Samantha breathed in through her mouth and out through her nose. She stood out in the yard, a little ways from the castle front entry. A crows of children stood watching her not to far away. She held an arrow and bow in her hands, aiming at a practice target broad a few feet in front of her.

"What would your mother have said seeing you like this?" Renee, a good friend of hers, sat on the grass, watching Samantha practice.

"She would have said: Good job Samantha. I'm so proud of you."

"You're not being very princess like young lady."

"Archery." She lined up her target with the arrow. Drawing the string back, she released the string, sending the arrow flying forward and launching into into the wooden target broad. "Is just a fun past time."

Renee rolled her eyes and sighed. "Men does things like this. Not a young lady who's in the making of being a proper princess."

"Just because I know how to shoot an arrow doesn't make me less of a princess. I'm twenty years old. It's time I know how to do something for myself." Samantha looked over at the older woman.

"You've have protection with your husband."

She lowered the bow to her side, glaring at the ground. "Why do I have to marry him? He's twice my age."

"King Matthew is a good man. He will give you the world and all. If age is just a problem, then there's nothing to worry about. Your mother married your father."

Her mother. The woman who had died giving birth to her. She was quite young when she married her father. A man that was twice her age. They had had a traditional wedding and had conceived her three years later.

"That's just it. I don't want to be like mom. I want to marry for love."

Renee gets to her feet, wiping grass and dirt from her brown dress. "Honey, love will come with time. That's just the way things are done."

"Well it's a stupid rule." She raised the bow and released the string sending the arrow forward once again.

"Princess Samantha--"

"Who is that going into the castle?" Samantha pointed at a man getting off a brown horse and walking toward the castle doors.

This man looked to be familiar. That's when she recognized that untamable brown hair and the same commoner clothes. It was him. The man she saw last night.

"I don't know. He's new." Renee came up beside her. "He looks like he could be handsome too from this distance. Thought I could be wrong."

Samantha was quick to say, "He was at the party last night."

"He must be a friend of the King."

"Let's find out." Samantha put her bow down on the ground. Picking up the end of her dress, she ran toward the castle.

"Wait! What are you doing?"

"I'm going to find out!" she called over her shoulder.

Once inside, she headed straight for her father's throne room. That's where most of his meeting took place. Once there, she placed her ear against the keyhole to listen.

"...her...forest..."

"I...Just...guards..."

Rats! I can only catch a few words. I know! Taking the round object at the end of her necklace, she put it to her ear and pressed the object to the small keyhole. Almost instantly, the voices became clear.

"I'll do it, but you know my price," The unfamiliar voice said.

Then her father's voice said, "I do. Just make sure the job gets done."

"Princess Samantha, what are you doing?" Mrs. Plum's voice started her into standing up abruptly.

"Sssh." She jumped up covering the woman's mouth despite the disapproval look threw at her.

"Wat u oing?" she mumbled through the hand over her mouth.

"Just be quiet!" she hissed trying to keep the woman quiet.

At that moment a click could be heard causing Samantha to look over her shoulder back at the door.

Her father and the stranger appeared in the doorway. They both looking at her curiously. However, her father's expression turned to a bored one. Samantha didn't pay her father any attention for she was looking at the man beside him.

He had browner skin then anyone she had ever seen in the kingdom. He had a perfectly narrowed face and full, symmetrical lips that Samantha watched as he spoke. 

"I see we have a little nosey rosey," he said in that gently rough voice of his.

"What?" she asked.

He smiled and it reached his brown eyes. "Another time, Your High."

The King didn't give a reply and watched the stranger walked down the hallway toward the entry.

"Go finish your studies." Her father told her as he turned and moved down in the opposite direction.

What was that about? She watched her go. Looking back in the direction the stranger had gone, she is tugged by the arm toward the study room.

Dinner that night was eaten in quiet. Samantha thought about the man her father had talked to earlier. Who was he to her father? And why did her heart flutter at his smile?

"Your union to King Matthew will be taken place over at his kingdom. You are due to leave tomorrow." Her father's voice cause her to look over at him.

They were sitting at a small table. Samantha was on her father's left and they were having a dinner of steak and red potatoes.

"Father, I don't want to marry him." She sat her fork down.

"You will. You're already twenty years old, Samantha. He's the best I can do for you." Her father didn't look her way as he continued to eat. "Plus it will strengthen out ties with one another."

"So you're only want me to marry him for political gain?"

The King sighed. "It's time you replay what all I've done for you, Samantha."

"This is unfair."

"Life isn't fair." He looked at his child then.

Getting up from the table, she fixed her father with a soft glare. "I'm going for a walk."

"Fine with me."

Storming out of the dining room, she made her way out the back of the castle into the garden. She walked hastily for awhile before slowing down to a slow walk.

He doesn't understand anything. How am I suppose to marry someone like King Matthew? I don't love him nor like him. This is unfair. I wish there was a way out. A way out and far away from this kingdom.

Just then, several men jumps from bushes and behind trees. Surprised, she turned to run back toward the castle where she knew guards watched and waited. Something is thrown over her head. A cloth of some sort.

"Father! Father, help!"

"Quiet you," A deep voice that held amusement said.

"What is this? Let me go! My father will have your head!"

The stranger laughed along with several others who joined in on the secret joke. "Let me enlightened you about something you don't know about your beloved father."