Elena tightened her fingers around the chair’s carved arm as she faced her father on the opposite side of the desk. In the private office at their sprawling country estate, once a sanctuary, what began as a father-daughter conversation had turned into a war. The heavy drapes and portraits of her ancestors staring down at them all bore witness to the battleground of wills between a king and his princess.
“But, Father–” she began in her crisp British accent honed from years with her British tutor, only to be cut off when he raised a hand.
As her words stopped, he pulled his hand back, tugging on the still-dark beard poking from his chin. “Elena, I will not hear any more of your…entreaties.”
“I am not whining,” she said as she settled her arms across her chest.
“You are.”
She narrowed her emerald eyes at her father, the current king of her small country of Eldoria. “Did you bring me here to celebrate my birthday, or merely to deliver this crushing news in a more calming setting?”
Her father closed his blue eyes, his nostrils flaring with a deep sigh. “Elena, this is hardly news to you.”
A storm of emotions whirled within her, sitting just below the surface. A fierce desire for freedom clashed with her ingrained duty of her royal lineage. She yearned to shout and argue that her life deserved more than a set of predetermined steps set out at birth. Yet, years of rigid decorum held her back, molding her protest into a quiet plea for independence.
She tugged her doll-like lips into a frown. She had known since she was a child she was betrothed to a prince from another country. She’d lived her life in that shadow.
In this very room, she’d been taught the importance of fulfilling her royal duties. As crown princess of Eldoria, she would ascend to the throne one day. She’d been reared by her father’s sometimes overbearing hand and her mother’s far gentler one to rule a country.
Over the years, those lessons had turned to lectures. Lectures about duty, lectures about state decisions, lectures about everything to do with her royal commitments. They all seemed like burdens to her now.
