Prologue
“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”
–Hans Christian Anderson
Winters in Torryn were generally mild—one of the perks of sitting in the dead middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The water was always the clearest blue, the sand white as snow, and the weather nearly perfect all year long.
Except for today.
Today the wind tore through our crops without mercy as raindrops fell like bullets against the windows of our island estate. Everything my father had worked so hard for was being ripped up by the roots and thrown across the sky as the storm raged on. The farm was our legacy, our lifeline. It was all we had. Apparently, God and nature had decided we’d had enough.
I held back the curtain of my second-floor bedroom window, trying to see out onto the water beyond the cliffs. There was nothing but black. Pure darkness was interrupted only by an occasional flash of light.
That’s when I saw it. Everything happened so fast. A bolt of lightning. A falling tree. A crash louder than the roaring thunder.
I ran downstairs and told my parents, not thinking for a moment that my father would run out the door into the unknown. But he did. Because ultimately, that’s who Matteo Bellizzi was.
He ran into the storm to save a king from a tree-pinned car.
And it cost him his life.
What began as a simple winter rain quickly became the storm we would never recover from. The wind didn’t howl. It screamed. The rain went from a light smattering against the castle windows to a torrential force in a matter of minutes. My mother paced the floor, holding tight to the rosary passed down to her from my grandmother. She paced. She prayed. She worried. Because my father, the king, was out there.
He’d gone out to help distribute sandbags for a storm that wasn’t due to hit until tomorrow. That’s who Phillipe Thorne was. He wasn’t the king who was comfortable merely being a figurehead. Where the people were, that’s where he wanted to be. When help was needed, he was there, in person, ready to give. I’d offered to go with him because like father, like son, but he said I needed to prepare things at home. Now I had to wonder if somehow he’d known he might not make it back.
The moment the weather took a turn for the worse, Dad called me. He’d told me the roads had begun to flood. Visibility was low, and the wind made it nearly impossible to maintain control of his vehicle. He’d said the best way home was to cut through the Bellizzi Estate, a nine-acre farm located a few miles from our castle.
That was two hours ago.
I put on a strong face for Mom, but my mind raced with thoughts I would never even wish upon my worst enemy. I’d barely turned twenty-five. There was an instability in our country due to a nasty rumor that our family had stolen the crown, a rumor my father had spent the last five years putting to rest. It didn’t matter. There would always be those who believed what they wanted. Parliament had recently gone on break. I was nowhere near ready to deal with a worst-case-scenario.
Then the phone call came.
There had been an accident. Thankfully, Dad survived, but the consequences of that night ended up changing all our lives. Forever.
One
Four months later…
I’d always been taught that Purgatory was that place between Heaven and Hell, the pitstop between a good life and a great life. The place where souls were sent to suffer. Where they walked through the flames and came out pure as gold.
My purgatory was a palace.
Except I wasn’t dead, and Hell had nothing on Thornebridge Castle.
I’d always believed I was strong enough to handle anything life threw at me. That’s how my dad raised me. I always vowed that no matter what happened, I would survive, and I lived as though that vow was the law.
“I’m sorry your grandparents died before you could know them, Katie.”
“I’m sorry you can’t go to college, Katie. Dad needs your help on the farm.”
“I’m sorry, Katie. Your dad is sick. He might not make it.”
He didn’t make it. Dad died saving the king’s life the night of the storm, and I hated him for it—the king, not my father. Dad had a weak heart, not strong enough to handle the stress of removing tree limbs to save a king from a burning car then carrying him all the way back to our home. He had a heart attack and wasn’t strong enough to recover while King Phillipe walked away with a broken arm and seventeen stitches. I was still waiting for someone to tell me how that was fair.
After Dad died, we lost our farm, a farm that had been in our family for generations. A man in a suit from the king’s cabinet had come to our home and delivered the news to my mother. He’d said the damage from the storm was too great. It had spread too far. We didn’t have the resources, financial or otherwise, to bounce back.
As some sort of pity prize disguised as gratitude, King Phillipe gave my mom and me steady work at the castle along with a place to live. Mama worked as the Queen’s Secretary and had a room inside the palace, in the East Wing where the Royals stayed. The king offered me the same, but I chose one of the guesthouses instead. It was a small two-bedroom villa behind the South Garden, completely separate from the main castle, and it was all mine. It made me feel less like them and more like me. Even though these days, I wasn’t sure who me was anymore.
The castle staff scurried around the kitchen, getting things ready for an extravagant gala the royals were throwing tonight. Men and women of all ages moved from one side of the room to the next with platters in one hand and pitchers in the other. They twirled and weaved around each other in a well-choreographed dance. I knew all their faces but hardly any of their names. I wasn’t here to make friends. I was here because here was the only place I had to go… For now.
Madeline—the one girl whose name I did actually know—prepared a charcuterie board, arranging nuts and cheeses around traditional meats and olives. She made an art out of food placement. Meanwhile, I spread whipped caramel icing on top of vanilla cupcakes and called it gourmet. Thankfully, my platter wasn’t being served at tonight’s festivities.
I didn’t actually work in the kitchen. I only baked in my spare time, which was far too often if you asked my hips. I didn’t actually work anywhere in the castle, unless reading books and dusting shelves in the library all day could be considered work. King Phillipe thought it was a good way to keep my mind off... things. I thought it was a good place to hide. I didn’t complain because I loved the smell of leather and wood and the warm liberation of getting lost in classic literature. Plus, he paid me and gave me a place to live. That made everything okay, right?
Wrong.
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like? To be one of them?” Madeline asked as she plucked a freshly washed grape from a metal strainer.
She was talking about the Thornes, the royal family. They were all she ever talked about. They were all anyone ever talked about.
I swiped my finger along the edge of my bowl full of icing, sticking it in my mouth then pulling it out with a loud pop. “Not even a little bit.”
“Do you think they’re like us?”
I drizzled salted caramel on top of cupcake number four. “Of course they’re like us. They eat. They sleep.” I scrunched up my nose. “They poop.”