WONDER ( Twisted Forbidden Tales ) Book Three

Bitter Heart

MANOMAY

This couldn’t be real, I thought she was my friend. I trusted her with everything. Emotions that I could no longer control manifested into destructive power. Breaking every plate, glass, and window within my vicinity. My screams were loud, bitter, and painful. Christine had lied to me. Everything that she had said was all lies to keep me here.

This palace had always felt like a prison, but no one dared to admit it aloud. Knowing what I had done just put every single servant on edge. I never meant to hurt anyone, but Christine had said it must be done if I ever wanted to get home. No one would ever understand my unhappiness. This place was never meant for me, yet years seemed to have passed. The memories that I held on to since the day I had arrived had become a blur-almost non-existent.

The letters had come just in time, at the point where I nearly lost my sanity. Christine had failed to show up like she used to, leaving me with Morse and Chester, who were my advisors. Another problem had arisen in the past few weeks; several teenagers had gone missing. As the princess of the heartland, it was my duty to solve this. How much would a fifteen-year-old princess achieve in this situation without guidance?

Christine was dead. This didn’t stop me from making her my number-one public enemy. On top of this, I had just gotten word of the Elder Portal’s disappearance. In my panic, I had to find an outlet for all this overwhelming news. So here I was in the Heart Palace conference hall, unleashing a devil-may-care tantrum on the expensive items that Christine had personally selected for this room.

Once my emotions were back under control, I decided to make a choice. The letters upset me and because of that, I would ignore them and the task they wanted me to do. The case of the missing was important, as well as the closed portal. According to my advisors, three entrances were recorded, but no one knew who or what had landed there.

The Spade Deck Guards I had sent out to scout the portal exit, had found nothing. That was impossible considering the portal always left something behind. Still, I had them collect anything they could find in the nearby vicinity. This meant that pesky mad bandits had swept the place. Was the bandit involved in the new entries? I had a feeling that was so.

Over the years, the mad bandit and I had many altercations with one another, yet we never met. In all honesty, I didn’t hate the mad bandit, whoever they were. They took care of the things that I couldn’t do for the people and for that I was glad. Though a lot of times the bandits' actions blocked me, in the long run, looking back on those times, I realized that my advisors had not always been right, and the outcome would not have been favorable if it had been carried through.

Bad reputations were hard to come back from and Christine had built me up to be spoiled, evil, and vengeful in people's eyes. I was nothing of the sort. This made it easier for her to do her dirty deeds in my name and me none the wiser. I was so naive and oblivious to my need for a mother's care I mistook her deception as love for me. The letters came to mind again. Was my mother alive like it said? If so, why hadn’t she looked for me?

Forget it, I couldn’t wait for my only friend to return. Haku was my best friend. He was here when I first arrived there, we grew up together even though he was three years older than me. He had a sudden mission and had taken off in the night. It must have been important because he didn’t even have time to tell me about it. Back in my chambers now, I had to change my tattered clothing, I hated dresses and only wore them for the occasion. In my home, I would dress the way I saw fit from now on. Christine was no longer inflicting her manipulations.

Donning a black button front belted short romper fit. I slid my feet inside my favorite purple Hello Kitty Crocs and pulled my sandy blonde wavy hair back into a ponytail. I stared at myself in the floor-length mirror, trying my best to smile. This was the only thing about this place that I like now. Pulled between two different worlds because of the curse, a lot of things here, though wonky, resemble that place far back in my memory.

A knock at the door brought me back to the present. I let out a sigh before allowing the person to come in. Tristan, the Head of the Spade Deck Guards came in holding a folder in his hands. He stood straight and then bowed slightly, waiting for my command.

“Speak.” I said nonchalantly. There was something he needed to report.

“Yes princess, we found something at the portal exit close to the Amanita Mu Fields,” said Tristan as he opened the folder and handed it over to me to look at the information they collected. After reading it, I closed the folder and handed it back to him. I walked over to the coat rack by the door and grabbed my white lab coat. The worn and new threads woven through it were a sign of how cherished this lab oat was. It was the only thing I had left of my mother in this world.

“Interesting. Shall we?” I said opening the door and motioning to him to leave first. Taking on a new experiment was what I needed. The Guards had found a sour-scented white powder on one of the Jumbo Amanita’s. A broad grin spread across my face. Maybe taking on that mission wasn’t such a bad idea after all. I closed the door behind us, and we headed down to the lab. Since Christine was gone, that left the mastermind still in play. There was nothing like revenge if you found out the mastermind was behind things happening here in Heartland. Heads would roll once I set my gauntlet of justice.

For now, we had been given a reprieve with this unknown powder coming into play. It seemed Christine didn’t work this spell on her own, and I was determined to make the one behind her who was still living to pay a very painful price. My heart pained as a memory resurfaced in my mind. The lab coat I now wore was a leading factor as I sat next to a woman whose smile felt like the shining sun. She would never have abandoned me. I knew that now that my mind was clear from Christine’s manipulation.

Had something happened to my mother as well? That had to be the case if she had yet to find me. But a place like this, not a world like this, was beyond what any normal human being could fathom to truly exist. I should have made peace with my fate a long time ago, but I refused to believe I would never find my way back home and into my mother’s warm embrace.

Taking the secret pathway down to my hidden lab in the palace. Two of my most trusted guards took their places as they had done many times before, as the wall closed in place behind me. With a wave of my hand, my magic flowed within me, opening the door to the lab space where I did private experiments. After discovering this, I held magic in me after Christine’s various tests on me. My curiosity surged, leading me to discover many things about myself and this place and how it came to be here. The letters also confirmed my suspicions. I never met my father, and my mother never spoke of him from the memories I can recall.

One thing was certain though, and that was my mother did not have any magic. So that meant my magic must come from my birth father. But who was he? And could I find him a place like this? A strange and foreign feeling was slowly building inside of me at the thought of this. Was this something I wanted to add to the list of things I must explore? After all the letters, I said I needed to leave this place as soon as I could. To do that would not be so easy in this palace prison. To get away undetected would have been a good plan of action and to do that I needed Haku, but where had he gone in the middle of the night and when would he return to help me with the task I had been chosen to do with the appearance of these letters. This didn't stop me from making Plan B either, as I was better safe than sorry now that Christine's mask had been torn off upon her death, others would surely follow and, for me, that was a deadly and fast-approaching threat.