Prologue

"Well is she ok?"

"Yes, congratulations; you have a baby girl."

"Well let me see her, and my beautiful wife."

The nurse quickly cuts him off from entering the room.

"You're majesty . . . your wife didn't make it; the queen died during the birth of the child.

Fear and rage filled the prince's eye's, but nothing but silence filled the air, The prince's face transformed to a man with pain, to a man with no emotion, no heart, no feeling; within a blink of an eye.

"Let me in, I want to see my queen." He said just loud enough to hear the pride he used to hide his pain. As the Prince began to walk through the door, his mind wouldn't allow him to see what he didn't want to know; the small length between him and his queen, seemed like a three day journey through a tight, dark tunnel. He was in denial, he was over filled with happiness, he was at that point of just existing.

The prince stared at the new born baby in the nurses arms, and the limp body of his queen that was so ever close behind her. The baby cried, in search for it's mother, the mother that was never going to know her baby.

"Her name?" The nurse continued to ask the prince.

The Prince saw the nurse, saw the baby, say the body, but he could hear nothing ' This isn't real.' is what he told himself, this is all a dream and nightmare combining into one; but it wasn't, it was worse then reality, it was the beginning of his death.

"Adam!"

The nurse screamed into his ear, and continued vigorously shaking him back to reality.

"Yes, Yes! ugh . . .what is it?" the prince asked in an disappointed tone.

"We've been asking you, what is the child's name?"

The doors slammed open, and on the other side was the King and the Grand Duke; Geoffrey.

"There will be no naming, and there will be no news of this born child yet." The King announced calmly.

The Nurse looked at the king with confusion and the prince looked at the baby with no surprise to his father's decision.

"Give me the baby"

The Princes reached over with the nurse for the baby with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. He was concentrating so much on keeping calm that he had lost all sense of nerves.

The baby began to cry as they all did then and still do now.

" I'm sorry, she's gone, but fortunately for you, there will be no memory of her, no pain in the future; then there's me, I'll being living my life with enough pain for the both of us, you may not have the burden of pain towards a lost mother, but I have to live with the pain towards a lost a queen, a lost wife, a lost friend."

The prince sobbed, and went down. Not noticing the danger he put the child in from falling onto the wooden floors. The nurse took the baby before she could fall onto the ground, and attempted to comfort the prince, by massaging his head as she rocked the baby to ease.

"Leave us." The prince mumbled under his breath, barely understandable.  

"I'm sorry you're majesty, what-"

"Leave us!" The Prince blankly stared into nothing through the floor, he had no care of making the baby cry or startling the nurse, he new his father wasn't going to make him feel better; but worse, and he was ready for his father to say the unbelievable. The Nurse left with the child, and before she exited through the door the king called out 'Tell no one of the child!', and then she was gone with the Prince's new born baby, nameless and motherless. 

"I'm sorry, my boy."

The Prince was shocked, he hadn't the slightest clues of what was just said, his father? comforting him?

"What do you want?" The prince attempted to stand up and look tall, proper - calm, but it was no were near convincing.

"I'm sorry, I'm not comforting you, I'm just saying that I feel bad, due to the way your queen died."

The Prince went from a fake stance of pride to him purposefully glaring at his father with confusion; demand.

"What do you mean, 'the way my queen died', she . . ." The prince didn't even understand what was being said.

"No son, she was poisoned, you're lucky the baby survived."

"By whom?" The prince said in a rather annoyed tone, as he unconsciously began to pace the floor, which is what he did often when he felt anything but happiness.

There was a long pause in the air, as if the answer didn't exist, but it did - the king just had no intentions of finding the it.  

"We don't know." The King said in monotone.

Disbelief ran through the Princes veins, but he said nothing, because he refused to feel anything, there was too much pain for him to bare.

"You need to remarry." the King informed the prince without budging or showing a single hint of emotion towards the circumstances of his son's state.

"You're majesty, I don't think-" Geoffrey attempted to hint his message through, but the king had his days.

"The Kingdom doesn't wait, royals don't get vacations. I understand your queen is gone, but now you need a new one. I'm dying and need to know that there is someone who will be at your side, and your equal before I go."

The king explained, all though everyone new that he wasn't dying, his illness increased in intensity the more he believed that he was done for. 

"I will not marry, whether I have a wife or not I will still be king once you are gone!"

The king had no emotion, no patients, he had nothing, he was nothing, he was just existing at that moment.

"Geoffrey."

The King called out, without moving his eyes from the prince.

"Call all the guards we have, tell them to come in today, there will be a ball in three days time. I want top security, make sure nothing goes wrong, no one learns of the child, no shifts, no breaks for the next seventy- two hours, print an announcement, all available women who have not married, and are of a higher class must attend the masquerade ball, in favour of prince Adam the fifth."

Geoffrey became hesitant as he wrote every word that the King spoke. 

"Yes sir."

The prince stopped pacing the floor to look at his father.

"I will attend to no such thing."

"You will and you must." The king then quickly turned away and left with Geoffrey closely behind him.

"You're making a mistake!" The prince yelled out.

As his father ignored him and walked away, discussing more detail with Geoffrey, which he couldn't make out. Unfortunately the Prince had no idea that he was right, his father was making a mistake; the worst that he has ever made. In three days time Adam will be the happiest man alive, and everyone will die, because he feel in love with the beautiful Cinderella.  

Author's Note

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