Page 1 of Enchanted Queen

CHAPTER1

The king who never was.

Water droplets ran down my back as I took a deep breath. I used my magic to dry my skin and shorts before sitting in the sand to enjoy the sunset. This was how I spent most evenings. Watching the waves crash along the shore as the day ended and reflecting on the past few months. Adjusting to life outside Kavan Keep.

The truth was, I often felt like those waves, tossed around and unable to keep from repeatedly crashing into the shore with no real sense of direction. I hoped eventually there would be more to my name, a worthy endeavor attached to my first name which would deter from all that my royal surname reminded. For now, I was simply that. The king who never was.

The true heir to the Wylan throne who had given it all up on a whim. Or what people falsely assumed was a whim.

To me, it hadn’t felt that way at all. I had known exactly what I was doing when I abdicated the throne to my brother. When my Assemblage had been down to the final two women, and The Six had given me a deadline of a month to choose my bride and the next possible queen, I had done a lot of soul searching. I hadn’t known I was the true heir then, but I had to assume I was while making my decision. A decision weighted by crowns and tensions and an entire country hanging in the balance.

Despite it all, I had seen a glimpse of it. Walking into being king. The crowns, the balls. Having Gwen by my side. A fork in the road of possible futures.

And yet something about it hadn’t felt right. Wylan needed to heal after the horror which was my father’s reign. I had known that with my every breath. And I was man enough to admit Krew was the better man for the job. He’d led the charge in forming the disloyal and taking down our father. He’d known what Wylan needed before Wylan had.

At the core of it all, yes, I had known that Krew and Jorah were what was best for Wylan to truly heal, but deep down I’d also been jealous. My brother found his soulmate in Jorah. They were soul bound and powerful as hell. And though at one point she’d been in my Assemblage, they had been drawn to each other even then.

Soul bound pairings were never a mistake. I knew that to be as true as the sun which brought morning. I wasn’t jealous anymore that Jorah was Krew’s soulmate and not mine, but I was still jealous they were soul bound.

Dammit if I didn’t want it myself.

As Enchanted, we all did. Before Krew and Jorah, there hadn’t been a soul bound pairing in years. That was why my father wanted to kill Krew that fateful morning in the throne room. He was threatened by their bond. The type of bond my father had always wanted but would never have.

I had somehow known that neither Gwen nor Delaney, or even Molly, were my soul mate. All it took was one look at Krew and Jorah and the way they couldn’t help but be the light to each other’s darkness to know that wasn’t what I had felt.

I had cared for Gwen. I had cared for Delaney. I had cared for Molly. But none of them had lit up my life the way that Jorah and Krew lit up one another’s. Like a flame which couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t as much a matter of fate, but rather an attraction so powerful it was undeniable. And though some of the women of my Assemblage could distract me from the numerous roles I had, at the end of it all, as horrid as it made me sound, I could also easily ignore them.

It could have just been that I was my father’s son. Maybe all the masks and schemes had finally caught up to me and I was incapable of chasing away anyone else’s darkness because I was too consumed by my own.

I had seen Gwen twice since dismissing her from my Assemblage. The first time I had wondered. Now that a crown wasn’t on the line, now that I didn’t have to worry about her sometimes-ambitious tendencies, maybe there would be a chance we could fix things between us. She was kind most of the time, she had a bubbly personality attached to her assertiveness which made her endearing, and she was attractive.

I’d felt like an ass for what I put her through, but I hadn’t felt a keen sense of longing in seeing her again. I truthfully hadn’t felt much other than the relief that my Assemblage was finally over.

I shook my head. It had been a disaster from the very beginning. I knew I was partly to blame for that too. I couldn’t place all the blame on my father.

Yet my brother’s Assemblage, which had been a farce and a set up from the start, had somehow worked. His soulmate had waltzed right into the castle, and he’d been unable to let her go.

Lucky prick.

And then just last week there had been another soul bound pairing. It was as though our magic was somehow unlocked after eradicating the evil which was my father off the throne. There were whispers of a couple in Savaryn who could now speak telepathically in addition to the new soul bound couple. Had they been soul bound all along?

Since I had heard those whispers yesterday here in Nerede, I couldn’t help but keep coming back to thoughts of the past few months, of my failed Assemblage. Had I already messed up my chance for a soulmate, like I tended to do?

I had done the right thing. Saved Wylan. Helped take down my father. Abdicated the throne to my brother and his wife, exactly who Wylan needed after everything was said and done. Yet now I had no idea what the next move was.

I was so used to scheming and planning to take down our father, that with Theon Valanova finally gone, I found I had nothing but time on my hands. Time and dreams. With no idea of the steps needed to get me in between.

“A little late to be out and about, don’t you think, Your Highness?” I asked. I had felt Krew’s nearness before I saw him, a product of our kin bonding.

“Well, if you didn’t insist on living so far from the castle, I’d have been here a lot earlier.”

I moved to stand, he was king after all, but his voice stopped me. “Don’t bother.”

As I settled back down in the sand, I looked over my shoulder and saw a few of his guards were trailing behind him, standing in the brush to give him space. It was rare my brother went anywhere without a full entourage of guards these days. And I knew it had to irk him to no end to go from being fully independent to having multiple shadows.

“Been wave riding again, My Prince?” another voice asked.

“Raikes,” I greeted. “I have.”

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