The Treasure Keeper

Chapter Fifteen

Once there was a prince. Have you heard this story before?

A prince in spirit if not in title, and he was handsome and brave and bold, and more than a little charming. Like many such princes, he tumbled in and out of love with ease, and happened to leave quite a pretty trail of broken hearts scattered behind him. He was not especially kind, but he was not especially cruel, either. He had been blessed by life and forged perhaps a wee bit selfish by all that good fortune. There had never come an occasion truly to plumb his depths, and so he sparkled like a raindrop, bright and cheerful and happy to splash where he would.

Don't judge him too harshly. Born in his magical place, do you imagine you would have turned out so very different?

So this prince might well have lived the whole of his life in such a way, and then his name and story would have faded from memory; he would have been just one more dashing prince for us to amass with all the dashing others, fine-looking fellows all with the same grin.

But one day this particular prince lost his looks and his fortune with a single devious blow. He lost his light, and his hope. And he realized, only then—of course!—what a waste his life had been. How foolish he was to have squandered it, when he might have been a good man all along.

He had but one chance to touch something bright again. He had but one chance to prove he was more than splash and easy charm.

This chance came to him in the shape of a female, a special female: a treasure, one might say. She possessed a heart so strong and true he could scarcely fathom the size of it.

It's a shame, isn't it, that the sole thing the prince was good at was shattering hearts?