Page 17 of A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart)

“Anywhere. As long as you don’t leave the premises.”

“Is Prince Apollo currently in Wolf Hall?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Excellent. Please take me to see him,” Evangeline saidcalmly, hopeful that this was simply a misunderstanding. Two nights ago, Apollo had said she wasn’t a prisoner and he’d never lock her up. In fact, he’d looked deeply hurt when she’d mentioned it. Clearly, these guards were mistaken.

“I’m sorry,” said Yeats evenly, “but the prince is currently occupied.”

“Doing what?” Evangeline asked.

Yeats’s mustache twitched in annoyance. “It isn’t our place to say,” he grunted. “What if we took you to one of the gardens instead?”

Evangeline finally let her smile fade. Until now she’d tried to be polite and pleasant, but these men clearly had no respect for her.

Maybe before she’d lost her memories, she would have been less troublesome. She might have been eager to simply wander the castle and the gardens and to be seen as an easy-to-please princess. But right now she really didn’t care about being a princess or being pleased or easy. She needed toremember.And that seemed unlikely to happen if she was confined to a fortified castle where people thought she was better off leaving the past forgotten.

“Did my husband tell you that he didn’t want to see me?”

“No. But—”

“Mr. Yeats,” Evangeline interrupted, “I’d like to see my husband. And if you tell me no or suggest that I walk through another garden, I’m going to assume you believe either that my husband can be replaced by flowers or that you’re in a positionto give me orders. Do you believe either of those things, Mr. Yeats?”

The guard gritted his teeth.

Evangeline held her breath.

Finally Yeats answered, “No, Your Highness. I don’t think that.”

Evangeline tried to hide her relief as she looked at the others and asked, “What about the rest of you?”

“No, Your Highness,” they each muttered quickly.

“Splendid! Let’s go see Apollo.”

The guards made no move to leave. “We won’t stop you from looking for him, but we won’t take you to him,” said Yeats.

Evangeline had never been much for cursing, but she wanted to do it just then.

“I’ll take you to the prince,” called a new guard from a few feet away.

Evangeline looked at this young man askew.

He wore the same guard’s uniform as the others, but his armor appeared more scratched, as if he’d actually seen battle. There were a few scars on his face as well. “My name is Havelock, Your Highness.”

He waited a beat.

Evangeline had the immediate sense that he was hoping she would remember him, which just added to her frustration when she didn’t feel so much as a glimmer of recognition.

“It’s all right,” Havelock said. Then he nodded toward the cloak draped over her arm. “You won’t be needing that. Theprince is in his receiving room. The fireplace takes up an entire wall. No one needs a cloak in there.”

Havelock did not lie.

The receiving room looked like the sort of place where children might gather on the night before a holiday to listen to a grandparent tell tales before the fire. Rain fell on the other side of the room’s wall-to-wall windows.

When Evangeline arrived, she watched the rain pour down in silver curtains, soaking the dark green needle trees and hitting hard against the windows. Inside the room, the great fire crackled as logs broke, setting off a quick riot of sparks and filling the room with a new burst of heat.

Even though her shoulders were bare, she was suddenly warm.

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