Breaking the Enchantment
by Mari NessJuly 11, 2019
"So," the prince said. "To break your enchantment, you need a kiss from your true love."
"Yes," said the princess, unable to keep the note of irritation from her voice. "And naturally, I get you."
The prince sighed. "Awkward, I know. Still." He tapped his finger on his lips. "I might have a solution."
The princess eyed him up and down. "Uh-huh."
The prince gave her his most charming smile. "Trust me."
Several months later, the prince came riding back to the enchanted castle.
He did not come alone.
The girl with him was no princess, nor even trying to be one. She happily accepted a rough pallet in the kitchen--"It just feels less enchanted here, you know?" instead of an elaborate, high bed in one of the dusty bedrooms, even when the princess warned the girl that the kitchen floor was doubtless covered in peas. "As long as you don't ask me to sort them," the girl said.
She was fond of fairytales, and cookies, and trees, and her smile, the princess could not help noticing, was more beautiful than the sun or the moon or the stars.
The prince insisted on dancing with both women at the wedding.
"Don't try to charm me," the princess said.
"I must," the prince told her, spinning her around in his arms.
"But I'm no longer cursed."
"True," the prince said, dancing her back to the arms of her new wife. "But you have a most charming brother."
About Mari Ness
More from Mari Ness
Verisya
The planet, located as it is on the edge of a small, unpopular irregular galaxy, itself on the edge of a slowly separating cluster of galaxies with limited appeal to travelers, receives few visitors, and even less attention. Its sentient inhabitants do not, for the most part,…
The Apples
It takes the servants several days to make their way to the storerooms. They blame it on the tragedy (not that the servants regard it as entirely a tragedy, but they know better than to say that out loud) and the resulting chaos: after all, they cannot enter the storerooms…
The Messenger
He knows he did the right thing. Knows it. The queen has told him. The king has told him. One look at the child--sobbing at first, but later playing with his toys--tells him that. The little man--hardly a man, really, some sort of demon--deserved it, after all he had done, and…
And the Tale Unchanging
This is the tale, as it has been every year. The flowers, red and dark as blood and stinking of earth, swell up from the ground, trembling against the wind. I caress them, or seize them, or bend down to sniff the earth as the petals reach up for my face. At that touch, he…
So You Want to Reach the Witch at the Edge of the Void
1. No, you don't. 2. Trust us on this. 3. Personal experience. 4. You're really going to insist on this? 5. Well, first, prepare to spend a lot of credits. And we do mean a lot of credits. "Enough money to buy a medium rank planet," was what we heard, and that turned out to be…
Stepsister
She finds a husband for me within the month. Not a prince, of course. One such misalliance is bad enough; two would be unthinkable. But a baron--more than I might have been expected to wed on my own. A moneyed baron, I am assured, even if at this court the word moneyed is so…