Chapter One
I stood staring at my Darcy Masters original wedding gown for what felt like an eternity, which was odd, considering. I had only met the man who would soon become my husband a mere eight months before, right around the time I found out I was six weeks pregnant from a three-minute mistake with a regrettable one-night-stand.
No matter how many fixed numbers were added to the equation, it all summed up one inescapable truth: time is fucking relative.
A lifetime of stuff can change in eight months. Take it from me.
By October 1st, I was 36 weeks pregnant, standing in a 12th century castle, staring at a regal white wedding dress complete with its own crystal studded cape, getting ready to walk down the aisle to an actual prince, with all the castles, crowns and thrones that came with the title, all ready to become mine the minute I said, “I do.”
I guess I needed a moment to take it all in.
You already know most of the story, where I, Peaches McPhee, had been hired to write the titillating tell-all memoir of Augustine Seamus Whitley Quinn Agassi, aka Auggie, aka Prince Augustine of Alasdair, The Duke of Iver, aka The Duke of Mayhem, a rebel royal who went rogue and became a rock star.
He was also the heir apparent to the kingdom of Aldayne, a country west of Ireland and south of Iceland, with the Viking/Gaelic roots to prove it.
His grandfather Evander had been king until his death in 1996, when power shifted to Queen Maeve, his widow. Their son, Roan, ran off with an American dancer named Sofie and newborn son, Auggie, to live a life of the ordinary in America, leaving Aldayne without a successor in the House of Quinn.
This was a problem because the next House in line of succession was the House of Byrne, filled with, shall we say, not so nice people. Queen Maeve then decided she needed to get her hands on an heir and quickly.
After the deaths of his parents, Auggie was her prime target.
By the time I met Auggie, he was more than a decade into his career as an award-winning musician/performer, who regularly sold out arenas all over the world. He embarked on one last tour before he was forced to keep a promise he made to the Queen. She needed an answer to a question placed upon his head the second he was born. Would he or wouldn’t he serve Aldayne as their king?
As it happened, he would, right after he asked me to marry him.
And I couldn’t even be upset about it because it was kind of my idea. Because I was the ordinary girl he plucked straight off the farm, Auggie left the decision to me how much I wanted our lives together to change. After one meeting with the aforementioned Byrnes, I knew we had no choice. Auggie had to become king to spare Aldayne.
Bad things happen to good people when bad men are in charge. Read any history book anywhere.
That one decision changed everything for me and for my whole family, which was why we hadn’t yet returned to our home state of California, after following Auggie to Aldayne for the Queen’s 25th Jubilee in August.
Well, that, and that the biological father of my near-term baby was an abusive asshole who could never get access to my son. Outside of these borders he had access to me, inside he didn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere.
It had only been a little over five weeks since Queen Maeve’s announcement that Auggie had agreed to become king. It both sped by like a minute and felt like forever ago, mostly because we had to hurry up and plan a wedding to take place in Aldayne prior to the blessed event of my due date, which was rapidly approaching by the end of the month.
Most folks believed my due date was November 24th, but I was due on Halloween. The deception was necessary to spare my son from his biological dad, Christopher Tyler, the aforementioned asshole. I knew the minute I delivered early that he’d turn up again like some recurring nightmare.
We had worked together for years, but the relationship had been contentious because he was a pompous, sexist Dude Bro jerk who thought I was a second-rate female due to my size.
That didn’t stop him from sleeping with me when he was drunk and horny, though. And it certainly didn’t stop him from slipping off the condom without my consent.
Did you know stealthing was a thing? Me either, till the pregnancy test came back positive.
Oh, and he confessed it to me right after he hit me and right before he tried to rape me.
Like I said. Asshole. Dangerous, abusive asshole who wasn’t going to come a hundred miles of my son.
Auggie felt even more strongly about this than I did. We had long planned to marry before I delivered, but initially our simple plan had been a family thing at my parents’ farm, with my mother officiating.
Instead, we had five weeks to pull off a real wedding in a real church, since being a king required such things.
So, it wasn’t just any wedding. It was a royal wedding. One with presidents, heads of state and other royal families on the guest list, not to mention all manner of celebrities and notables from all over the world. Oh, and it was going to be televised live for a global audience.
It was a matter of Aldaynean pride to get it right.
I had an entire team of people assisting me with this gargantuan task. There was, of course, my sister and bestie, Fern, who likewise was planning her own wedding the following spring. There was my mother and my younger sister Dallas, and of course, everybody’s favorite, my baby brother, Dash.
There was Countess Audra Tremwell, Fern’s future sister-in-law and our new, dearest friend. She was officially part of the Royal Court, having served as Auggie’s personal assistant for all the years he’d been M.I.A. from Aldayne, and was about as fierce as they come. If she wanted something done, people did it. She never needed to ask twice.
There were the Princesses, Auggie’s aunts, Princess Fiona, Princess Mariel, and Princess Giselle, all of whom had all the charm and connections to fill in the rest.
I had my own personal assistant, Kelly Murphy, who was also trained to help me with any baby stuff that popped up along the way. This was necessary after having a pregnancy complicated by placenta previa, as well as a steady occurrence of Braxton Hicks contractions due to all the stress stemming from my growing obligations.
Taking an extensive leave from the United States, my two favorite fairy glam mothers, Jorge Navarro and Darcy Masters, were on hand to help dress the entire royal wedding party, consisting of all my brothers and sisters, half of the Tremwells, a couple of Quinns and a partridge in a pear tree.
But the most important member of the wedding planning committee was the queen herself.
Maeve Quinn was poised to become my grandmother-in-law, but she was also a legit monarch who knew how to make things happen. With one phone call, she secured the venue, Crystal Sky Cathedral, an all-glass church that her husband had built for their wedding nearly sixty years before. A dozen calls more and we had celebrity performers, a fleet of dedicated newscasters (not one of which was affiliated with Christopher’s new employer PING,) as well as a virtual parade and cross-country tour, so I could be driven around Aldayne in a glass carriage for all the countrymen and women to see.
At seven o’clock the following morning, the processional would start from this very castle, Greystone, in the shadow of Grandpa Charlie, a dormant volcano officially known as Mount Charlemonde, and go all the way south towards the Queen’s castle, Shimmering Falls, and Crystal Sky just beyond. There I would exit the carriage, wave to the crowds, then walk down an aisle glimmering with the rainbows cast by all the beveled glass panes overhead, where my prince waited to make me an honest-to-goodness, bonafide princess.