Everyone loves Prince Charming. They have to – he’s cursed. Every man must respect him. Every woman must desire him. One look, and all is lost.
Ember would rather carve out a piece of her soul than be enslaved by passions not her own. She turns to the dark arts to save her heart and becomes the one woman in the kingdom able to resist the Prince’s Charm.
Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.
Warning: This story contains sex, violence, and naughty words.
It’s based on a fairytale, but it isn’t for kids.
You must be over 18 to read.
Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. This story is no fairytale.
1. The Witch
2. The Courtesans
3. The Cinder Girl
4. The Stableman
5. The Loup
6. The Prince
7. The Return
8. The Ball
9. The Happily
10. The Ever After
1. The Witch
I know you think you’ve heard this story before, but you’re wrong. Some would have it that this story begins with a virtuous virgin, a young woman of honesty and integrity sucker punched by cruel fortune and forced to sleep among the cinders while her moral inferiors lived the life which was meant to be hers. Bullshit.
This is no fairytale. The real story doesn’t even start with me; it starts with the Prince. The tales have him faceless and nameless, a passionless plywood man meant to represent everything a good girl is supposed to want. Nothing could be further from the truth.
His given name was Adrian Juste, but after the witch Gaetane bestowed her double-edged blessing on his naming day, none called him aught but Charming.
“Charme,” she whispered the word in the language of the Old Ones, the tongue of curses and enchantments.
The blessing fell from her lips with a spatter of blood, for the tongue of the Old Ones is sharp as broken glass against the tender flesh of mortal mouths. “May he be charming. May every eye find perfection in his face and form. May every man respect him and every woman desire him. May all who meet him love him and long to please him.”
The old king smiled. Who wouldn’t wish such a gift for their child? Only the royal Wise Woman, Raisende, grasped import of Gaetane’s blessing. She grew pale with shock and fright.
“Sister,” whispered, Raisende, “what have you done?”
“A blessing,” Gaetane replied, her voice untroubled as she wiped her bloody lips on her glove.
“A curse, more like! You’ve blessed the boy with respect he won’t have to earn, desire he’ll never learn to appreciate and love he’ll never need to reciprocate. He’ll become a tyrant!”
“You worry overmuch, Raisende.” Gaetane removed her bloody gloves to place her hand across the infant Prince’s brow. Her hands were delicate and lovely, save for the stump where the smallest finger of her left hand had been. “You wished him wisdom, did you not? Have some confidence he’ll make use of it.”
If Raisende’s gift of wisdom tempered the Prince’s pride, we never saw it. No man or woman who met him could deny him. No listener who heard his voice could help but love him. He grew to manhood but remained a boy, carousing, whoring and pleasing himself in any manner that took his fancy.
And we loved him for it. We loved him for the fortunes he spent on his horses and his hounds. We loved him for the virgins he seduced and the whores upon whom he bestowed the jewels of the royal treasury.
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