Page 117 of Quest for her Knights
The best I can hope for is someone I haven’t met who’s actually nice, or maybe someone from Shadowcross. They seemed like decent men. However, the thought of marrying anyone who isn’t my knights feels wrong. Like I might just vomit from the thought alone.
I stand up just as number eight turns around. He waves wildly at me, and twelve smacks him in the back of the head, making a laugh burst out of me. I slap my hands over my mouth as my wide eyes turn to Freya. She gives me a knowing smirk and links her arm through mine.
“Let’s go get some dinner, shall we? You can tell me all about how you haven’t noticed number eight yet.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumble quietly, making her laugh.
Unfortunately, the queen has me sit beside her, so I’m unable to relax and talk to Freya during dinner.
“Shouldn’t Elora go out there to meet the contestants?” Freya asks when the idea of me leaving the castle comes up.
“No, the contest needs to be unbiased. If any of them let it slip what their number is, it could cause her to choose one over another.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Grayson asks his mother. “She has to marry them, after all.”
The queen sighs and shakes her head. “I’m done with this topic for the night. Elora, when you’re done eating, the guardswill escort you to your room where you will stay until morning. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I grumble, taking a small bite of food.
“I’ve told you to call me Mother.” I nod, not wanting to tell her that if she wanted to be called that, she needed to start acting like it.
When I’m back in my room and changed for bed, I sit on the large bench under one of my windows and look out into the darkened night. Lights flicker from the direction of the arena, and I imagine it’s the lords and spectators who are camping out there tonight.
I sigh, thinking about how most of my time in this world was spent camping with my knights. I’d gladly go back to that over this stuffy castle any day.
Finally, when it's well past midnight and I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, I climb into my massive bed and hide under the blankets until morning. Wishing, once again, that maybe this time when I wake up, they’ll be beside me again.
I wake up with a groan as I move my arms and legs around the bed. Nope, all alone still. There’s a knock and one of the guards calls through the door, “Princess, are you awake? You need to be downstairs in an hour.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I call back. “I’m getting up.”
By the time I’m sitting on my throne in the arena, I’m feeling much more awake. The sun is shining brightly today with no clouds in the sky as I wonder what contests the kings have in store for us today.
The only things in the arena are a bunch of long branches and buckets.
King Cole stands to announce the first contest. “The first challenge of the day is simple. Hold the water the longest.”
I watch as each of the lords puts the branch across his back and two knights stand at each end. There’s a short countdown then the knights, in unison, hook the buckets to the end of the branches. It’s the way you’d hold a bar for squatting, but instead of weights, they’re using buckets of water. And instead of squatting, they just have to stand there.
Several of the lords start shaking straight away, water sloshing over the sides of their buckets before they crumple to their knees, effectively putting them in last place.
The rest are able to hold out for about ten minutes before the next wave of them start to give up. After that they start dropping like flies until there are only four left.
One of them is nineteen, but I can’t tell who the others are. When they eventually give up, Nineteen is declared the winner, and I have a strong feeling that whoever he and his brothers are, they’re going to win this whole thing.
My stomach tightens in unease. Last night, as I lay in bed, I tried to think of ways to escape, but being constantly surrounded by knights, it’s literally impossible to get away. I wondered about escaping through a washroom window but beside my room, which was far too high up for me to escape out of, none of the washrooms I’d found even had windows.
Maybe I’ll have to wait until I’m married to escape. Would my knights still want me if I married someone else? Freya told me divorce wasn’t a thing here, it’s why they took marriage so seriously, it was forever. But if I were forced into it, it wouldn’t really count, would it?
My wandering mind is interrupted by King Chase. “The next challenge is a little different. Each lord has forty minutes to find a gift they deem suitable for the princess. My daughter will review these, without knowing which gift is from which suitor, and place them in order of appeal.”
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. I didn’t know they were actually going to let me have some say in the contests, however small it is.
The timer starts and most of the lords run out the back of the arena in search of their gifts. Some move more slowly like they already have something in mind.
They are collected outside the arena, so there’s no chance of me seeing what each man brings, but once they deliver their item they move to stand around the inside the arena, all facing the middle where the box of gifts is placed.
“Princess,” King Lewis says, getting my attention, pointing to the stairs close by where two knights wait for me.
