Penelope & Prince Charming by Jennifer Ashley

passage and back to my room,” he said.
    She nodded. “That is probably best.”
    “The passage will be dark.” He remained fixed in place. “After a year in a dungeon, I dislike dark, closed-in places.”
    “Take my candle,” she said, then her brows drew together in concern. “How horrible. I did not even know dungeons still existed.”
    “They do in Nvengaria. My father threw me into one when I was a boy, beneath the castle at Narato. It is remote, damp, and nasty. His lackeys ripped me from bed in the middle of night, half suffocating me. The next thing I knew, I was in a cell with my wrists in chains and the door closing. It was dark.” He drew a quick breath, ageold demons swooping at him from the past. “Penelope, I’ve never been anywhere so dark.”
    “How old were you?” she asked gently.
    “Twelve.”
    “Why would he do such a thing?” she asked, angry.
    “My father? I am surprised it took him twelve years to act against me.” He toyed with her fingers while he answered. “A faction had gathered to overthrow him and put me on the throne. With their leader as regent, of course, and me to be their puppet. My father caught them and had them all executed in a gruesome manner. He could not prove I had any intention of going along with it, but to be safe, he locked me away. It took his Council of Dukes a year to convince him to let me out again. Public opinion was turning against him, and they feared an uprising. So my father set me free in a public ceremony—the prodigal son forgiven—then, in the middle of the night again, his men came for me and dragged me into the mountains and abandoned me. My father spun a yarn of sending me away to school in France, then later claimed that I’d run away on my own, because I hated Nvengaria. The truth was, he forbade me to come back. If I returned, it would be to face secret execution. Only the fact that the people of Nvengaria liked me and would never forgive my father if he got rid of me openly, kept him from giving the order to have me killed outright.”
    He stopped short, closing his mouth with effort, wondering where the flow of words had come from. He’d never told any living soul the truth of what had happened. Either they already knew, like Petri, or he had no wish to speak of it.
    Penelope had done the same with her story of Reuben White’s betrayal. Was the prophecy making them bare their souls to each other? Did it want them stripped naked before one another, and not only in the enjoyable way?
    She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I am sorry.”
    Candlelight gleamed on her tawny hair. He wrapped one glistening golden curl around his finger. “I survived.Petri found me, and together, we swarmed across Europe and conquered it. To a boy, it was an adventure; do not feel too sorry for me.”
    “Was it?”
    Truth snaked out of his mouth again. “No. I was damned terrified. I knew my father would send assassins after me, and he did. Petri and I lived hand to mouth, laboring in fields for food or a bed for the night, or we outright begged if we could not find work. I, the spoiled prince, was kicked in the face by burghers with nothing better to do.”
    He omitted the few who had wanted them for a different sort of labor, two handsome Nvengarian boys, and how they’d had to fight to get away.
    She slid her palm across his lawn-clad forearm. “That is horrible.”
    Compassion rang in her voice. She cared. She was imagining that scared youth and wanting to comfort him. He’d left the boy behind years and years ago, but the tiny part of him who was still that child reached for her comfort.
    Oh, no, no, no, he thought, wanting to laugh. You tried to snare me with desire, now you are trying to snare me with her shining compassion.
    And I’m talking back to a stubborn, lust-driven prophecy.
    “Penelope,” he said. “I will take your candle and return to my room.”
    “Yes,” she answered.
    He remained on one knee before her, his fingers tangled in