Page 38 of Prince Cheating Charming

My teeth ground together as I rushed through the palace and onto the front lawn. Quite a large group had gathered, although the cabbage and potato-throwing were decidedly on the tentative side. Alexander himself was urging his subjects to keep throwing harder.

As I came up beside him, I saw that he had drawn CHEATER in what looked like sharpie marker across one of his expensive, snowy-white cambric shirts.

“Stop this!” I hissed as soon as I got even with him. “You’re frightening all the normal people. Other countries are going to start invading us.”

Alexander was secured so thoroughly in the stocks that he couldn’t crane his neck very far, but I could see him trying to.

“Hit me,” he said. “I pissed you off. I hurt you. Hurt me. Punch me. Throw some cabbages at me.”

“Oh my god, Alexander,” I cried, tapping my toe impatiently, irritably aware that the whole incident was being live-streamed. “I’m not going to do that!”

“You have to!” he urged. “Hurt me like I hurt you.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel cold and disgusted. I felt white-hot anger at him. The arrogance of him thinking that a couple of moldy potatoes were going to change anything.

It wasn’t going to change anything, but I did suddenly feel like hitting him with rotten vegetables. I selected the most openly repulsive-looking cabbage head and threw it as hard as I could at him. I usually had the shittiest aim, but it hit him in the forehead, splattering rotten cabbage guts all over his face.

“You humiliated me,” I seethed at him, trying to keep my voice down so all the interested tourists couldn’t hear me. “You made me feel stupid for agreeing to marry you. I don’t believe you ever loved me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his throat swallowing convulsively and his voice cracking. “I deserved that, Delilah. I would deserve it if you left when the month is over. I don’t deserve anything more. But I want something more. I love you, and I know we can be good together if I can show you I’m not that man anymore.”

There was silence except for the wind blowing across the pond, and the gently clicking sounds of the townspeople, palace employees, and tourists all recording this.

I felt an embarrassed, prickly heat break out over my body but I realized one thing.

He did not give a shit about how embarrassing this was. Alexander did not care how many people would be gleefully viewing his humiliation on their phones later. He was just watching me, his shallow, rapid breathing thrumming through my chest.

My chest, my throat, felt constricted.

“Welp, time for the ducking stool,” Roger said cheerfully, thankfully breaking in, because I had no idea what to say.

Was it even possible for us to be good together?

We had never been good together.

I had been besotted, wildly, madly, foolishly in love.

Roger unlocked the stocks and directed Alexander to the huge wooden dunking stool, which was a wooden chair attached to a huge lever that Roger would use to dunk my husband under the water.

“Where did you even find that?” I asked in annoyance.

“I had it specially-made,” Alexander said, sitting still as Roger tied him in with the straps. Now he was trapped. He couldn’t get out even if he wanted to.

“Dunk me until I tell you to stop,” the King said. “Hold me under for at least a minute.”

“This changes nothing,” I warned, and Roger dunked him in the lake.

There were scattered gasps of horror.

Alexander was down there for what seemed like an excessive amount of time, and finally Roger raised him up, water streaming off his body.

“Again!” the King said, his eyes on me.

Oh my GOD.

“Are you sure?” Roger asked uncertainly, glancing between Alexander and me.

“No!” I cried.

---