Shattered Glass

By Rosalie Conte

I fell to my knees and stared at the hard tile beneath me. The man behind me released my wrists, and my arms dropped to my sides.

“Thank you for finding her, Zaivar,” a low voice said in front of me.

I glanced at the ticking wall clock. 1:16 a.m. It took him only an hour and sixteen minutes to catch me?

I hesitantly placed my bare feet on the cold floor, careful not to step on the torn hem of my gown and kept my eyes down.

“I barely even needed the shoe,” a voice behind me said.

The man called Zaivar stepped to my side and tossed something on the ground.

A glass slipper hit the marble tile and shattered, obliterating the engraved words ‘Ella Tremaine.’

“I’ll deliver your payment later. You have my royal word.”

I dared to look up and scanned the large, pristine study for the first time. Ornate decoration covered the walls. I felt underdressed. My eyes locked on the prince. He was tall. Charming, too, honestly.

“Go enjoy the party for now.” With a dismissive wave, he then locked eyes with me.

I gave him a cold, hard stare as Zaivar left, and I heard the door close.

The royal rubbed his temples underneath his bejeweled crown.

“I said I’d dance with you!” I barked, crossing an arm over my chest. “I never said I’d marry you!”

“I know that.” He lowered his hands and glared. “I needed an excuse to bring you here. I assumed you’d jump at the chance. Instead, you made a scene.”

“So you hired a bounty hunter?” I yelled, gesticulating wildly.

The royal shrugged. “He was just a room over, and I needed you back. But not for marriage.” He stepped toward me, crushing bits of broken glass under his boot. “Where did you get your tiara? Some fairy godmother?”

Why does he want to know? Does it belong to the royal family?

Worry filled my chest as I reluctantly admitted, “It’s from my betrothed, Steven.” I crossed my arms. “He didn’t come to your party.”

“You have no idea what he gave you.”

I fingered the circlet on my head. “Was it stolen from you?”

“Ella!” a muffled shout echoed behind me.

I whirled to face the door. “Steven?”

“Let him in.”

Two guards marched my fiancé into the room.

Concern etched Steven’s face. “Ella, your mother sent word that you were running from marriage. What happened?”

“I was, but the prince doesn’t want to marry me. He just wanted my tiara. I’m sorry. It’s not worth the trouble.” I unfastened it from my head and faced the heir to the throne.

The prince took it and commanded the guards to make sure we returned to the party.

Before I could leave, Steven broke the silence, “Ella. The crown, it isn’t—”

A deep rumbling cut him off.

I braced myself against a tapestry as glass bottles fell off the shelves and shattered. I slid down to a crouch, Steven immediately at my side.

The guards sat on the floor in a daze, staring at my crown hovering in the middle of the room.

“What is going on?” I yelled over the noise.

“Don’t look at it!” Steven warned, and I tore my eyes from the circlet.

The rumbling stopped, and the prince copied us, rising from the floor, his own diadem fallen off.

“It’s safe to look now.” Steven crept through the room, and I followed him. “The mind control process is over, and it seems like thankfully, no one is fully under the prince’s command but his own guards.”

“What?”

My tiara floated down and landed on the prince’s head.

Steven lowered his voice. “I gave it to you to protect. I didn’t think anyone here knew it was magic.”

“I thought I recognized that tiara.” A gruff, vaguely familiar voice startled me.

All heads spun to face the speaker.

Zaivar stood in the doorway, smirking. “I’m gonna need to take that.”

“Guards! Keep them here!” the prince shouted.

Zaivar sprang into the room and snatched my crown off the prince’s head. Before I could blink, Zaivar ran toward a floor-to-ceiling window and broke it with a metal tip on his shoe, finishing up with a punch from his gloved hand.

The guards, still dazed, rushed to him.

“Should we leave?” I hissed at Steven, but instead, he took my hand, and we sprinted to where Zaivar was lassoing a tall tree branch through the window.

Zaivar shouted, “Grab onto me, Ella!”

My heart leaped as I wrapped my arms around Zaivar from behind and Steven kicked a guard away.

Steven can fight?

Zaivar leaped out of the building on the other end of the long rope, and I screamed as we plummeted. Thankfully, at the last minute, the rope tightened, and we swung backward. Bending my knees, I jolted as my bare feet hit the castle wall.

Steven had caught the end of the rope in time to jump safely to the cobblestones as Zaivar lowered us, hand over hand.

When we reached the ground, I spotted my accessory, shattered like my slipper. Sadness mixed with relief in my chest.

Steven stepped over the fragments. “Since the tiara is now broken, the guards should be normal again. Thank you, Zai.”

I turned to follow Steven away from the palace.

Zaivar added, “Yeah. And Steve? Sorry for, you know, capturing your girlfriend.”

“I know.”

I nudged Steven’s shoulder with my own. “I have the feeling you have an interesting past that you haven’t told me about.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosalie Conte was originally born a cat, but now enjoys her life as a human in the pacific northwest. When not leading Link to rescue Zelda, she enjoys fantasizing a vast amount of stories and trying to put a couple down on paper. Rosalie lives with her family and extremely adorable bunny, Crow.