager, as they would likely be…
