Read Online The Bride of Larkspear by Sherry Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

their prince, for he was of an age when he should settle down and beget heirs.
    “Unbeknownst to the world at large, Narcissus had long been in love with a young woman of Pride named Fidelia. Fidelia knew Narcissus existed, of course, but that was the extent of her awareness of him. The prince and his fancy dirigible mattered little to her. In fact, from time to time she would make fun of him to her friends, mocking the size of his dirigible, and what one man could possibly do with so much hot air at his disposal.”
    My bride’s eyes narrow a little. She is beginning to catch the drift of my story.
    “Word would get back to Narcissus and he would pace the high towers of the palace, unable to sleep. From time to time he turned the telescopes in the astronomy tower to Fidelia’s bookshop in the city, to watch the light in her upstairs window, wishing he could be in her room with her, reading together.”
    My bride’s expression changes when I mention Fidelia’s bookshop. She is, of course, no lowly bookseller—her brother is a peer of a higher rank than I. But the parallels are too obvious to dismiss.
    “My,” she murmurs, her tone meringue-light, “for a moment I thought he meant to tie her to her bookshelves.”
    “Please, he is nowhere near as romantic as I am. Now, where was I? Ah, every three months Fidelia went on a book-buying trip to several nearby lands. The prince always watched for her return—when she came back from those trips was when she would come to the palace with a crate of her best finds for Narcissus to inspect, and he waited for those meetings with a yearning only those who’d known unrequited love could understand.”
    She sits up slowly, yanking a sheet about her shoulders.
Unrequited love
, those formerly unmentionable words, have at last been spoken.
    It is more difficult to go on with her staring at me, but I do. “Pride was a country of largely predictable weather. They were in the middle of the dry season. Fidelia’s freight of books was loaded on drays normally used for barrels of ale, and not the covered wagons she’d have used in rainier seasons. But as the prince watched her progress on the dusty plains outside the city walls, what should he see but a storm on the horizon, fast approaching.
    “He immediately called for
Narcissus’s Pride
, his wonderful dirigible. But by the time he reached her drays, the storm was nearly on top of them. There would be no time to transfer her books for safekeeping inside the gondola of the dirigible.
    “The prince did not hesitate. Much to Fidelia’s openmouthed shock, he pulled out his dagger and sliced into his dirigible, opening it up into an enormous water-resistant tarp to place over her books. Fidelia, recovering her composure, found large rocks to place all along the edges of the tarp to keep it from flying away during the storm.
    “They finished and ducked inside the dirigible’s gondola just as rain came down in torrents. ‘Why have you destroyed your beautiful dirigible?’ Fidelia at last asked. ‘They are only books.’
    ‘Maybe,’ answered Narcissus. ‘But they are
your
books.’”
    My bride blinks at Narcissus’s fervent declaration.
    “To this day people talk about how the prince won the hand of his beloved only when he first took a knife to his
Pride
. They were married the next spring and lived and ruled happily together for many years.”
    Utter silence. My bride gazes somewhere toward the mantel. I cannot tell whether my story pleases her or merely makes her feel as if she’s been run over by an omnibus.
    “A happy ending,” she murmurs. “That is depraved indeed. What will you think of next?”
    “A great deal more depravities, of course. I like happy endings.”
    She looks back at me. I feel transparent, as if my heart is beating in the open.
    “You could have told me that story five years ago. Ten years ago, even.”
    The weight of all my years of stupidity presses down on me. “I didn’t know how to